The first time I read this thread, I clicked away from it and said "that's not me, I do not want to be depressed, I hate feeling this way, I have nothing to gain from being depressed, it's only hurting me."

I read it again a few hours later and decided it's actually a really good question to ask myself. I am getting something out of it. I'm still angry, hurt and upset about changes at work that I didn't like, and the depression "proves" that "they" (whoever made the decision in the first place, and couldn't be talked into changing their minds about it) were wrong, and that it would and did make me sick, and that was All Their Fault.

I can be really really stubborn, especially when I know I'm in the right. I can be so stubborn that I end up making *myself* sick as a result. It's a way of making the people who annoy me suffer right along with me in the hell they created for me. It's also a way to make people leave me alone because nobody wants to provoke the crazy person.

My own therapist asked why I was giving people so much power. I think I finally understand what she meant, and what the answer should be. I don't have to give them that power, they don't care whether I give them power or not, and it only hurts me to allow them to make me feel so bad.

I did manage to show a few people in the past few months how it felt to be as angry and bitter as I was. But this has cost me way more than it was worth. I'm the one who ended up sick, not the people I was trying to "hurt back". The ones who got that message, though, were the ones trying to help me, not the ones I was blaming for hurting me in the first place. There's nothing to be gained by trying to torture the bad guys, karma doesn't work that way. They'll get their "lesson" in the right way at the right time, just as I realize I've now gotten my "lesson".

Thank you for turning on the light.