So you know how depression makes you really skilled at seeing all the reasons why people suck and the world is awful? And slowly you strip away your social circle by person by person until you’re isolated and easy pickings for the internal misery shrikes to stab you into bite-sized pieces of pure self-loathing?

Depression is kind of like a friend that tells you all the reasons other people are mean, or critical, or disrespectful so that you are hurt and afraid of everyone except your good pal depression who makes you feel comfortable and safe. And while convincing you that only your buddy understands you, it slowly submerges you in an ice bath of internal criticism until you’re pretty much drowning in your lonely, dark numbness.

And maybe your misery does this as a slightly misguided means of protecting you. Your pal depression wants to isolate you from external threats, but slowly redefines who is “threatening” until it’s pretty much everyone else. Then it’s really more about you reconsidering whether you want to interact less with others and be safer from external criticism, yet torn apart by internal criticism.

Sometimes it also feels safer to be your own torturer. Because again, there’s a comfort in the known, so in this case, your familiar despair. Knowing that you’ve done the worst you can to yourself means there’s not much room for other people to come along and poke or pinch your feelings into pain oblivion. At a certain point, you may realize that your internal self-flagellation has gotten so intensely awful that there is no way anyone outside of yourself could hurt you that badly. After all, since you know yourself the best, you know your flaws, you know your weaknesses, and you know just what to say to yourself to cause the most hurt.

Which makes you wonder, whether it wouldn’t be a good idea to let other people in on your torment after all. At least water boarders get tired eventually, and have to pause between taking turns. Not to mention, if you take the time to parse through what people are saying to you, sometimes it turns out that it’s less critical than your depression led you to believe. That your good pal was actually pulling a lens of shadowy negativity over your eyes, or blacking out all neutral stuff before letting you hear it. Then again, sometimes it turns out people around you are actually treating you like shit. And figuring that out is a bitch… Truth.

So if you want to be all alone in the depths of your freezing cold, personal misery pool, do so. It makes sense to keep yourself safe. If you want to let other people join you in there, do that. And if you want to swim to the surface to look around, go for it. Or if you want to drain some of the water and sit in a misery bathtub, superb. No matter what, when you get all pruney, you can hop out, dry off with a warm fuzzy towel, and then dive back in. Or stay out for a while. That can happen too.