Venting Depressed people haven't failed at life, but life failed them.

[AbusedInnocent]

Just venting about how people who find life bearable talk about depression as if it's our fault or an illness.

We don't choose to be born, yet we are born with desires that we deserve to have fulfilled, if life fails to provide for those needs and desires then how is it our fault?

Some may say we must work to fulfill those desires or learn to be more humble and accept what we have, I see both as valid ways to achieve happiness if executed, but for many people achieving this is extremely difficult or requires years of work.

Why should we do all this work just to make life bearable when we didn't sign up for any of this? How is it our fault that we refuse to do something none of us signed up for?

They say living in the 21st century is the best life's ever been, and that's partly true as we have access to many luxuries our ancestors didn't, yet rates of depression are at an all time high, our brains haven't yet evolved to adapt to life in the modern world, humans have been hunter-gatherers for almost as long as they've existed, we only learned to farm and build communities around 12000 years ago then the industrial revolution changed everything again even faster, maybe in a few thousand years we'll adapt or maybe things will just keep changing, but either way why should we be grateful to be born in the 21st century when everyone is depressed?

They also say that we should be grateful as we're better off compared to many others, this can be interpreted as A: only 1 out of 8billion people is allowed to complain, that is the person who is worse off than everybody else. or B: only people with a below average quality of life are allowed to complain. Either way it makes no sense as we all have different standards and expectations of life and we all suffer to some degree and have the right to complain, maybe we should help each other out instead of trying to gatekeep suffering and gaslight each other for not being satisfied with life.

Every time I try to make a post on this forum I feel like my writing is incredibly immature and nobody will ever care about what I say, I hope one day I will have something useful to add, thanks for reading.

 

[divinemistress36]

I can't stand when people say "you are the one who stands in the way of your healing" like I can't help that dysfunctional wiring of my brain

 

[Alexei_Kirillov]

I've often wondered if depressed people aren't the canaries in the coalmine for a degenerating society.

 

[EyesOfNight]

I wanted to search for for the differentiation between biological and psychological depression and came across this article/video discussing different types of depression.

Four Types of Depression

On situational, biological, psychological, and existential depression.

www.psychologytoday.com

While I feel like there is still something missing, it's still a decent point to start. What's especially interesting is how this:

They also say that we should be grateful as we're better off compared to many others

or a variation of this along with other "empty platitudes" are examples of the advice people give to people with "situational depression" as it's called in the article. I can't really judge if such "advice" works in those kind of situations but it explains why most people give this kind of "advice" and believe that it works for example through their own experience.

---

They say living in the 21st century is the best life's ever been, and that's partly true as we have access to many luxuries our ancestors didn't

It's true that a lot of luxuries have been invented. That doesn't mean that everyone has access to them.
I personally don't have a dishwasher or a vacuum or a washing machine and many other luxuries that are meant to make life easier. I can't afford to own those things and even then my apartment isn't big enough for them.