Commentary from Published March 23, 2016
This one I had written and rewritten several times before I came to the wording in this strip. Unfortunately, that’s the problem with this strip, the character (depressed character #3 FYI) is very articulate when most of the time we aren’t so. But I needed a strip to hold out and say “hey, your advice isn’t applicable here” and explain why it isn’t. Over the years doing this strip I have received lots and lots of advice, and when I’m at my most depressed I need to do things I can manage. Telling me to go for a jog when just being awake is painful is not going to help. Telling me to draw when I can’t even bear to look at a piece of paper is not going to help. That’s why I balk on advice so much … what I am capable of changes all the time, and I am the most aware of what I can do at any given moment.
I really like this character and it’s great to be able to draw her. She is strong, articulate and smart, but struggling with this illness in a way that makes it easy to relate to. She is my go-to character when I need something explained.
I really like this character and it’s great to be able to draw her. She is strong, articulate and smart, but struggling with this illness in a way that makes it easy to relate to. She is my go-to character when I need something explained.
When your advice is: “Cheer up” , or my personal favourite “Think yourself happy” this is the tactful reply when the usual answer is much shorter and sharper
Yeah, unfortunately I had three more panels to fill out so we got the verbose response 🙂
this is too accurate
To be honest, I don’t like this one. The advice may be poorly worded, but there is truth in it. Is it difficult to “think happy thoughts” when depressed. Yes! Oh believe me, I know. However, finding and cultivating “positive thoughts” can actually work. The book Buddha’s Brain by Hanson and Mendius has lots of useful advice like that from neuroscience research.
Is it easy to find a ray of sunshine when you are being swallowed by the darkness in your heart? No, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t look.
It is helpful to look for motes of sunshine in the monsoon, but it’s like clipping coupons. You can never save more than you spend. The sum total of the bits of sunshine is never more than the universe of darkness containing them.
We try, but that takes immense effort, and eventually it wears one down so much that it’s a painful struggle to simply exist.
Like most self-help books, I don’t believe that book is meant for people dealing with Major Depressive Disorder. Rich Hanson sells books and he has an online course he sells too, so what he says should be taken with a grain of salt. Remember that self-help books aren’t subject to the same level of strictness in terms of validity and replicability as a research article is, so whether or not the methods actually work is irrelevant to whether a self-help book gets published or not.
My advice is always to seek professional help, not a bookstore.
positive thoughts are absolutely useless to me.
the closest i’d get is something like realism, which means i’d have to remove all the negative thoughts from the mix.
doesn’t leave much positive, but at least it’s achievable.
and rather than positive thoughts, reminding oneself of things one feels grateful about seems more useful.
that’s not a positive thought, it’s remembering those few moments when another person did or said something that proved one is worth at least a little to them.
but the feeling will make me cry rather than smile.
For real!
Not a critique, just an observation — even coming up with that response can be too much, require too much thinking, and certainly can be more than I can say. There are times the best I can do (and some other folks I know) is “Ok.” I wish I had that response printed on a card I could just hand out before I slink away.
How about the ever present “it take three muscles to smile” bullshit? I hate that, it takes quite a few more to use a blunt instrument, but I think its worth it.
The funny thing is at some point my natural expression became so fixed in a mild grimace, my mouth actually starts to twitch and ache a bit from use if I smile too long at a time.
Somehow my natural expression is still a smile. I only realize it when my mouth starts to hurt, or when I deliberately stop smiling once my friends aren’t around to see.
What is a healthy person capable of when they struggle too? Expectations are set way too high. Living is its own accomplishment.
This rings true to the nagging, bitter train of thought that I find myself repeating incessantly… Yes it’s self defeating, but it’s an automatic response. At least the character in this strip has managed three significant things, namely “I got out of bed, got dressed, and went outside today”. Sometimes those actions are flat out impossible.
This made me cry thankful tears. My depression has been a lot worse lately and this is the first time in ages I haven’t felt totally alone and isolated. This constant struggle feels valid and real for once. I really, desperately needed this today.
Beth…and all the rest on this blog struggling to overcome your depression and the darkness that surrounds you –
This concept is SO important for everyone to hear and understand, both healthcare providers and well-meaning friends/family. As a Primary Care Doctor and Behavioral Health Advocate, I realized long ago the inequality in the way we evaluate and treat ‘physical’ maladies vs ‘mental’ illnesses. We readily will give a person time to heal, assist and transport them (‘hold their hand’), ensure they get to therapy, understand they cannot walk on a ‘broken hip’ after an unfortunate automobile accident, perhaps, and then give them time off work until able to get through rehabilitation. Yet, we expect people with (hopefully) temporarily ‘broken brains’ to be able to think with them, all by themselves, on their own, when they can barely hear the suggestion much less find the energy to act on it. This is the main concept being addressed with “The Parity Act” of 2008 after enactment of The Affordable Care Act, with renewed legislation being considered today, where Congress mandates insurance companies have to cover “mental illness” with the same depth, time, and cost as “physical illness.” Early on in my doctoring career I began reminding myself and my colleagues and clinic teams, daily, “Let’s remember – Who’s the Patient, and what are their needs and abilities… today?”…especially when considering the ‘hidden disorders,’ like depression, abuse, fatigue, and life trauma (PTSD). It’s not that a person with debilitating depression or fatigue doesn’t WANT to participate and be “compliant,” at the moment, they CAN’T. All of us lucky enough to be able to function (I.e. get out of bed, wash up, eat, and get going with our ‘work’ for the day, whether at home or in the community) must take the time to appreciate our good fortune, go to someone needing assistance, where they are at (“house calls”), listen to them, seek to understand, then stay with them and guide them to where they can get the help they need, on their terms. It’s this level of trust, respect, and sincere caring that people require of their well-meaning friends, family, and yes, care givers, to return to independence and productivity. “People don’t care how much you know…until they know how much you care,” as the saying goes. This is how we will get away from providing only urgent crisis care in favor of providing long-lasting recovery care, so everyone can enjoy the sunshine. This is why the group of caring consultants I am honored to lead are “The Serendipity Alliance” non-profit, giving “a voice to the (temporarily) voiceless…by listening to survivors.” Please pick up the phone and get help today.
