"Life is what YOU make it" - things you should NEVER say to a depressed person.

Do you know how hurtful that statement is to someone who is depressed? Basically it is saying - it is 100% YOUR OWN FAULT for ending up where you are, you deserve ALL of it, and YOU are SO ON YOUR OWN in getting out again! You can't imagine the mountain of soul-crushing guilt you pile on this poor person. You know what the saddest thing about that is? That person ALREADY feels that way, and you're just reminding them!

PLEASE consider carefully the things you post in the depression forum from now on.

Depression is a result of a multitude of life factors that has simply combined in a very malefactory way. It is often triggered by horrendous life experiences totally out of the sufferer's control. Sometimes the event is so deeply buried in the sub-concious that it cannot even be identified. It is then fed for years by negative experience after negative experience. Like a drug addiction, it becomes the cornerstone of the person's life, to the point where the original vibrant, creative, loving, happy person is virtually gone, and you're left with an imposter who can barely function.

Have you ever driven or walked in a really thick fog or snowstorm, so thick you can't even see your hand in front of you? At the dead of night? In the middle of nowhere where there are no lights? Without a compass, a map, a phone, a GPS to find your way out again? That's what it's like. And that's putting it mildly. The last thing you want at that point is someone reminding you that YOU were the one that got lost and ended up in this place. That if you just didn't choose to go out that night, none of this would have happened.

And the advice is actually very hypocritical when you think about it. Because in one breath it is saying you should go out and live life, don't be afraid of new adventures, yet what is not mentioned is that that is exactly how you ended up in the "snowstorm" in the first place. Sometimes we seek adventure in life and we fail, and we end up with something we didn't exactly seek. I would never have had depression if I didn't experience the things I did that finally triggered it, yet those things happened because I took a chance to go for something I really wanted in life. I was still lucky. I still went there on my own terms. Then you have people who are "kidnapped" (metaphor for say PTSD for example) blindfolded and end up dropped off in the "snowstorm" and left to die. How can you ever blame them?