Depression can cause people
to engage in negative self-talk
and believe harmful lies about themselves.
These false beliefs can keep you stuck in negative thinking
and keep you depressed.
I'm Dr. Tracey Marks, a psychiatrist
and I make mental health education videos.
Here are eight common lies
that your depressed mind can tell you
and these are in no particular order.
Number one.
"I don't measure up."
Depression gives you a negative view of yourself.
It can make you feel like you're not good enough
or you don't deserve good things,
and these thoughts can come from previous critical messages
that you've received from others
or it can come from present failures that become magnified
and that's all you see.
In the cognitive therapy world,
this kind of thinking is called mental filtering.
For any given situation,
you only notice the negative detail.
Another cognitive distortion
commonly seen in depressed people
that generates this kind of negative self-appraisal
is called discounting the positive.
You may get positive feedback about something,
but you downplay the significance by saying something like,
"It's only because of this that it turned out that way."
In other words,
you don't give much value to your contribution.
Why?
Because you don't feel worthy of praise
because you don't measure up.
Lie number two.
"No one cares about me."
When you don't feel good about your own self-worth,
how can you expect others to think any better of you?
At least, that's how you see it.
Unfortunately, this kind of thinking
can lead to another lie,
which is number three, "I'm better off alone."
Depression can make you isolate for a lot of reasons.
You may have no energy or drive to do anything.
You may be sleeping all day
or just have no interest in having conversation.
Some people experience depression physically
with a lot of aches and pains and malaise we call it,
which is this horrible feeling
of having your energy sucked away,
almost like you would feel if you were physically ill.
We call these physical manifestations somatic symptoms.
Soma means body.
Some people are more somatic than others.
If you feel this way,
you certainly don't want to be around people.
You're not up for company,
but in your mind, you also may feel like
people don't want to be around you anyway.
Number four.
"No one understands what I'm going through
"and therefore, I'm out here completely alone with this."
Now, it's true that no one can put themselves in your shoes,
especially if it's someone who hasn't been depressed before.
So that part is true,
but where this thinking goes too far
is how it makes you distance yourself
from people who care about you.
It's like other people
are so out of touch with your experience
that you reject their efforts to connect with you
because you struggle to feel connected to them
and this leads to more isolation
and can make you feel like it's futile
to seek help from others, even professionals
because no one will get it enough to be able to help you.
Number five.
"It's all my fault."
Feeling guilty or blaming yourself
is almost the standard response for a depressed person.
You can blame yourself for not getting better
because you're not doing enough
to pull yourself out of this.
Unfortunately, people around you
who don't believe depression is an illness
can perpetuate this thinking
by suggesting that you'll get better
if you just do this or that.
Or worse, they can't understand how you can be depressed
when you've got all these wonderful things going for you,
you don't have a reason to be depressed,
and if you buy into that,
you'll blame yourself for not being properly happy
for all the good things you have.
The truth is, yes, you can get sad or low
when you experience difficult circumstances,
but the biological disorder of depression
is much more than a reaction to something unpleasant.
You could be at the prime of your life with no real problems
and be deeply depressed,
and it's not entirely within your control.
Number seven is "Nothing matters."
This thinking stems from the apathy symptom of depression.
"What's the point, why bother?
"It's not going to make a difference anyway."
This thinking feeds in to the hopelessness of depression.
Since all efforts are futile, you can believe number eight,
which is, "I'll never get better."
Even if you had repeat episodes of depression,
each one is like a new experience
when it comes to your future outlook.
It can get so dark
that you can't remember each time you got better,
or even if you do remember, this time seems different
and you can't convince yourself
that you'll have another recovery.
It's like your memory gets erased
for how much better your life is when you recover
and you believe this is the final episode for you.
This sense of doom
is what leads some people to want to end their lives
or at least end their suffering,
but fortunately, most people don't get to this point.
They may contemplate options
or fantasize about what life would be like without them,
but they don't have the courage or the energy
to do anything to get there.
Do any of these thoughts sound familiar to you?
If you're having several of these thoughts,
you should see a professional for help.
This could be a therapist to help you with your thinking
and if the therapist believes your depression
is severe enough to consider medication,
they could refer you to a doctor
to be evaluated for medication,
or you could seek help in the reverse order
and see a doctor first and then maybe add on therapy.
Many primary care doctors will treat depression
or you could go directly to a psychiatrist.
If you have a loved one who is depressed,
know that these could be some of the things
that they're thinking.
If they don't want to be around you,
try not to take it personally
because their depressed state
distorts how they see and react to the things around them.
Here are some other videos that I have
talking in more detail about depression.
For more education and support
on mental wellness in general,
check out my mental wellness community
where we have twice monthly live streams,
workshops on clinical topics,
and weekly wellness-related challenges,
a lot of good stuff at the mentalwellnessspace.com.
In the meantime, thanks for watching.
See you next time.