Depressed people are failures. I apologize for the harsh wording of the thread title, but I feel that is the essence of what follows.
I spent almost an hour writing and rewriting this post for brevity.
PLEASE take the time to read it ALL.
I'll start by elaborating some statements that I think everyone can agree on:
1) Everyone has problems in their life; problems where emotional response is necessary.
2) Emotions can be both positive and negative, dependant on the emotion and the situation.
3) Emotions will effect our well-being (in negative and positive ways, see 2).
If you disagree with me on these basic ideas, it is unlikely that you'll agree with what follows. I'd ask, however, that you post repsonding with why you believe 1, 2, or 3 to be untrue.
If you accept (1) and (3), then you likely accept (4)
4) There are times where emotion must not be allowed to interfere with our well-being.
Again, if you disagree with this statement, please respond with your reason for disagreement. Otherwise, I'm going to assume you made it this far without disagreeing with me.
Necessary also are a few caveats:
5) No one is perfect.
6) Everyone will fail to enforce *4* at some point in their life.
7) Everyone has bad days.
8) There are cases of pure chemical depression.
It is with these eight points that I hold a strong conviction:
If you are depressed, you are a failure.
Nothing like kicking a guy while he's down, eh, JinnKai?
I've attempted to reword this statement to be more amiable, but I don't believe I can.
I established (1) and (7) for very important reasons. Everyone has bad days, and everyone has times where being violently emotional is necessary. These are given, and I accept them. However, there are also times when emotion becomes detrimental to our well-being (4). Given the choice to become violently angry at an employer assigning a menial task, most people will chose to subdue their emotion, acknowledging that it is
more important to keep their job than chose to be emotional.
{WARNING} I'M ABOUT TO GIVE MY OPINION, AND IT MAY OFFEND. {WARNING}
With understanding that there are legitimate (8)'s out there, most people are not. Anecdotally and experimentally, I can say with a high degree of confidence that most "depressed" people have not been diagnosed as chemically depressed. Those that have been diagnosed as such can accept that the mental techniques described herein may not be applicable.
For the rest of you losers out there, it does.
I've been called arrogant and I've been called condescending, but I've never been called a crybaby. To me, the latter would be far more insulting. Every time I hear someone say that they were unable to complete an assignment because they were "sad," I cringe.
Being "sad" or being "depressed" is an excuse, just like being "drunk." Being drunk, being sad, or being depressed does not mean that you can ignore your responsibilities. I think at some level or another, most people will agree with this.
Unfortunately, there are also people who will accept an excuse like "I was depressed" as a valid reason for failure. I, however, interpret it differently. This means that the person chose to let "depression", "sadness" or "drunkenness" control them. They chose to let an emotion get in the way of something that they knew needed to be done. If you made a mental decision that it was more important to be emotional, please.. say that. Say "I decided that it was more important to me to cry than to get my work done." That's what you're really saying when you say that you're "depressed." Allowing yourself to be "depressed" is convenient, because it lets you ignore the true reason for your failure.
I have the same problem with people who use their parents as a similar excuse. "I'm a failure because my parents were mean to me as a kid." Do you see the link between this and depression? You're letting someone else prevent you from being successful. By making it their fault, you avoid the responsibility of finding the true root of the problem. The true root, in this situation, is being unwiling to become an individual. If you let another person control your success, then you are still dependent on them. In this case, you're being depedent on parents that you've already identified as being "bad."
The list can go on, but if you find yourself blaming your problems on an external source like parents, money, or depression, perhaps you should reconsider the true source of the emotion.
I understand that many of you may feel that your situation is unique, or that I cannot understand your position.
This is a very common defense mechanism -- but I think you'd be hard pressed to say that YOUR situation is that unique. There are hundreds of thousands of people your age who had "bad" parents and who were "depressed" at some point in their life.
I can tell you from personal experience that I was "depressed," and the only thing that got me out of it was knowing that I was the person responsible for my emotions and my actions, and I chose to stop using excuses. I looked into the emotions themselves and determined the true reason; it wasn't that I was "depressed." It was that I thought I was unattractive, I thought no one liked me, and I thought that I would never succeed in life. I've addressed each one of thsoe individually, and it's taken me much further than wallowing in my "depression" ever would have.
I've addressed similar issues in many of my posts, and I continue to do so in hopes that someday, someone out there will read this. And maybe they'll step outside their depression, their self-loathing, their shyness, their hatred for their parents, their anger, their alcoholism, their gambling habit; whatever their mental affliction is. And they'll realize that they CAN control it, if they identify the true source and stop excusing the behavior. I don't know if that'll happen, but I can always try.