Depression is an unbelievably powerful thing. It’s wild. One minute you can just be sitting there enjoying yourself and then, without even so much as a change in wind direction, your brain can decide that your world is crashing down all around you.
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Quotes tagged ‘Understanding Depression’
If you don’t get hit with 'bouts of depression, that is wonderful. Consider yourself lucky. And remind yourself that not everyone is as lucky as you. Instead of telling them what to do, ask them what they feel. It can make all the difference in the world.
It often has nothing to do with any reality. Nothing had to change. Your perception about things shifts instead. Things that were good become meaningless. Things that were bad become dire. All without anything happening. Maybe that’s why it’s so flabbergasting when someone tries to say that depressi…
Being miserable doesn't exclude us from the human community. It's a sure sign that we're very normal – and that life is progressing, in its own dark way, more or less exactly to plan.
Things we thought we'd never be able to get over become gradually become bearable; we adjust our mental posture, we stoop to accomodate a new reality.
Things can get slightly better for reasons it's hard to foresee. Just as pleasures fade and can seem meaningless in retrospect, so pains (at least sometimes) can pass or soften.
We should accord ourselves the same degree of forgiveness we wouldn't hesitate to direct to an acquaintance.
We live so close to ourselves, we know so much about our private failings, we miss that our flaws are general: present even in the outwardly placid, the beautiful, the rich and the people next door.
Our tribulations are a symptom of being human, never just a curse attached to our silver of existence.
Sorrow is not an individual failing; it is a basic reality for our entire species.
We rely on an internal engine or muscle of hope to pump out consoling thoughts. Then one day the task seems to much; the muscle can't take it anymore.
Societies tend slyly to insist on cheerfulness. We end up not only struggling, but humiliated that we are in such difficulties. Yet, in truth, there is nothing more natural or routine than grief.