So, I had a very frustrating conversation with my best girlfriend yesterday that was very troubling.

I told her that I think I am depressed. She began to argue with me about me NOT being depressed and wouldn't let it drop. She wanted to argue that I am experiencing normal human emotions but that I am NOT depressed.

It upset me because I felt entirely invalidated yet she continued to argue for minutes on end, even after telling her it was unproductive and not the point of me bringing it up to her.

Before this conversation, I had determined that I AM depressed. I have had bouts of situational depression before, and I realized this weekend that I am in a depressed funk due to work & life circumstances.

I am low energy, and despondent on most days. I lie on the couch and do nothing. I don't feel motivated but to do the bare minimum at work and at home. My thoughts are constantly despondent, and I am ruminating on all the negatives.

So, I am depressed, yet she argues that I am not and that the DSM is full of it.

She thinks that depression means you cannot help yourself or function. She thinks it means you have to be completely incapacitated. I told her there are different levels and degrees of depression and that I thought she was talking more about clinical depression than other types, like what I suffer, which is periodic, situational depression. I have even been diagnosed more than once as having depression. I have been on an anti-depressant medication for YEARS to help me during times like these that happen from time to time.

She came across so strongly and so arrogantly, as though HER definition trumps the DSM and all psychologists and psychiatrists with PhD's and medical degrees!!! I couldn't BELIEVE what I was hearing. She even knocked the entire field of psychiatry by saying the DSM is only aimed at medicating people so that pharmacies can make money.

OMG - I think I need to speak less to this girlfriend!?!!?!?

Lately, I have wondered how or why I am such good friends with her, and I have had these thoughts a LOT. We talk often and she has been my main support over the last many years..... BUT I'm also thinking that her thinking is totally off-based and whacked. She believes in things like conspiracy theories, she doesn't trust authority figures, and she thinks she knows everything. We voted opposite in the election, and we have opposing political beliefs and views so we don't talk about politics.

She also speaks over me frequently, and I have to fight to be heard. I often find myself raising my voice over hers and speaking loudly, while she continues to speak over me. It's incredibly frustrating and also I find it to be very disrespectful. Her whole family behaves that way with each other, so she thinks it's OK to do. I have brought this to her attention a couple of times, but she continues to do this on the phone, every time we speak! So, I gave up bringing it up and allow it to happen.

She is on disability and doesn't work yet she is under the impression that somehow miraculously she will figure out a way to make money online from home to replace and surpass her disability income. She lives in a fantasy world, but I don't have the heart to tell her she is being completely unrealistic, so I try to support and encourage her as best as I can.

But, she spins her wheels about the same 3 or 4 issues in her life, which never change, and this has gone on for YEARS! And I am just now beginning to see how nothing has changed in YEARS!

She complains about the same family issues and the same financial issues. I listen to her talk all the time about how she needs to distance herself from her family, then she allows herself to continue to be completely enmeshed with her family, who distract her from trying to learn a skill so she CAN make money, and it goes on and on and on.

She hates where she lives and how she lives, and she speaks often about how she cannot stand her living space. She lives like a packrat in her home, with very little room to move around because of so much junk, yet she has not cleared out any of the rooms of all the junk like she says she will do, each and every year.

She's a massive rut, but nonetheless, I listen and support and encourage her.

We talk on the phone at least several times each week, if not every day. She has been a mainstay in my life and is one of the closest people to me who has been there for me through thick and thin. But her arguments to me about my not being depressed took me by surprise and really upset me. I felt invalidated and continued to tell her repeatedly that I know when I am in a depressed state.

If my father were still alive, who was a psychiatrist, I bet she would try and argue with my father about depression not being a real thing.

The problem I face is I seem to be heavily dependent on our friendship, despite these issues. I have very few local friends to talk to all the time, so she is my bestie. But we don't even do the things normal friends do together, like having dinner or going out together for fun, because she has no money and little energy.

What do I do given that I AM dependent on her for friendship? I have a few new friendships blooming with 3 different women, but it takes a long time to develop closer friendships, which cannot be rushed or forced. That level of closeness has to happen naturally and over time.

It's also crossed my mind if she is in fact toxic for me as a friend. The speaking over me thing feels like toxic behavior. The rest feels like we are simply in very different places in life, our thinking is different, and we have completely different lives.

At the very least, I think I need to back off this week from speaking with her so frequently. I don't know what else to think or do... UGH. What do I do???? Build more of a life so that I am less dependent on this friend?

Everything continues to point me in the direction of branching out more in my life to continue meeting and making new friends.

I will be reaching out to a therapist that my nephews see. My mother gave me his contact info - so I do have a referral now and will follow up.

Maybe these questions are for me to figure out in therapy, but I would be curious to hear anyone's thoughts on here too about this issue with my girlfriend - if you've made it this far through my long post!!!