Uncanny, how spot-on this is!
Just this morning on my way to work, I thought about how putting in the amount of effort it takes to reach “Baseline functionality” in all aspects of life robs me of the ability to achieve the goals I see as truly desirable. Especially during the “low” periods I really have to pace myself to just hang on to what I’ve got, keeping my expectations and ambitions low to avoid exhaustion is a double-edged sword, it diminishes the chance getting hurt but it also takes away the joy of trying new things.
I think some comments don’t understand. There is no evidence what the advice was exactly. Even if it was to think positive, I think the point of this is that depressed people need to be validated and not treated like children and given unsolicited advice. She doesn’t want advice, she wants VALIDATION and understanding. Giving advice to people, depressed or not, when they don’t ask directly for it, is not respectful of the person’s boundaries. It seems to come from a good place but it does not. It comes from a place of someone wanting your problems to “go away” or someone trying to be “helpful” without caring about whom they’re talking to and without really listening actively to what the other person wants. Just pretend this is about losing a loved one. It’s not ok to say “You will be fine. It will all work out.” when the person is not fine and is not interested in anything working out because somebody died….
Exactly this. I’ve never been able to figure out how to reply to this one. Well I had it down in my head but trying to make it into words is hard for me. I’m recovering from Depression, and I have a super supportive Boyfriend. Somedays I had to tell him I had an episode and I don’t feel well. Instead of telling me to cheer up, he says he’s sorry that it happened and then offers to watch a Show or movie with me.
It’s never “Well just make it go away” and I love that about him. It helps me calm down and not feel like I’m broken.The mere act of saying it was there, and just accepting it, makes it so much easier for me to deal with since it’s now being seen as real, not just something to throw away.
“It’ll be fine!” “We’ll make it all go away!” “You just need to try harder.”
“Yeah! I have plenty of rope and a sturdy hook! I can do this!”
Yes, thank you for this. Too often the people who claim to understand without really listening just expect you to rewire your brain in an instant and expect it to stick. They give you ultimatums and make you promise to take care of yourself when that’s all you’re desperate to do but just can’t seem to. And when nothing changes, it’s all on you. “You didn’t want to” “You’re not trying hard enough” “You can stop if you really wanted to.” And each one of those statements kills you a little on the inside.
It’s painful
Thank you for this, Clay.
Last week my friend told me to get to work and stop being so passive about finishing my degree. In an attempt to “motivate” me, he went as far to tell me to look at him and how he was able to finish his two degrees, both of which are “way harder” than mine. I hardly even knew how to respond to that other than to say, “please don’t compare yourself to me. It doesn’t matter what you do because I am not you, and you are not me.” I wish I had read this before that. At least I could have been able to understand exactly what had made me so angry.
Unfortunately, including psychiatrists, DO NOT understand depression unless they have experienced it. One young doctor, made such a foolish statement, and since I did not agree with her, she said: “You must have a personality disorder.” i asked if that is the diagnosis she gives to those she cannot diagnose. She was seething; too bad. Textbook learning has little to do with understanding depression, and now I am doing some counseling especially with survivors of the Holocaust who, for the most part, really suffer from PTSD. Depression is not a list of symptoms one checks off. It is a complicated, diverse set of complications. I really like this COMIX on the subject. Thank you.
I like it too. Sad but true. How can we accomplish anything when we feel panicked and emotionally abandon? Ugh. F/$&@ BPD
I think this higlights the biggest difficulty in having to deal with someone suffering from depression, any advice you give is seen as ‘patronising’ but not giving advice is seen as ‘not caring’. I have a daugter that is depressed, in bed all day, self harming, but when she goes to see her therapist, she tells her that everything is fine, so her treatment is not changed, and she never improves. But if I dare saying that maybe she should tell her therapist how things really are, she shouts at me. I can’t win, I can’t draw, and since she’s my daughter, I can’t leave the game.
I’m in both sides, but he doesn’t recognize my suffering, so to him I don’t understand even a thing and he sees threats and advices everywhere. I repeat to myself that it’s part of the illness. But it’s so hard to hear his advices about how not to give advices.
As Tyrion says, it looks like there’s no way to win. If you are there, depression gives him reasons to suffer, if you are not, he suffers too. And both, you suffer with him.
At this point,
http://www.depressioncomix.com/posts/189/
… I can only wait for him to remember that he loves me… if he does.
Good job making things we all feel into simple and understandable terms. Though I think some people still wouldn’t understand.
Thank you
Very relatable.
There are always things you know can make you feel better… but may require a 10/10 effort when putting on socks is a 1/10 effort and even that seems insurmountable.
*saves this to use as a reaction image*