So you know how everyone does really dumb shit all the time? Including you, of course. And how it’s a lot of fun to judge people for the dumb shit they do? Again, including yourself.

Judging people is easy and entertaining! There are an infinite number of reasons why you could look down on and criticize someone, so you never run out of flaws to pick at. No one is perfect. Even Ghandi was kind of a dick when he was young. Then again, does that mean that he wasn’t a crazy awesome bald baller later in life? Nope, he was the shit.

The thing is: what’s the point in judging people really? You don’t actually feel better about yourself in the long-run. And if the other person really needs you to stop judging them and give them some help, then you’re just being an asshole. Given that you’ve experienced depression, it’s likely that you’ve run into some people who chose to judge you instead of help you. And aren’t those people so fucking annoying? It’s not like you don’t know what you’re doing wrong, because, oh wait, you are depressed and it’s all you can think about.

People judge depressives for their self-sabotagey behavior all the time. Why? That’s so unproductive. And selfish. And irresponsible. Because a person that doesn’t take the time to understand you has no right to judge you, and a person who does understand has a responsibility to help you. Also, it’s funny because when other people judge you for being depressed, all it does is feed into that need for self-loathing. “I deserve this.” How satisfying.

No, judgment is just a way for us to separate ourselves from someone else’s pain. It’s the same reason that we’re creeped out and even sickened by other people’s “weaknesses.” We don’t want to deal with their disgusting negative emotional goop, so we just slap a “You need to pull yourself together” on them and run away. And remember how that sucks? Judgment is a glass wall that we put between ourselves and other people. That way we can make sympathetic faces at them while keeping ourselves safe and protected on the other side.

So judging someone for their problems is a fail. You definitely do not like annoying self-righteous shit-heads lecturing down to you. Ergo, don’t act like that annoying self-righteous, lecturing shit-head to someone else. Be responsible, listen to them, accept their problems, and help them get better. Don’t just stand over them watching them be miserable and telling them how sad you feel for them. Give them a hand and pull them to their feet. Or you know, just shut the fuck up.

So you know how you’re a disgusting waste of space? And you always fuck everything up no matter what it is or how simple? Then you sit there and wait for your punishment, but sometimes it fails to show up in the way that you’d hoped, so you take it upon yourself to find one that’s more fitting?

Good job. Go ahead and do that. Be the go-getter you were always meant to be.

It’s frustrating how people don’t get punished for the mistakes they make. Without punishment, how would we learn to avoid making similar mistakes in the future? If you touch a flame, you get burned, and then you don’t go around touching fire. Well, there are exceptions to every rule. Then again, if you find that you punish yourself and yet still end up making the same mistakes, then maybe you’re not doing it right?

The thing about determining an appropriate punishment is that every incident is truly different both in the reasons that led to it, and the impact that results from it. If you accidentally step on one person’s toe, he or she may simply laugh it off, while another may get their grump on. If you intentionally stomp on one person’s foot, he or she may try to get away before you hurt them further, while another may launch a vicious retaliation. There are natural reactions that occur as a result of your actions. And natural punishments too. So really, you don’t need to punish yourself at all. Still, there are times when you might think that life hasn’t doled out the right punishment. That it is too strong, or even too weak, and you need to take action to fix that.

If the punishment is too strong, you can end up taking the balance out on others. That’s why hurt happens. Because the overflow of pain needs to go somewhere and so it ends up splashing all over everything. Again, then you’ll want to recognize that while it may not have been your fault that you were punished too strongly, it is your responsibility to make amends for passing on the pain. Instead of being victimized, and then going on to victimize others, it’s worth turning the tables on whatever force punished you too strongly. Not by striking back, since that will just start more misery waves. Instead, by understanding why you were punished so strongly, and whether the pain inflicted was intentional or accidental or a force of nature.

Now, if the punishment is too weak, then maybe you’ll want to hurt yourself. You’ll physically or emotionally attack yourself to make up for the difference between how the world responded to your action, and how you think the world should have responded. Sometimes you’ll act in ways that jeopardize your well being, or cause other people to not get along with you. You may seek out people who will punish you, and even provoke them into doing so. Sometimes these people won’t want to hurt you, and as you transform them into monsters capable of causing pain, you’ll feel your punishment even more. Because you know that you have hurt another person by turning them into your personal torturer.

So if you want to punish yourself, go ahead and do it on your own. When you create monsters for the sake of hurting yourself, you fuck everyone else over too. Because that darkness that you helped to create in other people doesn’t go away, and it leads to the development of those cycles of hurt. It would be for the best if you search for a way to forgive yourself. Still, until the time comes that you’re ready to do so, avoid using other people as a tool for your self-flagellation.

So you know how sometimes you fuck up big time and hurt other people? Maybe because you were flailing around in your misery puddle and accidentally splashed someone. Maybe because you were bored or lonely in your misery pit so you tried to pull someone down. Or maybe just because you were being an asshole. Then after you realize that you’ve hurt someone, your self-loathing cycle starts and it’s all wash, rinse, repeat.

Yeah, sometimes whether we mean to or not, we hurt other people. And it’s important to remember that is okay. Well, maybe not okay so much as it is inevitable. Ideally, we would never lose control and hurt other people, but unfortunately it does happen. And when it happens we can’t take it back, or pretend that it didn’t happen. Well, we can pretend, it’s just that does not change reality.

