quote:
Originally posted by kygal:
I had a wonderful woman of God tell me that depression was nothing more than "I'm not getting my way".....and once I got past that, I might just "get it." What a guilt trip to lay on someone who had just come through a very scary experience of losing all sense of direction trying to get to her place.
Mary, thank you for posting that experience. That's exactly the sort of thing I mean by "cruelty of kind intentions". I doubt that we're ever going to make a significant dent in that negative stigmatization of depression/mental illness, but we CAN change how we receive it. Those kinds of comments are deadly toxins that we have to leave "out there" and not allow to simmer into our already guilt-infested mangled thinking. Just as we wouldn't willingly allow toxic hazardous materials into our house, no matter how messy our house may be, so too we cannot allow those mental toxins into our psyche and being, no matter how messy our "attic" might be!

I really think that one of the key starting points might be to give ourselves permission to declare our depression as a bona fide illness. I don't mean any disrespect to those who have cancer, but I do think of my own depression as a sort of "cancer of the mind". Let's face it, it eats away at our ability to think and function, and if left untreated, does grow until it swallows us into its darkness. So it does behave like a cancer.

If we can just allow ourselves to recognize the mangled thinking, the fatigue, the lostness, the profound woundedness as SYMPTOMS of a bona fide illness, rather than character flaws and proof of failure as a human being, then we're that much closer to learning how to manage the depression so it doesn't completely swallow us into that terrible quicksand. We learn how to treat the symptoms (medication, therapy, positive self-talk, supportive network) rather than let those symptoms define the totality of who we are.