on depression and changing your mind.

Is this font any easier to read than the last one? 

<<<<<< First of all, please go that way if you would like to see my latest picture entry.

Also, just as a disclaimer, the following entry may offend some of you. I make no apologies for that, I simply would like to warn you. This entry is about another diarists’ entry on overcoming difficult circumstances and my response to her view.

I would also like to note that all my notes are private, so please, if you have something you’d like to say, feel free to share it. I will never post any private notes publicly on my diary without the explicit permission of the author.

Here is a link to the original entry, if you would like to read it there or comment.

I will copy and paste the contents of the entry posted earlier today by [~Victoria.]

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Who would you be?
 
10/10/2009

 

What if it didn’t matter to you about ANYTHING that happened in your past?

What if everything that happened to you that was "bad" before today…..those things that left a scar…..what if you were able to completely believe that it was just "something that happened"?

What if — just what if — you could get over that abuse….if you could let go of that significant other that cheated on you….if you could get over the fact that you grew up without a mommy or a daddy….or if that divorce that terrorized you no longer lives in your mind….who would you be?

What if you let go of those phobias….or stopped staying up all night worrying….or stopped beating yourself up over your weight or your perceived inadequacies or what you don’t have?  Who would you be?

Seriously.  Stop.  Think.  Right now.

Who would you be?

I said — STOP.  Right now.  I’m serious.  Who is that person?

Can you see yourself as that person — right now — and tell me who that person is?  Is this person 100lbs lighter, does this person have their dream job, or have a lot of friends that care about them, or even found the love of their life?  Does this person wake up every single morning with joy in their heart?  Does this person worry about money?  Is this person so strong on the inside that those little things that used to send them "over the edge" don’t even bother them anymore?

Who would you be?  For a moment — just a moment, you owe it to yourself to stop and think about who you would be if all of that "stuff" that happened to you before today didn’t matter anymore.

Those of you that have read me for a long time know that I’ve seen it all.  I’ve seriously been through it ALL.  Name some kind of emotion or experience, and I’ve been there.  I even have a medical disability, for heaven’s sake, that I have to deal with every minute of my life.  The truth is, I’m no more special that anybody else on this planet.  I don’t have special powers, and I certainly can’t fly.  I can’t turn water into wine and I can’t make stuff appear.

But — you know what?  A few years ago, I realized one very, very, very important concept on my own.
 
 
Whatever has ever happened to me doesn’t matter.
 
The worst thing that you can ever do is carry around your "story."  We ALL have a story.  WE ALL HAVE A STORY.

When you carry around your story, you use your story to make excuses for yourself

It’s comforting because it seems to absolve you from any behavior you may be exhibiting — "The reason I don’t trust you or anyone else is because my mom was a drunk and used to beat us."  Yes — that was a horrible thing that happened to you.  I understand, and I’m sorry — you’re right, it wasn’t right that your mother (or whomever) subjected you to those things when you were young.  Yes, you grew up in a harmful environment, and yes, that hurt quite a bit.

What if you could move past it?  What if you let it, and everything else that has ever happened that was "bad" in your life, go.  What if you realized that it wasn’t right, and instead of carrying it around with you, you decided that you didn’t deserve to punish yourself for the rest of your life for it?  You are punishing YOURSELF by not letting it go because you are denying yourself opportunities to live your own life.

Your drunk, abusive mother (or whatever is holding you back in your life) moved on, and chances are doesn’t care about what they did to you.  Stop wasting your time trying to make them care, or trying to earn their approval, or worse — trying to seek revenge and make them pay for it.

Think back to that person you would be "if only…."

Let go of your story.  Tell yourself TODAY that it was horrible.  Yes, it was really, really horrible.  But you won’t punish yourself any longer by holding on, because it’s not worth it, and YOU are worth every moment from now on.  You make your own decisions.  You ARE that "if only" person — you just haven’t let yourself be that person yet.

Isn’t it time to be that person?

Let me help some more.  I am SO sorry that happened to you.  I am SO sorry that person, or that situation, or that event — has hurt you for so long.  You did not deserve it.  You did NOT deserve it.  YOU DID NOT DESERVE IT.  I am SO sorry.  It’s okay now.  You are safe, and you are free from it because you’ve realized who you are, and it does not include your story.  Your story does not matter anymore, because it just just something that happened.

Now, act like you ARE that "if only" person……every single moment FROM NOW ON…..because that IS the person you haven’t let yourself be.

You may have to disappoint a person or two or five, because they enjoyed who you were when you weren’t empowered.  But I bet when you imagined yourself as that "if only…" person, you weren’t thinking of those two or five other people.

You ARE worth it.  You DO deserve it.  Every single minute of the day.

Your life has been waiting to start.

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Now, this entry was absolutely infuriating for me. So much so, that I left the computer and OpenDiary and decided to go read and think about something else for a while. All night, I haven’t been able to stop thinking in the back of my mind how twisted this view is. This is the very view that most of my family has, that you can just decide to feel better one day. If you’re depressed? "Well, Beth, maybe you shouldn’t be so negative about everything." "Maybe you should just get up in the morning and decide to have a good day!" "Maybe you have to just make yourself feel better!" 

