I ride my depression. Give it full rein for awhile, and when the tears have dried up for a bit I do a mental inventory to figure out what’s set it off *this* time.

I avoid certain pieces of music, keep myself busy with work to put a quash on the memories that set me off, and will queue up favorite light movies and a big pile of salted-sunflower-seeds-and-tempered-chocolate patties for an all-nighter. It plays hell with my sleep schedule and diabetes, but that beats the hell of contemplating razor blades and pills.

YMMV.

And if so… how do you deal with it?

In my case, probably badly. I’m pretty messed up in a lot of ways I know and I also know i dn’t always deal with things well. I drink too much, I try to do my best and muddle through.

You have my sympathies & my admiration for whatever they may be worth and as many internet [[[hugs]]] as you want if you want them.

There’s no real way to deal with invalidation because of mental illness, in my experience—most of the time, people either get it or they do not get it. And if they don’t, and they’re becoming toxic to you, the best thing I’ve done is to ignore what they say and to never discuss my depression with them again. Sad, but honestly, it’s the only thing that’s gotten me a moment’s peace with some people.

There’s normally two extremes—either people assume that because you have MDD (like me) or some other mood disorder, you’re ALWAYS depressed and on the brink of a psychological break, or they assume that it’s not really as bad as you’re making it sound. The latter is the more common one, IME, but a lot of people tend to transition between the two, as in they’ll at first think I’m making a big deal for no reason, and then I’ll actually tell them what my life has been like because of depression, and suddenly they’ll completely turn around and think I’m about to jump off a bridge (when that is often not the case these days, however often it may have been in the past).

Depression is hard enough. We need to stop judging people and shaming them because they’re not “ill enough” for us, or they’re “too ill” for us. Beyond the fact that it doesn’t really matter how much pain someone is in when they’re pain, it’s just not our business to know exactly “how depressed” someone is so that we can DECIDE whether or not they are worthy of our validation. You know what? They’re hurting, and they deserve to have that hurting validated, regardless of how much they “seem” to be hurting. They don’t owe it to us to show us the blood, you know what I mean? This isn’t CSI, I’m not owed evidence of anyone’s suffering, nor should I attempt to investigate their suffering because they deserve to be believed. Seriously.

This makes complete sense to me. I’m not sure what YOUR actual reasons are for thinking this way, it could be any number of things, but what it looks like TO ME is that you simply want people to believe the TRUTH about your depression. You don’t want people to over-estimate it and think you have no self-control or agency and are helpless, but you also don’t want people to underestimate it, think it’s NBD, and ignore your needs (when people think that, they stop asking how you are, which really sucks, because then the burden is on you to bring it up and then you feel like you’re being a whiney pain… sigh. :/ At least, that’s my experience.). Perhaps, if it were factually the case that you had slashed your wrists, you would not be so concerned with people thinking that. Or maybe you would, simply because of the culture of shame and silence around that topic, but it seems to me that you really try to surmount that and be as honest as possible.

So what I’m saying, I guess, is that I think those concerns you have about people getting the wrong idea about your depression are completely rational, and tied to your overarching desire for people to generally believe the truth about things. Just a hypothesis.

I’m slowly growing less self-conscious about them, but it’s been hard, and it adds to my general agoraphobic anxiety when I have to wonder about what other people will think. I especially worry about making sure they’re covered when I have an important meeting or a job interview, because I don’t want to look unstable when trying to make a good impression. And more than anything else, I want badly to avoid the pitying looks and the need to explain to all the people who think it’s their goddamn business what happened to you.

This isn’t really helpful, I’m afraid. :-/

I’m turning 30 in two months time and two weeks ago, for the first time, went to see a doctor. Pretty much got to skip all waiting lists and was in with a therapist the next day. Turns out, they do actually take you seriously. Who knew. Since then I’ve been mostly sitting around in a bit of a daze and just following her directions.

I’m still hugely uncomfortable with all of it. After having people, teachers in particular, my entire life tell me I’m lazy, disinterested, unmotivated and lacking in willpower, having a therapist tell me it takes an enormous amount of mental strength to stay functional, as in managing a job, college and a social life, for this amount of time is.. weird.

When my cast came off, I was afraid that people would notice the scar and ask I was suicidal. It has yet to happen. But it did take a few years for the fear that someone might ask to fade away.

Not sure if this helps but I hope it does.

*Damn* you can write! Clear, evocative, and thoughtful.