Briefly trending on Twitter last Friday was the hashtag #TheWorstPartOfDepressionIs. It dropped off the radar almost as quickly as it appeared, but produced some profound statements about what it’s like to live with depression. Here are a few that stood out to me.
This is true, and it’s incredibly frustrating. You can be doing all the right things, and still feel crappy. Checking all the boxes on the list isn’t a cure. That being said, not doing all the things tends to make me worse—if I don’t get enough sleep, for instance, my mental health crashes.
https://twitter.com/shxr_a/status/629661592485953536Answer: Everything and nothing. Nothing and everything. You want to be hugged and you want no one to touch you. You want to be somewhere else but you can’t think of anywhere else to be.
Look at all the time you have to do exciting things today! says my brain. But ugh, I don’t want to do any of those things, and now I can’t remember what all of them are, and what if you forget to do something more important?
It doesn’t take very long to get to, I actually don’t have the energy to do anything and there’s no time to finish anything properly so why even start? I wonder what it’s like to have mental energy every single day.
https://twitter.com/atiqalabiba4/status/629870236297113600Because what if you forget that important thing you need to worry about? My subconscious seems to believe that if it enjoys happiness it has not earned, something bad will happen.
Yes.
How can you be sure which parts are the lies? What if you really are making a fool of yourself? What if you really are ugly? I get annoyed with discussions on how to combat “imposter syndrome” for this reason—the cures all seem to revolve around recognizing your true accomplishments, but that requires (a) having true accomplishments and (b) believing part (a).
Then there’s this one, which is utterly terrifying:
https://twitter.com/niais/status/629839863458586625I’m just going to stay in denial about the fact that my kid has some of my genes, OK? I mean it—if I never admit that this is something I’d ever have to worry about, then it must not exist as a threat. Right? Right?
I added a few contributions, including this:
It was kind of nice to know that this struck a chord with at least two other people. That I’m not the only one for whom worrying about fatigue is a component of my mental health.
Finally, there was this guy, who, really, says it all:
Readers, what would you add?
crazy mama, PhD 
The worst part of depression is even when you are not in the middle of it, you still can’t let your guard down.
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(Said from the other side of the flimsy fence). Oh how I wish you didn’t have to walk this road. But if you are concerned about your little one, all you can do is teach mindfulness and resilience skills from an early age. Teach him to express his emotions in healthy ways etc.
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I feel ill-equipped to teach those skills… but I have thought a lot about what my parents did that worked and what didn’t. They handled it better than their parents (there is a definite genetic component to the depression in my family), but there are things I would change.
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The worst part of depression is smiling on the outside, and screaming on the inside. Forcing a smile and engaging with people, yet having no presence.
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Gosh, yeah. Thank goodness for having an outlet on the internet.
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The worst part of depression is struggling to move forward even though you are drowning in quicksand. I, too, wonder if my little ones will have to go this road. I only hope they are as open to help as I have become.
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I hope that if Little Boy ever reaches out for help (for anything, not just depression), he finds it.
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