Depression is a challenging condition to manage. People living with it have to deal with the effects of depression itself—and also struggle with taking medication, questioning why they ended up with mental illness, and deflecting insensitive comments from others.
Influencer Emily (@getfitminny) knows this well, and in a recent Instagram post she documented what life is like when you have depression and how she handles the day to day of this condition.
First, the unkind remarks from loved ones. “Three years ago, a friend looked me in the eye and said words that will haunt me forever, ‘I can’t believe you think you’re depressed. So many people in this world have it so much worse than you,’” Emily wrote.
She continued and brought up the topic of medication. When she recently tried to dial back her depression medication, she ended up in a “downward spiral.”
“Sometimes life is really good and sometimes it’s crying on the kitchen floor for no reason,” she wrote. “I don’t yet understand the reason, but I refuse to let the ugliest parts of my life color everything else.”
She also commented on how random a depression diagnosis can be. “I never imagined I’d be someone who’d need medication to be happy, to function, but here I am with a chemical imbalance that I didn’t ask for,” she related. “To be honest, I belong to a club I never asked to join.”
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Emily wants other people with depression to know that if someone ever says “other people have it worse,” it’s not about you, it’s about their ignorance of the illness. It’s not easy to brush off a comment like that, but try to muster up all of the strength you can to rise above and not internalize it, she advises.
“You can’t ignore your pain and you can never leave it behind completely,” she wrote. “The only thing you can do is find a way to embrace the madness, run toward the chaos, and grind through the low points, even when it sucks.”
If you’re not depressed, this advice applies to you too. Emily says to “fill in your own personal brand of chaos” because if we’re being honest, we all have something we’re dealing with—and we all need to be compassionate with ourselves.
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