Frankly, this viewpoint shows a lack of knowledge and understanding, not only empathy for other people, but simple knowledge of medical mental health conditions such as depression. And it makes me so ANGRY to hear people claim to be supportive, understanding, caring for other people with a mental disease, and yet have no desire to EDUCATE themselves on that particular disease. They just ASSUME that they know the best way to help. "Let’s take you shopping, go somewhere, let’s get out of the house and have some fun! You just need to snap out of it!" "If I tell you enough that you’re okay, you’ll be ok! I’ll just beat the happiness into your brain until you understand that life is good!" 

DEPRESSION IS NOT JUST A BAD MOOD! 

*sigh* Suffice it to say that this is an issue that is very emotional and important to me. I tried to stay away and not comment on the entry. What good would it do to start a diary war with someone I don’t even know? So, I tried to just forget that I read it. But of course, being the person that I am, I couldn’t forget it, and I had to say something. I had to stand up for the other people who might feel the same way I do and are too afraid to say as much. I had to let other, unsuspecting people who might be in the same or a similar position as I am–afraid of starting therapy (again, for me) and what might happen–know that this is just twisted. Think of the people who may have read this entry and thought there was something wrong with them for, despite all their efforts, not being able to decide to be okay again! It’s just not right. I felt it was an injustice to other readers not to voice my view in this situation. I felt dutiful to let other people know that it is perfectly okay to struggle when bad things happen to you. So yes, I left 14, yes fourteen, 400 character notes on this woman’s diary. And I am proud that I did!

Here they are:

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I saw your entry in the reader’s choice box on the front page earlier today, and I wasn’t going to respond. I figured that would only elicit a forceful response from (as you had to mooch), but after several hours, I can’t seem to stop thinking about this particular entry.

It is enraging to me! I mean how dare you make assumptions about such things as other peoples’ "stories," other peoples’ challenges, other peoples’ mental health, other peoples’ MINDS, for heaven’s sake!?

I won’t sit here and say that I am happy for you, that you were able to find peace in your life and with your current situation despite the personal trials and difficulties you’ve been through and continue to face the way that you say you are "SO sorry" for me and what my life has been like. Because: a) I don’t know you, I will probably never meet you, and what do I know or care what you have or haven’t been through or overcome? (The same way you have no way to know or empathize with my circumstances), and b) It would be pretentious and preposterous for me to sit here and claim that I could understand and empathize with your situation if I wanted to, having only read a few hundred words that may or may not be true of yours on the internet. But I will say that if what I’ve read so far is true, I can applaud you for overcoming some very harsh circumstances in your life. I am not such an important person that I can claim to understand your situation, but I am considerate enough to say that, if you have truly found happiness in the midst of the horrible things that have happened to you, that is great–for you.

But you have absolutely no right to make claims about how "easy" it is for someone else to do the same thing with their lives. You have no right to tell people that their pasts, their stories, the very essence of who they are–whether they like it or not–doesn’t matter!

Clinical Depression, Bipolar Disorder, Social Anxiety Disorder, Paranoid Schizophrenia–these are all DISEASES, SERIOUS mental illnesses, that HAVE NO CURE! These are all serious conditions that millions of people all over the world deal with–many of them undiagnosed, unable to receive the help and treatment they so desperately need. These, and many others, are incurable mental diseases that plague millions of people all over the world, every single moment of their lives. These are mental illnesses–sicknesses of the psyche–that science, modern medicine, researchers, and doctors barely understand; conditions that are treatable at best.

So who are you, a music teacher, to say that you know or understand how they can simply decide to be someone else? I do believe that people can–as you say–"change their minds." And I do think that there are many, many people who sit around and let their mental illness serve as their excuse to want and to try to become better, both within themselves, and for the people that surround them. But simply "changing your mind," is not how life works. It’s certainly not how life works for someone who’s "story," is not just a story, but the catalyst for the complete overhaul of their psyche, the very thing that caused them to live a life of fear, exhaustion, desperation, and inexpressible despair. Those people who were slowly changed from a person who has the potential to be happy to a person who will always suffer from an acute mental illness do not simply wake up one day and say, "I want to be different, so now I am."

Change is a slow, grievous, rigorous PROCESS. It does not happen overnight, it is not the product of one single decision, and it certainly is not "easy." Change can happen. Even people with the most serious, acute cases of mental disease, even people with the most dire and drastic circumstances can change not only their lives, but their way of thinking, even their ability to cope with the extreme emotions they experience. But it is HARD! It is EXCRUCIATING! And it TAKES TIME.

I want to believe that you meant this entry to be inspiring, that you wanted to tell the tale of someone who has been through some really rough circumstances in life and has prospered despite that. But you have come across to me as preposterous and condescending; you have insulted my ability to change and cope and deal with the circumstances that I was dealt. I wish I could count the number of times that I have felt I was falling through a deep dark pit of despair, crying my eyes out, at the end of my rope, and wishing, praying, begging that SOMEHOW I could just make it all go away. I have wanted more than anything at times to be able to just make a decision to not be depressed anymore. If I could just make up my mind that I’m not going to be this person anymore–IT DOESN’T WORK THAT WAY! And you coming here and ranting some sort of "motivational" speech about how people can just "wish away" their problems is not only insulting and pompous and presumptuous, but down right ignorant.

All of that said, I want to apologize for the multitude of notes, as I do not subscribe to OpenDiary plus. I would also like to apologize if I have come across as mean or cruel here; this is just an issue that I feel very passionately about, and I have a hard time just sitting here and not voicing my opinion on the issue.

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