The excerpt below comes from Kelly Jensen’s first-person account of living with depression, which was published on The Mighty. We thought it was worth sharing, as perhaps you recognize some of these lies or know someone else who is living with similar messages. If you’re in the greater Cleveland area and feel like you may have depression, we hope you’ll reach out.
I was not depressed.
I couldn’t be.
I had never self-harmed. I had never ideated on suicide. I had never felt the need to seek professional help for those low days or weeks or months. I wasn’t like the people I saw on TV or in movies or in books who were depressed. People I knew with clinical depression sought treatment when they engaged in destructive activities or couldn’t get out of bed in the morning or function on a day-to-day basis. I did everything with my whole heart — and depression always seemed to me to be like an all-over weight, impossible to live with.
I wasn’t like that.
The first lie depression told me was that I didn’t have depression.
Because I could get up in the morning, because I could take a shower and do my makeup and my hair, because I could sit down in my office at home and put in a day’s worth of work, because I could follow the routine day in and day out, my depression told me it wasn’t a big deal that I’d spend all my free time sleeping.
Depression lied about it being relaxing, recovering and restful. Working takes a lot of energy. It wasn’t an avoidance tactic or an unhealthy coping mechanism.
Going through the performance of each day drained me, but it was ignoring depression that really wore me out.