Everyone talks about mental health until they meet someone whose depression is no longer “easy” to be around. People love sharing quotes about checking on others, but disappear when someone actually needs consistent support.
Because real depression is not always motivational speeches and recovery posts. Sometimes it is:
-Canceling plans because getting out of bed feels impossible.
-Ignoring calls because your mind is exhausted.
-Smiling in public and breaking down in private.
-Losing interest in everything you once loved.
-Feeling emotionally numb around people you care about.
-Wanting support, but feeling guilty for needing it.
And that is heavy for people who haven’t struggled with depression to understand.
The sad reality is that many people only love the healed, happy, productive, and entertaining version of others. The moment your pain becomes “too much,” the distancing begins and suddenly you are called: “negative.”, “too sensitive.”, “too draining.”, and /or“a burden.”
People say “reach out,” but become uncomfortable when you actually do. We need to stop romanticizing mental health awareness while avoiding the reality of emotional suffering. Healing is not always pretty and the journey of recovery takes a different course for each individual person.
Struggling people are not always easy to understand though.
And sometimes the strongest form of support is simply staying, listening, and not abandoning someone when they are at their lowest. The silence people receive during their darkest moments changes them and their outlook forever. Sometimes, the biggest heartbreak is discovering who of family and friends only loved the version of you that was easy to handle.
And I know it is hard as the support person, because people struggling with depression often push their loved ones away making it even harder to be supportive to someone that you already don’t completely understand what they are going through. And I have been on both sides, the downs of depression and the euphoric-ness of mania. Even having experienced severe depression I still don’t “get it” when trying to be supportive to my friends struggling with depression when I am in a good place myself. I cynically think- “what changed from last week, nothing, so why are you so down now?” And I totally understand a lot of it is just brain chemistry and the medicines working right, but it doesn’t change the fact that someone suffering from depression can be hard to be around, a “debbie downer” as SNL (Saturday Night Live) coined.
We do as a collective society need to figure out how to be more supportive to people suffering from mental health issues. To preach “seek help” and then when we do there are no resources or support available is not only a broken system but dangerous for the person struggling. In the United States, suicide ranks as the 11th leading cause of death overall, claiming over 48,000 lives annually, though it ranks much higher among the younger age groups. We have to do better.
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