Depression


Let’s Talk About This

Let’s talk! Something we rarely do nowadays. There are so many cases of depression nowadays. Depression has been termed as so many different things over the years. Some say it’s a “disease”. We live in a society where we term anything neurological to be mean the same thing:
     She has a mental problem!
               OR
         She’s weird!

TAKE A MOMENT TO DEFINE

The main definition calls depression to be a “state of low mood and aversion to activity that can affect a person's thoughts.”

Nothing mental about that. It’s a situation more than a condition. People with a condition have an inability to be functional, people with depression are not like that all. They find it hard to fit in. It is a shortcoming that we fail to understand sometimes that people with depression, social anxiety, and so on are no different from everyone else. To be honest, a girl suffering from depression is also either an introvert or extrovert. Just because you see them being terminally quiet doesn’t necessarily mean that person is weird.

     THE TRUTH IS…

The truth is that there are many ways “understanding” people may try to help those they know and try to show sympathy. Now where that is obviously the right thing to do, sometimes what you do or how you do it not only does not work but also makes it worse. The fact is that studies actually show that you should never ask a person suffering from depression or social anxiety “What’s wrong?” because they themselves don’t know and cannot explain. The “how” is always general but the “why” is just not the right option to go by.

When you look at that girl who’s been down since the last three days why she has been acting strange lately she literally doesn’t know what to say. 

Depression is a state unlike sadness that the person really doesn’t recover from after taking a few hours alone or after having slept it off. You never really are able to flush it out, it just gets buried inside your subconscious for a while before it is meant to resurface again. This is because of the other hundreds of minute thoughts which keep surfacing. Poof! It’s gone the next minute and then suddenly it’s back again.

Depression will hit the person from out of nowhere whereas sadness is directly triggered. The trigger to the meltdown however is from the many years of mental toil.
  

    THE PARADOX

It’s a very emotional situation not only because you’re suffering from it but also because you have people telling you “You should consult a psychiatrist”.
Now where that does help, it is wrongful simply because you’re telling the person that he/she needs medical attention. No one likes that being said to them.

    What can be done v/s What needs to be done

What can be done is again showing sympathy, giving care and attention but all of it because you know there’s something wrong with him. There is something he faces which is different from what you all face so when you talk to him you’re more understanding, more caring when going out with him and so on.

What however needs to be done is giving time to process his/her pain and suffering. If the person isn’t able to say, stop there and focus on making the person joyous just like you’d do normally to get that person you like so damn much. Keep the sympathy to yourself and try empathizing. You need to mean it, as a normal thing. The person wants to know that you’re being friendly because you actually like the exact person he is, with all that baggage. 

Depression or not, no one wants pity love out of consideration. Everyone wants a friendship built from true compassion for each other. 

So go and give your depressed friend a hug from the heart and tell him/her “I love you” and mean it.

“IMAGINE ALL THE PEOPLE LIVING LIFE IN PEACE.
TOGETHER WE CAN CHANGE THE WORLD”
--- JOHN LENNON

By: Aritro Ghosh


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