Depression Lies to You
How to spot it, defeat it, and regain meaning in your life.
by Sharon Turnoy
It never occurred to me that depression might lie to me.
I thought it was honest to a fault — not sugar-coating the most cynical points of view, but rather rubbing my nose in the unadulterated truth until I was forced out of denial to face reality: My life sucked.
My beliefs about depression changed a few years ago. A therapist listened to me as I engaged in some negative self-talk that was, I thought, quite accurate, albeit extremely critical. I sounded hopeless, lacking in self-worth, and not able to foresee a happy future. She let me finish my tirade and then said, “That’s depression talking.”
Huh?
Depression Can Talk?
Not only can it talk, but it frequently lies.
Being depressed is like listening to the same record on a turntable over and over as it slows down toward the end. The singer’s voice gets lower in pitch as the rpms make their way down the scale, until the record on the turntable slows all the way to a halt.
When we are depressed, we frequently repeat the same self-diminishing statements and self-critical assessments that we’ve been using to demean ourselves…
