On honesty with ourselves

The recent death of Robin Williams has brought the disease of depression to the forefront of our collective awareness.  According to reports, he was suffering from depression when he died by suicide.  Depression, as I have seen in many of my friends, family, and clients, is a terrifying, slow-working, and highly pervasive disorder.  It's painful for those suffering and for those who love the sufferers.

That being said, the interesting thing about depression is that all it is (and I don't mean this as a minimization of the disease, I mean it as a normalization) is an extreme expression of feelings we all have.  We all feel sad, down, unmotivated, distressed, unloved, and unworthy, from time to time.  If you're not feeling one of those things at least once a day you're definitely in the minority.

The other thing about depression is that it does not discriminate.  It can affect anyone, including the people who we see as the happiest and funniest.  In fact, it's the people who come off as funny, happy, lively, jovial (like Robin Williams) who are often covering up feelings of sadness and depression.  We all do that to an extent--cover our true feelings with a facade or with jokes.  But the problem with that is that then we're all walking around with facades of ourselves shown to the world instead of our true selves.  We cover our feelings and thoughts, the true ones, with joking, sarcasm, and pleasing others.  And that means we're keeping all of that bad stuff, the negative feelings we have, inside.  We never release them.  And that's unhealthy for us.  That leaves us simmering in that negativity.  And negativity is poison.

So I challenge you, whoever you are reading this, to be honest with yourself and others.  Don't cover up your true self, your opinions, your feelings (negative or positive), with a facade.  Be you.  And be you for you.  Not for the pleasure of others. You deserve it.

Keep on thinking,
Josie