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>But a depressed person often is a negative person, and moods can spread. That's pretty stereotypical. The happiest people on the outside can hide some pretty
by Sgt_Apone 10y ago
>But a depressed person often is a negative person, and moods can spread.
That's pretty stereotypical. The happiest people on the outside can hide some pretty dark clouds on the inside; especially in a work environment where outward appearances are important. In fact, I would suggest that the majority that are depressed don't show any outwards signs to working colleagues.
- washadjeffmad 10y agoI'm in the Robin Williams category of depressives. I know how desperate and tiring it is fighting off those causeless bouts, and so I try to make life as enriching as I can for people around me. It's my way of compensating for every relentless, hammering, baseless urge to die that I've survived alone over the years. It took a long time for me to get that people don't typically understand that it's more like hiding that you have cancer than not being able to cheer up. You can hide the symptoms of both, you don't ask for either of them, and they might both kill you, but somehow you're responsible when you get depression but not cancer.
- brookside 10y agoWe can be responsible for our depressions though. The CBT paradigm is that thoughts cause emotions, and if we change our thoughts (which we can have control over) our mood will shift. So there is some self-determination, I don't think the typical comparison with cancer is a good one. (Obviously you can give yourself cancer with behaviors like smoking, but once you have cancer you have little internal control to make it go away. Not so with depression.)
- brookside 10y agoAbsolutely, but I can almost guarantee you the person who presents as anxious/tortured wreck is not secretly beaming with contentment inside.