Links in this post are not apart of the affiliate program but are links to more information if you would like to research the topic further. I am not getting paid to put these links in, they are just for your benefit.
Depression is hard.
I am pretty sure I said that last week but it is true. Depression is something that affects many people differently and can be difficult to deal with. For one person with severe depression, it could be hard to eat, get out of bed, and even live life normally. For someone who has mild depression it could be easier.
But even easier is still hard. With my own depression it can be easy to get out of bed and live life, but when it comes to the simpler things, such as eating right and taking care of myself, it can be difficult and I will fall deeper into whatever I am feeling at the moment.
Who knows what I actually have. Whether it is a seasonal thing or if it is something more reactionary, it is still hard to deal with and I can get frustrated at myself for falling back in after a couple weeks of actually doing well.
If you had asked me a couple weeks back, I would have told you that I am depressed. Not that I have depression.
There’s a difference between the two. One is a label that I put on myself, that it was a part of my personality instead of something that I just have.
But that all changed a couple of weeks ago. During that time I was in the midst of finals and writing a paper on the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints and their views on the LGBT community. While I was writing it, I read an interview with some of the church’s authorities.
During that interview, I read that those authorities believed that people who identify themselves as queer shouldn’t leave that term as their sole identity.
And whatever you think about this position, what they said on the topic can be applied to that of depression as a label. Elder Oaks said, “I think it’s important for you to understand that homosexuality, which you’ve spoken of, is not a noun that describes a condition. It’s an adjective that describes feelings or behavior. I encourage you, as you struggle with these challenges, not to think of yourself as a ‘something’ or ‘another,’ except that you’re a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.”
Looking at this quote we can take out the word ‘homosexuality’ and then apply the word ‘depression’. If we look at it that way we can then see that depression isn’t a noun in which we can apply to ourselves.
It isn’t going to be something that is just apart of ourselves but will be instead an adjective. Something that describes a condition I have and not something that is a part of anyone who is struggling with it.
It’s easy to define yourself by any type of label. Throughout my life, I have always said both, I have depression, and I’m depressed. It affected me to the point where I was confused as to who I was.
On a mental health blog, a post called The Extreme Dangers of Labeling Yourself With Mental Disorders, the author expresses that some people, when they label themselves, can affect who they are at their core.
When this happens we can make ourselves more depressed and even change who we are. This happened to me once, but I won’t let it happen again.
Labeling who you are at your core as depressed can also give yourself an excuse. Recapping my last post, I gave myself an excuse for being more depressed than I should have.
Making it something that is just a part of me and not this adjective gave me a big excuse. I let myself go during that time. I let myself exclude myself from others and I ended up missing out on a ton of memories that I would love to have now.
On an online forum, a user with the username MyProfile said that a con of labeling herself as depressed was that she made excuses for herself just so she could avoid things.
She says, “What we think of ourselves, for better or worse, affects who we actually are. If one tends to paint themselves, consistently, in a negative way – they’ll begin to live up (or down) to their expectations.”
For me, I knew that when someone is depressed they usually are tired, have trouble concentrating, among other things. Even though I did have these things, I used the fact that I had them as an excuse.
I couldn’t complete school work because I was tired or I didn’t concentrate during class time so my work was poor. But the truth was that I could have completed my own work. I just didn’t care and I needed an excuse. I blamed my depression.
I know I shouldn’t have done this. I feel regret about the things I could have learned in high school, but I can’t go back.
I can make sure that I don’t do that in the future.
Of course I have to make sure that I am not making an excuse. If I really do need a break then I need to recognize that and take one, but I shouldn’t excuse myself because of my condition.
There is, however, the fact that labeling yourself (at least in the beginning) isn’t bad.
While labeling yourself can cause a multitude of problems, there is also a time when you should get labeled.
That is when you don’t know your label.
There are stories of people who have not known what was wrong with them and they didn’t know that there was a name for what they had. After they got diagnosed, they felt normal again because they finally knew what was wrong with them.
Fortunately for me, I have known about my depression for a long time. But saying that depression was a part of me instead of a condition that I had caused me to label myself in a terrible way that affected myself.
If this is what is going on for you, you need to stop labeling yourself as, liked I mentioned before, a noun and start seeing it as an adjective.
If you need to label yourself, at least for a time, that you do have depression or some other mental illness then do it. Help yourself to become mentally healthy.
As for me, I am going to stop labeling myself as depressed and get used to not telling people that I am depressed, but instead live as someone who is just a person who is struggling with depression.
Because that is the truth about mental illness. That we are all just normal people who are struggling against opinions in our mind that aren’t true. If we can get past the labels we put on ourselves and come to know who we truly are then we can better get past our mental illness to become better.
Thanks for reading. If you enjoyed this please leave a comment about your own story with how you have seen depression or share with someone who might need this advice. I am not a professional and I don’t know about how you can help your own depression so if you need help, please talk to a professional. Thanks, and I’ll see you next week for our interview.
Penned by Rose 