These Are the Worst Things You Can Say to Someone With Depression
Itwill come as no surprise to anyone that I have dealt with depression a time or two in my life. I struggled with it as a kid, being crushed under the wheel of my mother’s misery and narcissism. I struggled with it as a young adult when, traumatized, I continued to make a bigger and bigger mess of my life. Most recently, I dealt with it after a quick succession of deaths and a health crisis that pushed me to the brink of death in 2017. I hit rock bottom and felt like there was no other option for me. Things had been bad for a long time, and when I lost my mother and my half-brother (whom I had only recently reconnected with) within a 6-month timespan…it was too much. I’ll never forget when I opened up to my “best friend” of the time about what was going on, she said to me, “Why didn’t you tell me about your mom’s death first?” It was like being hit with a sledgehammer. I was telling her about being in the depths of a crisis and she was worried about being the first person to know about the drama in my life. It only got worse when she started comparing my crisis to the superficial inconveniences in her life (many of them self-made). Everything she said, everything thing she did next, was the wrong choice. There are some things that aren’t helpful when you’re dealing with someone who is genuinely battling depression. No matter the causes, no matter the level of the despair, when someone is depressed it’s better to be silent than to add to their pain with ignorance or misguided intentions.
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