Quote:
Originally Posted by nickerjones
Backstory:
When I was 22 I was in an auto accident and lost my first wife. I was obviously sad and upset. I remember family, friend, and tons of doctors asking about my mental state and If I has suicidal thoughts. I just never had any of those thoughts.
Fast Forward to now. I have had some friends attempt suicide and some friends commit suicide.
I find it extremely hard to empathize with them because I never had these thoughts. Even in , what I perceive as, the hardest part of my life I never suffered depression or suicidal thoughts.
|
The problem you're having is that you are thinking about two different things as if they're the same thing - that is, emotional trauma stemming from an event that can produce suicidal thoughts, and depression as an illness. The former is event-driven, the latter is a state of the brain that causes it to function differently from most peoples' brains.
In other words, some peoples' brains work differently than yours, and probably have for so long that it's hard for them to communicate the differences because they have no frame of reference. What living through a day feels like to you and what it feels like to them may be quite different things. Try describing the colour green to someone who's colourblind.
This is one reason why it would be nice if people stopped using the word "depressed" as a synonym for various degrees of "sad" or "upset". They are not the same thing. Depression involves persistent imbalances of neurotransmitters in the brain. in that sense, it is an ongoing condition. Feeling sad, even devastated, over an unfortunate life event generally does not denote any persistent problem in brain chemistry.
This is somewhat complicated by the fact that bouts of depression symptoms can be brought on or exacerbated by real world events, but usually it's not something like a death or losing a relationship, it's something that seems totally unrelated, like the sound of someone turning a key in a lock, or the sensation of driving. This is analogous to PTSD or the onset of symptoms of an anxiety disorder. Brains are weird, the reactions do not flow logically, trying to understand these disorders through what seems to make sense is just going to mislead you.