you should read elizabeth wurtzel's "prozac nation" - she gives the most accurate and rich description of depression i've ever read:
"Slowly, over the years, the data will accumulate in your heart and mind, a computer program for total negativity will build into your system, making life feel more and more unbearable. But you won't even notice it coming on, thinking that it is somehow normal, something about getting older, about turning eight or turning twelve or turning fifteen, and then one day you realize that your entire life is just awful, not worth living, a horror and a black blot on the white terrain of human existence. One morning you wake up afraid that you are going to live.
" In my case, I was not frightened in the least bit at the thought I might live because I was certain that I was already dead. The actual dying part, the withering away of my physical body, was a mere formality.My spirit, my emotional being, whatever you want to call all that inner turmoil that has nothing to do with physical existence, were long gone, dead and gone, and only a mass of the most f*#$ing god-awful excruciating pain like a pair of boiling hot tongs clamped tight around my spine and pressing on all my nerves was left in its wake.
"That's the thing I want to make clear about depression. It's got nothing to do with life. In the course of life, there is sadness and pain and sorrow, all of which, in their right time and season, are normal - unpleasant, but normal. Depression is in an altogether different zone because it involves a complete absence: absence of affect, absence of feeling, absence of response, absence of interest. The pain you feel in the course of a major clinical depression is an attempt on nature's part (nature, after all, abhor's a vacuum) to fill up empty space. But for all intents and purposes, the deeply depressed are just the walking, waking dead.
"And the scariest part is that if you ask anyone in the throes of depression how he got there, to pin down the turning point, he'll never know..."
show that to the next person who tells you to "get over it"
source: Elizabeth Wurtzel. "Prozac Nation: Young and Depressed in America" Riverhead Trade 2002: 21-22
Is it normal To hate misconceptions about depression??
← View full post
you should read elizabeth wurtzel's "prozac nation" - she gives the most accurate and rich description of depression i've ever read:
"Slowly, over the years, the data will accumulate in your heart and mind, a computer program for total negativity will build into your system, making life feel more and more unbearable. But you won't even notice it coming on, thinking that it is somehow normal, something about getting older, about turning eight or turning twelve or turning fifteen, and then one day you realize that your entire life is just awful, not worth living, a horror and a black blot on the white terrain of human existence. One morning you wake up afraid that you are going to live.
" In my case, I was not frightened in the least bit at the thought I might live because I was certain that I was already dead. The actual dying part, the withering away of my physical body, was a mere formality.My spirit, my emotional being, whatever you want to call all that inner turmoil that has nothing to do with physical existence, were long gone, dead and gone, and only a mass of the most f*#$ing god-awful excruciating pain like a pair of boiling hot tongs clamped tight around my spine and pressing on all my nerves was left in its wake.
"That's the thing I want to make clear about depression. It's got nothing to do with life. In the course of life, there is sadness and pain and sorrow, all of which, in their right time and season, are normal - unpleasant, but normal. Depression is in an altogether different zone because it involves a complete absence: absence of affect, absence of feeling, absence of response, absence of interest. The pain you feel in the course of a major clinical depression is an attempt on nature's part (nature, after all, abhor's a vacuum) to fill up empty space. But for all intents and purposes, the deeply depressed are just the walking, waking dead.
"And the scariest part is that if you ask anyone in the throes of depression how he got there, to pin down the turning point, he'll never know..."
show that to the next person who tells you to "get over it"
source: Elizabeth Wurtzel. "Prozac Nation: Young and Depressed in America" Riverhead Trade 2002: 21-22