[mjayhn]

As someone who has dealt with depression their entire life it's really something to start to see people who have never, ever dealt with it begin to try to compartmentalize their lives from their depression and look for every other option before declaring it depression. Like it's some horrible disease you'd never want to catch, like any of us have the option.

I really hate that it took this but I've had my feelings/depression talked down so much by people who don't understand depression, don't believe it's a real thing, etc.

I've had so many conversations with friends this year that go like this; "I've lost my entire personality, I can't motivate myself to get out of bed.. whats wrong with me, is this depression?"

Yes, yes it is. Maybe it's temporary, maybe it's acute or chronic, but that is depression. You never know how long it will last, what it will take from you or how quickly you can overcome it.

Be kind to people.

edit: Reading this again I can't shake that some of you are just so far removed from actually understanding your own feelings and emotions that you can't even recognize that you're depressed. It's absolutely fascinating. "What are depressive symptoms?"

I'll say that one positive of this struggle throughout my life is that I've learned which emotions and feelings I can trust or let guide me. I often don't get it right and focus on the negative but I'm very glad I'm cognizant and it's a bright burning fire of "Yeah I'm depressed this week oh boy let's work on this, I need to make some changes."

[Viliam1234]

> some of you are just so far removed from actually understanding your own feelings and emotions that you can't even recognize that you're depressed

For example, I am quite aware that I have some feeling X. I am just not sure whether other people use the word "depression" to refer to X, or something else. Maybe "depression" actually refers to 10 times X, how am I supposed to know?

Sometimes people use the same words to describe different things (or different degrees of the same thing), sometimes people use different words to describe the same thing. I don't have a direct access to your feelings, so how am I supposed to tell whether my feelings are the same?

[cutemonster]

I've been wondering about that me too

I wonder what could be good ways to "calibrate" one's words against each other

So thereafter two people who say "depression" mean the same thing and X strength