7 Reasons Why You Don’t Seek Help for Depression
“How are you?
“Oh I’m fine”.
“That’s great to hear. Stay well.”
Most conversations about how you feel, start and end in a few seconds. It’s hard to let your guard down and accept defenselessness. Maybe because you synonymize vulnerability with feebleness or failing? Midst this perplexity, the way to survive is to join the dots to make meaning of things. You make goals and plans for health and life, you create lists and inventories for pantries and parties, you research universities and localities for career and residence; and you try to scrutinize everything and everyone, so that your existence turns out perfect, and right.
Yet, you don’t know how you truly feel.
Why then, do you shy from seeking help for depression? You don’t want to be sad or miserable. But if you are, why do you refuse to do something about it? Here’s some food for thought.
#1 You Worry About the Stigma
A label of sadness or depression is not easy to swallow. The diagnosis itself is a scarlet letter ‘D’ slapped on the forehead, instilling a pulsating fear of admonishment. And so, you choose to suffer the pain silently. Truth is, you internalise the societal stigma and trouble yourself doubly. Society does not ostracize you as much as you berate yourself for how you feel.
#2 You Think It Will Just Go Away
Maybe you don’t know how the brain works in depression — the rigmarole of altered chemicals, disrupted electric circuitry and transformed internal connectivity. You believe that if you ignore the pain, it will just go away. But does it? When you hide the garbage under the carpet, it rots; and the stench could invade the whole house. That is how depression eats into your life.
#3 You Think Depression is Not a Real Illness
Surveys conducted world over affirm that a vast majority of people do not regard depression as a medical illness. Millennia ago, it was looked upon as an outcome of demoniac possession or the wrath of God. But the science about depression today is clearer. If malaria and the flu get your acute and undivided attention, why not depression?
#4 You Think You’ll be Labelled as Weak
It’s true, everyone who goes through stress may react differently. Some appear more empowered, while many others, crumble. The fact still remains; each one of us is blessed with unique coping capacities. Just because you are more sensitive or reactive, or you’ve had multiple and deep wounds that drained your resilience; you don’t become weak.
#5 You Worry Therapy Will Change Your Brain
Well, here you might be right, because a single positive conversation holds the capacity to modify your brain circuitry permanently for the better. But contrary to popular myth, therapy is not voodoo or magic done to brainwash you or control your thoughts. Medication as well as specialized therapies help you connect deeply with your core self and heal you from within.
#6 You’ll Talk to A Friend and It Will Get Better
Friends are saviors; they save our life every day, several times a day at times. But professional therapy is different because it is a structured and scientific way to resolve thinking errors, faulty behaviors and maladaptive emotional styles. Friends mean well and nothing matches the power of their support. But avoiding professional help because you’re speaking to friends isn’t right.
#7 You’re Too Much of a DIY Person
Depression is not the same as the low or down period that happens every other day when something goes wrong or different from what you expected. That is why the “I can talk myself out of this, because I always do and I know how to snap out of a low mood,” mentality doesn’t help. You want to, and you have to; but you need guidance to help yourself out of depression.
If you look around, near and far; you’ll know that fear and angst are slowly engulfing the globe. The statistics are screaming in our faces. Depression as a disease, is a deadly slayer, but doesn’t kill with immediacy like cardiac illness or acute respiratory syndrome. It slowly but steadily consumes its prey minute by minute; eating into days, weeks, and months; that sometimes add to a lifetime of emptiness and misery.
Don’t ignore depression. The silence of it, is deafening.
