The Upside Of Suffering From Depression
Suffering from depression often leaves you feeling helpless, hopeless, and worthless. It feels like the lowest of lows; a place without escape. But all hope is not lost, it never is. There is a silver lining to every cloud, no matter how dark and heavy that cloud may seem. As serious an issue depression is and as much as you need help getting through it, as I fight through mine, I can’t help but notice a few upsides to suffering from depression.
Firstly, depression makes you more empathetic and sensitive to the problems of others.
At least it did in my case. When you’re depressed you desperately want someone to understand what you’re going through. I felt like that too. But in feeling like that, I developed an empathy to the problems of others. I am willing to listen to people, and I am careful not to hurt someone intentionally.
In fighting my own battles, I have learned everyone goes through their own problems in life, and that you need to learn respect and understand that to the best of your abilities. Through my depression, I have gained the ability to connect with people on a different level. In this way, you could say that my depression made me a better person.
Another upside of depression would be that moments of happiness aren’t taken for granted.
When a person is fighting depression, they have their good days and their bad. On the bad days, everything seems bleak and you want nothing more than for it all to stop. So you learn not to take the rare happy moments for granted.
On my bad days, I really struggle, just as others do. So on my good days, I make the most of it.
I meet friends, I get work done, I spend time with family. I laugh, smile and enjoy myself because I don’t know when the next bout of sadness might strike. This also means I am more productive and efficient at using my “good” time wisely. My depression, therefore, teaches me to better appreciate and use the good times.
With depression, the smallest of things – maybe a simple comment on your weight, or a social media post of friends enjoying themselves, or even a passing sad thought- may set you off in a spiral of negative emotions.
In contrast, the smallest of gestures, and experiences can make you happy.
A person smiling at you, or a ‘how are you’ text from an old friend, or even a funny cat video, all of these things may have the ability to cheer you up on a bad day. These may not seem like a big deal to someone who isn’t suffering from depression, but it is. And again you don’t take any of these moments of happiness for granted.
It’s often said that depressed people in the creative field do well. They are able to emote better and connect with audiences better. That can be said for me as well. Through my depression, I discovered my passion for writing. Writing to me is a form of therapy, so my work comes across more open and honest. By writing about my experiences, I hope to connect with and help people who are similar to me.
Finally, it can be said that as you embark on a journey of recovery, you discover and learn new things about yourself.
That’s another undeniable bright side to depression.
In my journey of self-love and self-compassion, I learned how to better handle my emotions, to rationalize my own thoughts, and to stop catastrophizing events in my life. More often than not people see depression and recovery from it as taboo, but all it is a phase of self-learning in your life. There is a light at the end of the tunnel, and you come out of it as a much stronger person, and I definitely see that as an upside.
