Living with a depressed, anxious person?

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I start to feel down on myself because depression makes simple tasks seemingly require an extraordinary effort. From the outside nobody really sees the effort it takes just to get through the day. Because the thing you suffer is invisible to others, people are reluctant to even believe you. If you're depressed and people constantly come at you with the "get over it" attitude, there's no way to feel good about yourself. I'm pretty sure every person who experiences depression runs into people not understanding and judging, often from the people closest to them. Because it's hard to avoid the lack of understanding, it's hard to avoid becoming down on yourself. People constantly imply that depression is a fault, weakness, or moral failing. It's everywhere, sometimes subtle, sometimes not so subtle. You simply can't avoid it. It's a lot like the patriarchy that feminists complain about. Prejudice and judgement against depression is embedded in our very language. You can't help but internalize that and that becomes your reality. I don't think all depressed people would be down on themselves if they weren't exposed to constant attack.

It still seems like the depression is there first though. At least for me. Even in a 1000% supportive environment where I was treated like I king, I'd still be capable of feeling depressed. It can be totally bio-chemical. It's just a shame it isn't always easy to treat. There's definitely way more too it than serotonin levels. If depression was equivalent to low serotonin, SSRIs would work on everyone. Really, there are a ton of people for whom SSRIs don't work, and they don't all just have bad life circumstances.


For me, at this point in my life, the depression seems to come first. Something negative will make it twice as bad, but it can totally happen all by itself. Also, something positive will not always lift it. People always seem to overrate the influence of thoughts on feelings and underrate the influence of feelings on thoughts. It is a two way street, but the majority of the traffic is on the emotions influencing thoughts side of things. Of course that's just from my own perspective. Other people may experience things very differently. Other people may not be a self-aware as I am either.

I'm sorry. I didn't try to imply you were condescending, just that you didn't completely understand.

That's fine.

I hope you feel better today.

Thank you for explaining.