During the years of suffering bipolar disorder, I have had endless people tell me to \u201cthink happy thoughts,\u201d or to \u201csnap out of it,\u201d \u201ccheer up, other people have it worse,\u201d and on and on and on. It is as though they thought that I didn\u2019t know about these wonderful suggestions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
Others questioned whether I was \u201ctrying hard enough,\u201d whether I \u201creally\u201d wanted to get better. The common thread seemed to be that I had somehow chosen to suffer, and all I had to do was to choose to be happy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
These comments were completely unhelpful. They were also painful to me, because they dismissed my suffering as trivial or self-inflicted. Sometimes they were well-meant; but often people were just being insensitive or even brutal. Maybe they thought of it as \u201ctough love\u201d or something.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
All of these suggestions are completely useless in clinical depression. They may work for people who are feeling sad and disappointed by events. These people can just snap out of it. The painful situation resolves, or else time gives perspective, and they start to feel their usual, more cheerful selves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Clinical depression is a disorder in which the sufferer cannot \u201csnap out of it\u201d or \u201cthink happy thoughts.\u201d That is why it\u2019s clinical \u2013 it doesn\u2019t resolve.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The bottom line is that telling a person suffering from clinical depression to snap out of it or try harder is not only unhelpful, it is positively harmful. Its effect is to leave the person feeling all the more isolated and alone \u2013 and hopeless. It is worse than no help at all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
During the years of suffering bipolar disorder, I have had endless people tell me to \u201cthink happy thoughts,\u201d or to \u201csnap out of it,\u201d \u201ccheer up, other people have it worse,\u201d and on and on and on. It is as … Continue reading