Depression Shaming.
It’s a thing, though if you try to google it, you just get a lot of sites on dealing with shame when you’re depressed. Because there is plenty of shame to be felt. Why can’t I just be happy? Just get out of fucking bed already, ugh I am so so lazy. God, how did I forget to pay the DTE bill? So forgetful. So inconsiderate. Just terrible.
So it makes sense that when you try to google Depression Shaming, that’s what you get.
But that’s not what I’m talking about.
Other people want to make you feel ashamed too.
“You shouldn’t have to take that medicine to be happy. To be normal.”
“Why can’t you just relax?”
“It’s not like these pills I take are like MOOD STABILIZERS or something like that.”
Or – the one I got today. It’s so innocuous. It’s said with such love that the person who sent it doesn’t even realize how hurtful it is. I know it would crush them if they knew that, so I’m not even going to type it out. But what it boiled down to?
Stop being so miserable. Stop looking for the negative in everything. Be happy. YOU did this. You do this to yourself. You can change this about you.
But the thing is – as many a blogger has pointed out – shame doesn’t help anything. Shame is paralyzing. Someone with depression is already thinking those thoughts, and when someone says it out loud it reaffirms what we already know. We are defective, we are broken, and what’s even worse is we did this to ourselves and should know how to fix it. But we’re too stupid to figure out how to just be happy.
What baffles my mind is this — don’t you think we haven’t thought of that? Like we’re actually sitting around all the time going “You know, I think I’ll just lay in bed and cry for awhile. That sounds like a totally solid way to spend my afternoon.” Who would make a choice like that? And what does it say about me that you think I would actively make that decision? “Oh, I could be having a blast right now but I think I’ll just be miserable instead.”
I mean really. Don’t you think if it were as easy as smiling more often or simply trying harder to see the good in things – that we would have done that already? It’s as if these people think I don’t want happiness. As if I’m not constantly seeking new ways to break the cycle of feeling relatively normal and feeling so awful about everything that I can’t make myself get out of bed. If I could simply will myself to normal without the assistance of therapy or pharmacology – I’d have done it already.
But I can’t. We can’t. We’ve tried, and it just doesn’t work that way.
So stop shaming us. Because depression is an illness, just like any other illness.
It’s not our fault.
And there is nothing to be ashamed of.
I’m curious to know about everyone else’s experiences with mental illness shaming. Leave a comment, email, tweet, etc. 🙂
one long season 
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I agree that mental illness shaming is rampant and often done by the well-meaning. What makes it complicated is that when dealing with our depression, attitude DOES matter and we do need to do our best. It’s just that someone on the outside can’t see how hard we are trying because their idea of what our best should look like is so different. People who haven’t been there don’t see that someone might be expending a huge amount of hope, faith and strength just to “wait out” a bad phase and not do anything to make it worse.
Agreed. I would never argue in favor of “just don’t try” — this was more about others accepting that “Just make a decision to be happy” simply doesn’t cut it. I make that decision daily and I fail – often.
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