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. In this article, we will discuss eight common lies that your depressed mind can tell you, and these are in no particular order.
Lie #1: I Don’t Measure Up
Mental Filtering and Discounting the Positive
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. 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 #2: 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.
Lie #3: I’m Better Off Alone
Isolation and Somatic Symptoms
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, 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.
Lie #4: No One Understands What I’m Going Through
Disconnecting from Support
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. 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.
Lie #5: It’s All My Fault
Guilt and Blaming Yourself
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.
Lie #6: Nothing Matters
Apathy and Hopelessness
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 into the hopelessness of depression. Since all efforts are futile, you can believe the next lie.
Lie #7: I’ll Never Get Better
Memory Erasure and Sense of Doom
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.
Seeking Help and Supporting Loved Ones
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. Alternatively, 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 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.
Further Education and Support
For more education and support on mental wellness in general, check out mental wellness communities and online resources where you can find live streams, workshops on clinical topics, and weekly wellness-related challenges. In the meantime, remember to take care of your mental health and seek help when needed.
