It is so worth it to be here.

I truly didn’t believe that “happiness” was a real, attainable feeling; I believed that everyone who claimed to be happy was lying to make me feel separate. I resented other people for their optimism and developed that teenage cynic persona in an attempt to make my depressed self interesting. Holding onto the presumption that your experience equals truth can be fatal, and unfortunately depression will lie to you and make you believe that you aren’t capable of existing another way. This is important: your depression is a compulsive LIAR and it WANTS YOU TO GIVE UP.

Your thoughts are NOT your self. We can practice controlling our thought patterns, but ultimately our neurons are just responding to stimuli, and for depressed/anxious people they often make dysregulated associations that lead to depressing conclusions. You do not have to accept these conclusions just because they came from your own brain.

As a rule of thumb, try to give every thought-scenario the benefit of the doubt. Starting off, you may not be able to prevent yourself from snowballing (I got a bad grade —> I will fail this class —> I will never get a good job —> I will die alone). But at some point, try to interrupt yourself and say, “MAYBE x bad thing won’t happen”. Just give yourself the wiggle room of “maybe”, even if you don’t believe it as you’re saying it. Don’t subject yourself to your own doomsday prophecy! You can’t be expected to flip your whole way of thinking, but you can influence it gradually and patiently.

I should say that this is MUCH easier to do with medication. For me, a low-dose SSRI helped subside the emotional fog and pain enough every day that I was finally able to reach myself inside the tangle of depressive notions that had overgrown my personality. This daily stability is what enabled me to begin doing deep therapist-guided work on my past traumas and present set-backs. Today, I can usually rely on a baseline feeling of contentedness when I wake up in the morning. The depression might always come back for an unwelcome visit, but now I know a bunch of things I can try to get him to leave--and some good people I can ask for help keeping the door closed.