Quote:
Originally Posted by amicus_curiae
Now I think myself an expert on depression, having been brought down by the disease for over 16-years. I can’t offer any complete explanation of the disorder and doubt that anyone can. Depression does dampen any enthusiasm for living but that’s but a single symptom and I don’t believe that the enormity of the disease can be written off as a general ‘lack of enthusiasm’ and certainly not apathy though I admit that the depressed do feel apathetic about some daily activities (showering!) and other considerations of the world outside outside of themselves. With that I’ll admit that depression is a deeply rooted self-centred disease by definition.
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I
strongly, strongly, strongly disagree with the idea that depression is self-centered. Depression is a perspective on life. I've equated it -- accurately so, according to doctors and others suffering from it -- with looking at the world through rose-colored glasses, only instead of it being rose-colored the glasses are darkened. Rather than label it with a specific color, since it varies from day to day and from person to person, I refer to it as looking at the world through depression glasses.
I've been dealing with depression for a good 18 years and it was created by the combination of the situations in my life -- I was parentified after my father's death (which in itself set me up for failure); my mother was so focused on my brother that nothing I did was ever good enough to get her attention; and I was suffering with recurring painful migraines, often accompanied by vertigo, that I could only get relief from by sleeping.
The above colored the way I look at life, it changed my perspective on things, but in no which way do I see me being self-centered in any of that. In reality, I'm as far from self-centered as can be. I cannot, for the life of me, figure out how to put myself first, even to my own detriment. It's very OCPD of me, since I saw it as a rule and no one ever told me the rule no longer applied until it was too ingrained in my personality, but I took on my role as a parentified child and extended it from caring for my brother to caring for others. I didn't even realize it wasn't normal to put others' needs so far before my own until I was in college, when my RA found out about my living situation and forced me to change dorms because my "living situation [was] a hazard to [my] health." (I was caring for a mentally ill roommate by locking up sharp objects, doling out her medication, hiding the alcohol, and following her around when I was told {i.e., lied to} that she was released from being Baker Acted into my care).
So again, I cannot disagree strongly enough with the idea that depression is a self-centered disease.