The Trouble with Depression Advice

When you’re depressed, they’ll tell you that the sun will come out tomorrow, as though your life is an Annie film and your disorder comes from some mystical place outside of you. And they will be right: life can be an Annie movie, and the sun will eventually come out. That is the nature of this solar system. The earth turns, the sun rises, the clouds evaporate.

They just don’t do any of those things inside your head where your disorder lives.

Yes, the world’s normals know a few things about clinical depression. They learned them all last year on the day their hamster died and the dinner burned and it took them an extra two hours to fall asleep. It’s easy to dole out vapid advice and quote Annie songs when you think mental illness resembles your last dose of grief. Clichés make you feel like a hero, all warm and cosy inside your own puritanical fairytale.

There are only five universal fears: death, loss of autonomy, isolation, mutilation, and ego death (humiliation or shame). It takes a great deal of suffering to make a person run towards, rather than away from, death, which should tell you a little about a condition that pushes people to suicide. That’s not enough for depression, though. It wants all five fears, and so it will isolate you. It may even mutilate you. As for the shame… well, that comes from those who learned about depression from an Annie song. That vapid advice brings a lovely ego buzz.

“Normals” who minimise the very real and legitimate suffering of depressives are universally present at every discussion I’ve seen about this illness. Give them a comments thread and they will teach you to survive something they cannot understand at even the most rudimentary level.

There’s a reason for their ignorance: They’re too busy talking to listen, and too lost in their sense of superiority to realise they need to listen.

Depression is not a character flaw or a sign of weakness, but I’ll tell you what is: giving advice about a disorder you’re so ignorant of that you compare it to your last dose of sads.