I know this post is old but it's so relevant to me. It explained some things to me. That I suspected but wasn't sure about before. I want to post about it. I'm not trying to attack anyone, and OP is no longer around probably but my message is more general anyway, to all depressed & self-absorbed people who aren't that self-absorbed by default but allowed depression to make them self-absorbed to the extreme.
Quote:
Originally Posted by AngstyLady
People may misinterpret depression as disinterest, or being rude & flaky or purposefully ignoring them and being self-absorbed instead of the caring friend/family member that they are- which sucks because that makes the said depressed person feel worse when they then get rebuked or ignored as a consequence and they feel even worse and hate themselves even more - all they were doing were trying not to be depressed and didn't have time to be engaging and remember something they talked about with someone or forget someones name- It seems a lot of people still don't realize/know that depression causes one to be more forgetful and have low energy and have slow thinking in general so I guess depression can be selfish in the fact that you don't think of others because you're so distracted by the negative thoughts and the pain you feel inside. Plus usually one doesn't want to be a downer (or at least I don't) and tries to be 'happy' and stay positive for the sake of being around others because most people either misinterpret their behavior and take offense or don't know how to react/what to do and feel uncomfortable anyway around people who are depressed.
|
Frankly I don't get that version of depression. I've seen people like that yes but I don't understand it.
Even when I was very low and slow I still had focus on other people. Why?
Does it depend on one's value system, what they find most important?
Was I just not doing that bad?! I know I was doing plenty bad, I was so low at one point I stopped caring to eat. I literally stopped caring. And there was worse than that too but I don't want to talk about it
Quote:
Originally Posted by AngstyLady
People may misinterpret depression as disinterest, or being rude & flaky or purposefully ignoring them and being self-absorbed instead of the caring friend/family member that they are- which sucks because that makes the said depressed person feel worse when they then get rebuked or ignored as a consequence and they feel even worse and hate themselves even more - all they were doing were trying not to be depressed and didn't have time to be engaging and remember something they talked about with someone or forget someones name- It seems a lot of people still don't realize/know that depression causes one to be more forgetful and have low energy and have slow thinking in general so I guess depression can be selfish in the fact that you don't think of others because you're so distracted by the negative thoughts and the pain you feel inside.
|
I will say more on this part..... So thank you for your honesty because yes this is self-absorbed.
But I want to say more. I most certainly did NOT rebuke or ignore my friend when she was depressed like this. In fact I kept trying to help her! She sought me out if she needed help. Ignored and blocked me at other times. She was very flaky and rude yes. She started behaving really disrespectful with me, with all that flakiness. But I tolerated it because I cared and wanted to help and didn't want to make her feel bad/worse. She did blame all of it on her depression. I now wish I had just rebuked or ignored her because I eventually got a really bad dose of her negativity, when her mad anger bordering on paranoia and whatnot turned against me. It wasn't worth it for me to tolerate it for so long.
So, I recommend to you to accept it as normal self-protective behaviour if people ignore you back or get offended in response to you ignoring them and being rude to them. Please do not expect anyone to drop their self-protectiveness just so you can feel less depressed. It's everyone's own responsibility to keep up their self-protection. Or they'd end up like I did. It wasn't worth it!!!!! It was so much damage in the end. And it didn't make her LESS depressed, my sacrifice didn't help with that AT ALL! Because it remained her own responsibility to deal with her own depression without burdening others so much with it. It's OK to ask for help, but you can't expect others to always suffer the rude behaviour without protecting themselves.
I did run into some other guy who was depressed and I had a problem with some rudeness of his but I was trying to understand him, why he said it, and where it ended up was him making ME apologise for somehow making him feel bad with trying to understand! I didn't tolerate that, by then I'd learnt enough about not to tolerate it, thank god. I mean I DID try to accept it for a day or so (I guess I hadn't learned enough from the case with my friend after all), then I saw he actually had MORE positivity, more energy from me having apologised!! I'm not joking, the change was PALPABLE.... Then I took some time to reflect and realised this is vampire behaviour. So I stopped tolerating it THEN. Thank god.
That friend did also become a vampire, to be brutally honest.
She was certainly very much busy with her own pain, too. Yeah. But she allowed herself to become way too busy with it and that damaged several people around her. One of them actually became s------- and k---- himself. After having helped her for years. I also did feel s------- too because of the negative drama she pushed on me. I didn't k--- myself but I did almost do so because I got so impulsive. I'm not going to go on with this, it's too dark a topic.
Please take responsibility for getting your depression treated and doing everything yourself too to make it better and don't become a vampire, respect yourself more than that!