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Why do a lot of depressed people think..
| And even using a logical approach, they do believe humans deserve to be happy, so logically, they would be included and also deserve to be happy! But no. Oh no, they think all humans except them deserve happiness.
Why? Why do they reach a point where they don't think they are humans anymore?..
I know it's pretty much an issue of the brain, that don't work like it should.. but I wished that mental illness like these didn't exist in the first place.
| Tell me God (if you are really there), Why do humans have to suffer so much? Just for what? To learn?? I don't think so. Because I can imagine at least thousands of ways/worlds where humans could learn with little to no suffering involved at all.
| If I as a single human can imagine that..
How can't YOU do the same, god?
I know that god will never answer my question, and that any response from humans will be unsatisfactory and/or uncertain.
So sorry god. Not-Thanks you for your frickin' silence.
| Well... My rant is over. Thanks you if you read any of this.
| As a depressed person who thinks i don't really deserve to be happy, i can't truly explain it but i'll try my best. I think one of the reasons is because we've been constantly disappointed and hurt through the years that we just started to accept overtime that maybe happiness is something that's not meant for us.
| Funny enough, since we know how this feels, we do our best to not make others feel the same thing and we put their needs above our own. Logically speaking, i personally believe that everyone DOES deserve to be happy but i've also grown to accept the reality that i'm an exception to the rule. So someone trying to say that we do deserve the same treatment is something that's incredibly difficult for us to wrap our head around.
| >>783526 Adding to this, with most depressed ppl I know (myself included), it's less of an "I don't deserve to be happy" (though that also happens) and more of an "I will never be happy no matter how hard I or anyone else tries, so why should I continue trying"
It just feels like a matter of fact, so why waste anyone's energy on trying to change that?
(Disclaimer: I know that it's not true, but that's hard to prove, isn't it. You can't prove someone will be happy in the future)
| It's sadly just how depression works. I've been battling depression for years, and I've actually been starting to get better and handle it a lot better recently, but even I get like that sometimes. If someone makes me feel really nice and warm and happy inside my first response is "I don't deserve this". Why? Well, it's because depression tears you down internally and makes you hate yourself and blame yourself for the suffering you are going through.
| You yourself is the most consistent thing in your life, right? Other elements come and go, but you are always there. So when you are suffering to some degree at more or less all times, your brain concluded that you are the reason you're feeling that way and that you are to blame for it and therefore you are a burden and not someone who deserves to feel happiness or feel better, because you already cause suffering.
Does that make sense?
| Obviously, I'm aware that all of that is untrue. Depression is not your own fault, the suffering you're going through comes from other elements in your life + the mental issues you have, and none of that is your own fault.
But, depression is a force that does everything it can to tear you down with the goal of destroying you. What better way to do that than convince you that you are subhuman and exempt from the rule of all people being deserving of happiness?
It's a scary thing.
| Also, about your whole think with logic, well, logic doesn't really apply to mental issues.
A huge part of what makes depression so hard is that it makes you very irrational, especially about how you perceive yourself. That's why the process of therapy is a lot more complex than just telling the person suffering that "You deserve happiness :)".
There are lots and lots of factors to it, and some of them are honestly pretty abstract.
I hope that helps you understand it better.
| Thanks you for your words everyone, I hope you can fight against this horrible thing called depression.
| >>783567 I know, I know. Mental illness does not apply to logic.. maybe that's one of the reasons it's very hard to fight against it.
| >>783594
Yeah, it is actually. I'm a very logical person. Whenever I solve problems it's with logic and the way I think about things is often more logic based than emotion based, so, fighting mental illness has been absolute hell. I'm a rational and logically person, and that usually helps me solve all my problems, so when problems appear that a slowly but surely killing me and the only way I know to fix problems isn't working, like, shit's terrifying. Feels impossible.
| >>783598 I think now I can understand the suffering you've been through, I'm also a logical kind of person, so not being able to tackle a problem with logic is... Hard.
So.. thanks you for explaining it to me in your words..
| >>783627
Of course! It makes me happy when people who haven't struggled with the same things as me are so willing to learn about it. The world needs more people like you.
| I think the best explanation I can give you is the one my therapist gave me to explain this type of thought, through the pain, trauma, disappointment and other bad stuff we have conditioned our brains to have an illogical, but to us "proven" with past grief, train of thought, these ideas, in my case: "My art isn't worth anything", "I'm a bad person", "No one likes me they just tolerate me because of pity", etc.
| These are called, according to my therapist, "automatic thoughts", in my experience it's easy to look at any of my drawings and immediately go "this shit fucking sucks, I want to burn it and I can't believe I posted it" but if I keep staring at it searching for things that I like in it, I start another more logical train of thought, I remember how hard I worked on it and how much I loved doing that one piece.
| This second thought while not as impactful as the first is one of the ways I fight my depression, an I also think it's one of the most difficult aspects of depression treatment, relearning to think about yourself in a much better esteem, sometimes that same thought "I don't deserve happiness" is what keeps us away from therapy and having someone assist us in re-learning that we do deserve happiness, so yeah, that's the explanation I can offer ya
| Although I don't think depression is my core problem, I do suffer from it sometimes and did more in the past, and there are two ways that I tend to have that kind of thought. One is that how I live has rarely been in line with what I want or believe in. So if I'm feeling bad about not doing what i should, I sometimes have the thought that 'at least I'm not doing what I want either'. It's stupid moralism that I consciously disagree with, but still part of my culture i guess.
| Another related thing is that for a long time I couldn't actually imagine feeling joy, except for one weak memory. So while I didn't exactly think i shouldn't be happy, i also didn't actively think i should or even have an understanding of what that meant.
| I wanna be happy. But no one will give it to me. So i exercise, play shitty games and work too much to forget.
There's no magic words for cheering someone who's proper depressed. Usually get them in an activity that they have a mild interest in and hope they perk up.
Need the patience of a saint to crack these sad fucks but if you give em time they'll at the very least develop some mechanisms to pull themselves out.
Like myself they can only get happy as an accident.
| It's a cope. Like a twisted version of the sour grapes story. If you're depressed, you can't just "be happy". It doesn't come to you like it does for others, like it has for you in the past. An easy way to not lose your mind over missing this fundamental part of human existence is to tell yourself that you must not deserve it anyways, so it's all just in the end.
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| ..that they don't "deserve happiness"?
I'm truly an advocate of empathy for depressed people, but I'm gonna be honest, (and I say this because I need to vent about it)
When they say things like that.. they make so fucking mad. It's literally impossible for me to "cheer them up" or at least give them some trace of hope, if they believe that they "don't deserve to be happy".