Thoughts on Society and Depression

Excerpt:

Undoubtedly being a somewhat sensitive and emotional person to begin with makes me more susceptible to depression than the run of common people, but I still resist labelling this as a “biochemical imbalance.” It’s not. It’s normal human variation. My circumstances fully warranted depression. It was a normal, healthy response to my situation, and only by paying attention to that situation and changing it, by validating that emotional response, did I manage to make a long-term escape from depression. Now when I get depressed, my response is not to say, “What’s wrong with me? Can I fix myself?” My response is: “What’s wrong with my life? Why am I having trouble? Can I change it, and if not, how can I cope?”…

I don’t like that our society has such a narrow definition of what constitutes an “ok” emotion that when someone feels something outside this narrow bound it gets labelled pathological. I don’t like that we are all expected to be the same people, feeling the same things in the same way at the same time. I don’t like that we are expected to be happy all the freaking time, even when life is hard and we are struggling. And then if we’re not happy, we can’t just be sad–we’re sick.

via Bitch