People telling you to snap out of depression, irritating?

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I thought I'd start this topic because it really does irritate when people say, 'Oh go out in the sun' or 'What is there to be depressed about, be happy!" among other, more irritating comments.
This seems like a good place to ask this question because if you ask this question on YouTube, some people will make fun of you, and others will go on with their paranoid beliefs that depression was created by pharmaceutical companies to fund their antidepressant sales, etc. The worst has be some of the comments written down by Scientologists. It gets annoying. For the record, there are also many compassionate people that have positive, reinforcing comments regarding depression.

I would just like to discuss this topic with people that are mature and have realistic, down to earth comments/opinions, etc.
Thanks a lot.

I can relate. I was not diagnosed properly or treated until I was about 35 and this was after a lifetime of low grade chronic depression with periodic dips into major depression. I stopped talking about it after a certain point and pretended I didn't feel the way I did. Comments like the ones you mentioned only add to the problem. You feel awful and on top of that you feel inadequate and guilty about not being able to change it on your own. Judgmental attitudes based on ignorance do so much damage.

I find those comments annoying as well, and rather unhelpful because clinical depression isn't simply about having a bad day. Being clinically depressed feels like a combination of:

Someone close to you has died + you have lost your job + your pet is at the vet + your car needs repairs + you come home and your toilet's flooded

EXCEPT

You may not have any reason at all to feel like whale s**t at the bottom of the ocean.

Now let's see sunshine and fresh air and exercise fix THAT!

Finally, after reading all the negative comments that break you down and then some of the CCHR nonsense, I find some people that actually have REINFORCING comments. Once again, thanks a lot guys.

My parents did that a lot when I was a kid (well, actually it was more like "oh you feel like X? well that's just stupid. When I was a kid...") So by age 12 I'd pretty much stopped telling them anything personal (and it remains so to this day). It still takes me huge amount of trust for me to tell someone anything personal. And they get one chance to screw up; to brush something difficult or painful off as some trivial BS. I'm not saying that's good or well adjusted behavior, but it is how it is for a reason.

Comments like that usually deepen my depression because they are just another expression of people not really caring which is the source of my depression in the first place,
Throwing a thoughtless phrase like those u mentioned is typical of the average narcissistic who wouldn't even dedicate the time to see or feel u because he thinks that his mere sunny presence is enough to lighten your day,
I can not stand people like that and there is no way to make them notice how thick and hollow they really are because they are so full of themselves,
the worst part is having people like that in your family so u have no choice but to put up with this destructive and poisonous behavior for years and have to adapt to the fact that no matter what they will never change.
it seems that ppl who lack the skill of giving real attention to other people could never get it no matter what.

I hate snyunsnyine. I prefer the rain.

I get told all kinds of stupid things. I get told stupid things, like, “Smile and you'll feel better.” or “Suck it up, buttercup!” Another one that grates, on my nerves, is “You shouldn't be feeling, this way! “There's a sexual revolution, going on.” That was said, by my mum, the Spring of 1998, when I was diagnosed with Depression and Psychosis.

when peple teld me this I wood snap my fingers
and cast a spell they then had to stupid out on
me and say "well that aint gonna work" DUHHHH
god tehy made me crazy.

Finally I told them their solutions wasn't
as good as mine and some of them actually
got the point.

True, the worst aspect has to be when your own family members yell at you for being depressed. My mom is sometimes like that. She also criticizes me for rocking my head back and forth as is a symptom of AS.
I am on 100 mg sertraline (Zoloft) and it has helped me a lot regarding the anxiety that comes with depression. The anxiety was so bad I was vomiting every hour and heard mild auditory hallucinations (unpleasant music). So, as a separate topic: I understand that SSRIs don't help everyone, but they sure did a lot for me. Despite their success in suppressing paralyzing anxiety, they have not done too much for periods of depression though. Although studying at college helps me a lot with the excess depression that remains. Once again, thanks for the comments guys!

I don't know that I've ever had very serious REAL depression. I'd say what I did have was worst in my teens but it was more like me just giving up on myself because I knew I was different and didn't know why.

I get sucked into my own world very easily and that can look like depression because I withdraw so much. Depression is not easy to break out of, just like being lost in your own world isn't either but TBH I only have so much sympathy for people. I do understand the need to let yourself feeling whatever you are feeling for awhile but when it gets to the point that it's really interfering with your life you may want to consider medication or something.

It's taken me awhile to decide to go back on medication and it's certainly not the solution for everyone but I'm not going to be able to get back into the real world until I do, my brain is just not wired to work FOR me, I think I can learn to live without meds in the future but for now I am so behind in life that's it really kind of disgusting.

Maybe you could try therapy? There are different options but do try as hard as you can to pull yourself out of it, in the long run you're really only hurting yourself if you don't. Depression can lead to a lot of lost time in life.

I get people telling me to go out in the sun (particularly my neighbour, who loves sunbathing and can't understand why I like to stay in). I just explain that I get dizzy in the sun. They don't understand it, but then they don't have to.

Being depressed is something I would keep private and only tell very close friends whom I trusted to understand. A lot of people don't understand depression, and of course there's nothing worse than people telling you to pull yourself together, so I would opt not to tell people.

People do sometimes say to me 'Cheer up - it might never happen', generally when I'm not actually feeling miserable. My default face just doesn't happen to have a big grin on it! When people say this to me, I just tend to dismiss them as idiots and ignore them.

"Why don't you just snap out of it?"
"Why don't you go for a walk?"
"You need to get out more often."
"Would talking to someone help?"

Just a handful of my favourite expressions people use when I am having an off day.

I have stopped trying to explain that I am not looking for advice from anyone, that I would like nothing more than to go home and lose myself in music or one of my favourite books for the rest of the day, or that by making suggestions or asking questions they are just adding to my discomfort. It might not make me feel any better, but it prevents them from being offended when they inevitably misconstrue the meaning in my words.

I do understand that I can be a drag when I exhibit my depression.

I pull my hair out as a result of stress and my mom thinks I can stop just like that.

Last edited by PunkyKat on 15 Aug 2010, 2:04 am, edited 1 time in total.

I think lot of people don't really understand depression because they had learned it means having a bad day or being down in the dumps or unhappy about something. That word always gets used for those situations like people may say they have been depressed for the past week. So when someone says they have it, people just assume you mean that depression.

I thought that's what depression meant too and I used to try and do things to keep my mind off stuff that makes me so unhappy with my life and think of the positive I have. Maybe I was never depressed and I was just unhappy and down in the dumps due to the bullying I got and the environment I was in.

But for it to be depression, it has to be onset for certain amount of months or weeks (I don't remember) before they call it that. Maybe that's why I got diagnosed with it.