Helping friends understand my depression - Adventures in Depression

[Zoomah]

Was talking to a friend last week who linked me this comic. It is amazing. It has been used in psychology journals to demonstrate what depression is like. I got my parents to read it so they could properly understand what I feel like all the time. Even though they are supportive they still didn't fully understand until they read this.

Professor Jonathan Rottenberg - “I know of no better depiction of the guts of what it’s like to be severely depressed: Clutching your blanket, you are born into the baffling, boring, disorienting state that is depression – radically out of phase with the rest of humanity, unable to understand the concerns of other people, nor able to communicate yours to them.:

Hyperbole and a Half - Adventures in Depression - (I never experienced the end of this one but most of it applied.

Hyperbole and a Half - Depression 2- This one is what I'm like

(MOD NOTE: Links contain profanity)

[zailleh]

Hey Zoomah,

I know the comics you're talking about. They certainly are a great representation of what it's like to be depressed. 

How did your parents feel after reading it? Did they actually have a better understanding of what its like to be depressed afterwards?

~Zailleh

[Zoomah]

They had always been good about it but they tended to do a lot of the silly things that really weren't constructive. They are a lot better at helping now and don't try to pressure me into "feeling happy" on my off days.

[zailleh]

That's good to hear!

I recently, in one of my darker moments, came up with another explanation that I'm yet to try out on anyone, it is:

"Can you remember a time when everything went wrong all at once and it seemed like the whole world was against you? You felt terrible. Every little thing that went wrong started to seem like a disaster. Anger would well up inside you, either at the world, yourself, or both. You'd start to berate yourself for being hopeless and making mistakes and not being able to do anything right. All it would take is one thing to send you over the edge.

Depression is like that; only it is all the time and without the prerequisite sequence of things going wrong one after the other."

What do you think?