People's reactions to depression

I am so tired of people who don't have depression telling me to just suck it up and get over it. That is so easy for them to say because I can't just suck it up because it is a life long problem that I have to deal with. I just wish people would understand that depression is a medical condition and I treat it just like I would if I had diabetes or something. I wish they would understand just how real my depression is and how serious it can get for me.

The reason why people don't treat depresion the same way they would diabetis is, because they both have physiological foundations but diabetis affects mostly your body while depresion your behavior.

It takes a little bit of a carying heart to understand people with conditions that affect their behavior. I'm sorry some people are simply too shallow to see beyond your condition.

gab

Another problem is if you were to describe the symptoms of your diabetes, how you could go into diabetic shock, loose your eyesight, and other things, people can relate to that on an external level. They wouldn't want those things to happen to them.

But when you try to describe the symptoms of depression, people believe they can relate to them internally. And so they think "yea that has happened to me, and I just ate a gallon of ice cream and then felt better! So why don't you just do that?"

They don't understand that the defining difference between their "depression" and yours is that you are physiologically unable to "snap out of it" and it doesn't respond to "pleasurable" activities as it should.

I wrote a paper addressing this a while ago and you can get a copy of it at
-- The world is what we make of it --
-- Dave
-- <A target="_blank" HREF=http://www.idexter.com>http://www.idexter.com</A>

If I ate a gallon of Ice cream to help my depression the only thng that would probably get me is overweight. My own father who has lived with me most of my life even tells me to suck it up but my dad is so mellow nothing bothers him. When I am super depressed I get super sensitve and I have trouble dealing with people's reactions to me. I just plug on and hope people see me for the good person that I am.

Wow, David. That is just a super paper.

As for sucking it up, snapping out of it, this list has helped me so much come to terms with this being a disease. My family treats me as depression is a moral personality weakness, and I do it strictly to annoy them, make them feel bad, and to get attention. So -- I get accused of being "selfish" for dumping my illness on them -- and they don't even see how selfish they are to interpret my pain solely in terms of how it affects them. That, in fact, they have created a world in which *my* illness is *all about them.*

My previous T worked with me to get me to do pleasurable activities. I went to a butterflly garden she recommended, where classical music softly plays in a serene setting with waterfalls, lush tropigal gardens, etc. I sat on one of the benches and thought, "This is lovely. OK, when do I start feeling pleasure," and felt as if I was outside myself, watcing myself not feel good.

My new T is a cognitive guy, not gestalt as the previous, and we are working on the "just do it -- just keep moving" approach. Which, for someone who needs a job/source of income, is good.

I'm sorry you are getting so little support from your family. I know how much that hurts.