I've been struggling with this also - the fact that from the inside, things get me depressed and I act/feel despondently paralyzed, but from an external perspective it doesn't make any sense because it doesn't solve any of the situations I feel depressed about in the first place.

I have concluded that the desirable thing is to encourage ourselves, as we might try to encourage someone else in a similar situation. People who just complain that "depressed people are acting lazy" or the like are not showing the slightest inclination to empathize or understand, they are just conveying what they see and assuming what causes the behavior.

I ask myself, is it understandable that something genuinely bad makes me feel bad? Yes, I wouldn't possess emotions, opinions or preferences at all otherwise. The problem comes in me seeing a bad situation as permanently fixed or as extremely threatening, and that causes the negative state to persist and cause paralysis.