While it is tempting to try and brush over our actions. Or to try to explain them away. Or to even apologize and then beat ourselves up a disproportionate amount. These solutions don’t tend to make other people feel better, and even when they are enough to get everyone off our case, they don’t make us feel better either. Because none of these responses are enough to satisfy our internal self-critic. Our depression knows when we’re minimizing, or explaining, or self-flagellating, and it just attacks us for doing those things.

And worst of all is when we know that we hurt someone, can’t accept that it was our fault, and feel the need to lay the blame on others or even the person we hurt. When we are so disgusted with ourselves, and our actions, that we can’t handle it and need to share the guilt. Of course, this just makes the guilt worse, and our inability to manage it leads to more hurt. Then the cycle continues…These cycles are the most frightening and damaging aspect of depression. Because they perpetuate again and again, until we have lost all sense of self-control and autonomy. We even lose site of the way out. Not sure how we’ve become the agressors when we were originally the victims.

There is a way to break the chain. To prevent us from becoming agressors again, and again, and again. That is, we need to recognize that what we did was wrong, and then we need to accept that it is also okay that we did it. When we blame and attack ourselves for hurting others, we are unable to truly take responsibility for it. Punishing ourselves does not help the people we’ve hurt, and when taken to an extreme, it causes us to break, and take our punishment out on others. The only way to stop the cycle is to truly look at the hurt we have caused, and accept that it was our responsibility. That we have caused pain, and that through our will, we can stop causing pain. Most importantly, we can redeem ourselves for the pain that we have caused.

So hurt happens. It would happen even if we weren’t depressed. There would still be times when we are agressors, and still be times when we are victims. The depression just intensifies our self-blame, self-loathing, and self-punishment. It brings us past the brink of despair, and leads us into cycles of negative behavior. In order to break free of our depression, we must break free of these cycles by recognizing our responsibilities without punishing ourselves when we fail to live up to them.

So you know how depression is just sooo unoriginal? Like, because like, everyone has it these days so who even cares? And everything you think and feel has already been discussed in some book or pamphlet or incredibly insightful help-self blog?

Yeah, you’re not the first person to experience depression. And you’re not the last either. Then again, that’s not really the point. Because whether 5 billion people have had depression or just 5, that doesn’t change the fact that you have it, and you need to find a way of managing your version of it.

Because it is your depression and no one else’s. Everyone has unique past experiences and unique ways of experiencing things in general. Consequently, everyone is affected by depression in a different way, and everyone finds a different combination of coping or healing techniques. While you might be struck by the unoriginality of having depression, watch out! If you don’t take full account of your depression’s little eccentricities, it will be hard to clear it out of all the corners and crevices of your mind. Stock solutions and generic by-the-book cures generally need to be adapted to your own special brand of crazy.

For some reason people think that if a condition is common, it isn’t as serious as if it’s a rare one. There’s probably a fancy name for this phenomenon, but the Internet is big so out of pure laziness let’s just call this the “Dangerous Zebra, Safe Horse Phenomenon.” Because people make a big deal about zebras, but they’re really just the same as horses in that you’re pretty fucked if you get kicked in the face by either one.

The household flu is pretty common, but people still get fucked up by that shit. And depression is in some ways common, and similarly, people still get fucked up by it. If you sit in your misery pit and think to yourself “Ah. Really, this is just so trite.” You are totally right! And it will remain trite, especially if you sit like that for hours, or days, or weeks, or years.

So yeah depression is pretty unoriginal and that sucks. Lots of people deal with similar issues, and so your misery is not as special as you would like. However, your experience of your depression, and your ways of managing it are unique to you. And ultimately, It’s the climb out of the pit, the whole personal redemption narrative, that is truly distinct, and absolutely all you.

So you know how you’ve tried everything to “cure” your depression? Yet all of the Mongolian throat singing, Alpaca farming, and math puzzles just haven’t seemed to work? And you’re getting more stressed and depressed in your hectic search for the perfect solution?

Feel free to quit looking for a bit. Remember that “taking a break” thing can be pretty important when you’re getting to that point where you want to give up all hope of ever figuring your depression out. If trying out everything in the world hasn’t helped, how about trying some tactical not trying?

Now, tactical not trying is not the same thing as regular not trying where you let the depression run amok and get its misery blah all over everything. The “tactical” part means that you intentionally take some time off to examine your depression, not that you give up entirely. It’s the difference between sitting on your couch because you couldn’t get yourself to do anything else, and sitting on your couch because you just really feel like sitting on the couch.

Sometimes the process of trying to deal with your depression can be so frenetic and intense that you kick up a storm of emotional tumult which obscures your progress. It’s good to take active steps to work on your depression, and it’s also good to give yourself some time to assess the results of your efforts. That way you can determine what’s been successful, what’s been less successul, and what you want to try next.

And it may be the case that you don’t really notice much change. Or that things have actually gotten worse. That’s okay. In fact, that’s really valuable to know. Getting a self-status update is worthwhile even if the results are negative, because it’s still information about your depression.

So take some time to sit back and get some perspective in between your cure searching efforts. It takes time and energy to determine the best ways to manage your depression, so give yourself time to rest as well.