So you know how much fun it is to play the pain game? Like when we look at other people and think how much better or worse we have it when compared to them? And when we win we also lose because either we have more pain and that sucks, or we have less pain and therefore less right to feel justified in our misery?

Pain is not really quantifiable, and therefore setting up inequalities seems a rather fruitless enterprise. There’s no way to measure how a negative experience will affect one person versus another, let alone the impact of different types of experiences. Comparing pain just isn’t possible.

But of course, we still do it all the time. We want justification for our unhappiness. We want to feel like we deserve to be unhappy. That we’ve earned it. And so this means looking at other people for cues. If that person is unhappy because of this, then certainly I’m allowed to feel unhappy because of that. Or if I am able to cope with this event, then why can’t that person? Why are they making such a big deal of their pain when I’m doing everything in my power to minimize the damage and keep it out of sight?

And so we become invested in other people being hurt. We can feel good when we know they are more damaged than us. Or feel bad because they are coping with something so much better. We judge and judge and judge some more. Deciding when people have a right to behave in a certain way and when they are “over-reacting” or “milking it” or “being melodramatic” or “just doing it for the attention.” And all the while we ignore that all that bullshit is irrelevant, because that person is in pain so the only thing that matters is how they can find a way to heal.

Really, we should not need to play games with our pain. Because we know how it feels when people are measuring themselves based off of us, and when they are comparing our pain in order to judge us. And it fucking sucks. When people assume that they have had similar experiences that they have “handled better” and so they somehow have the right to tell us how to deal with things. Pain is not something that requires any justification, we can just feel it when we feel it, and handle it however we choose to handle it.

So pain is not a worthwhile investment. We can’t win or lose at the pain game, because it just sucks for everyone. Instead of spending our time trying to be better or worse at suffering, we could spend that effort working in tandem to heal each other’s hurts. And rather than splashing about in our separate misery puddles, we could seek to soak them up together.

So you know how people fuck you over again and again? And how sometimes there’s nothing you can do to stop it, but at least afterwards you can get high off your own anger and resentment? How everyone makes such a big deal about forgiving, but ultimately it can just feel so good to hold on to the hurt?

Damn it’s so sickeningly sweet. Saturating yourself in feelings of being “justified” and bathing in your puddles of pain and misery. It can be delicious. It can be addictive.

And in the end, it can be utterly useless and detrimental. Because holding onto to the pain damages exactly one person: you. Well maybe a couple of other people too if your hurt ends up happening all over everyone around you. It’s not like the person you’re angry at is affected by your pain. Even if you choose to exact some sort of revenge, the pain you cause them is just new pain, not a direct extension of your own. People can hurt other people, but everyone experiences hurt on their own and in their own way. Nothing you do will ever cause a person to “feel your pain” because it’s only yours.

That being said, hurting other people can have an impact on your own experience of your pain. Sometimes it makes it worse because you may feel guilty or ashamed, and sometimes it relieves it because you may get a sort of release from victimizing others.  It’s worth knowing that while strategies that cause further pain to others may allow for that short term release of your pain, they don’t resolve it, so the pain will just keep returning. Ultimately, everyone finds their own strategies for managing pain. The question is whether or not you will choose to seek out strategies that help you to deal with the hurt and truly move on. Because it is a choice to heal, and while not everyone chooses in their best interests, you can.

That is where the whole forgiveness thing comes in. Because at its heart, forgiving isn’t forgetting about what people do, or accepting what they do, or even understanding what they do. Forgiving is about finding ways to release your pain. It is when you look at another person, and realize that while you were not responsible for the hurt they caused, you get to choose whether or not you want to try to release it without causing any further harm to yourself or others. Forgiving is recognizing that while other people are responsible for the damage, you are still the one who has to deal with the mess, so you might as well clean it up in addition to whatever else you decide to do. Because you can forgive and still choose to dislike someone, or want to hurt someone, or to not understand someone, or to not accept someone.

So forgiveness is for your own sake. It’s for you to be able to heal, and so fuck whatever caused the pain in the first place. It doesn’t mean there are no scars. It doesn’t mean that you let go of everything and just forget about what happened. It does mean you get to find your own way of moving forward.

So you know how human beings are disgusting, cruel creatures? How they murder, rape, pillage, lie, cheat, steal, and just look really ugly when eating stuff? And no matter how much you try to ignore that you too are human, it’s just an inescapable fact?

Don’t worry, it’s not your fault. It’s “God’s.” “God” is in quotation marks because it’s too much of a hassle to try and discuss all religion and philosophy in a six paragraph essay. In this case, “God” is whatever the fuck is responsible for humans being what humans are.

You’re not particularly flawed if you’re disgusting and cruel. You’re human. And when you see those characteristics in yourself and others, and feel contempt for all humanity, you’re right on the money. Because human beings do a lot of fucked up shit. Since presumably you are a human, you are capable of doing a lot of fucked up shit too, and in fact, you have probably done plenty of asshole things worth being more than slightly ashamed of. Maybe even worth some guilt.

When people try and tell you about all the good shit that human beings do, they’re completely missing the point. When they focus on charity and love and selfless acts and all that rainbow bullshit, they don’t seem to get that all does nothing to erase pain and hurt and conflict.

Then again, when you focus on the pain and hurt and conflict, you don’t seem to get that all that does nothing to erase the charity and love and selfless acts and all that rainbow bullshit. Nothing can wipe out the flaws of human kind. There’s a cruelty button in everyone that’s just waiting to be pushed. Still, there’s also a kindness button. Or at least an apathy button. And an anger button. An amused button. A remorse button. A jealousy button. These buttons may never be pushed, or may be pushed all at once. The point is that while humans are sick little fucks, they are more than just sick little fucks.

So make sure to put all the blame on “God” because that’s why humans are the way they are, and why they have so many god damned buttons. Though on the flip side, “God” deserves the credit too. As humans, we don’t get to change the fact that we were born with some pretty disgusting capabilities. However, we do get to choose which buttons we push in ourselves, and in others. If you find that your cruelty is outweighing your apathy, you could care less. Or if you know how to make someone admire you as opposed to being jealous, you could purposely act to affect that outcome. What kind of human you want to be is up to you.

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.

So you know how the future is really fucking terrifying? And lots of bad stuff could be waiting around the corner? And you need to do a hundred billion things to prepare for it, but even then everything awful will happen?

The future doesn’t exist. When you prepare for it, you’re not doing it for the future, you’re doing it to make your present self feel better. Which, is absolutely fine, and in fact, often a smart idea.

It’s good to do your best to prepare for negative things. For one, you get to feel like you have complete control over your life, and that’s a nice feeling. The thing is: you don’t. All your best made plans to build castle moats could go to waste if a massive comet strikes the earth. Or the flood insurance you bought could be made useless if your house is taken down by a giant lava monster.

Still, it’s good to prepare anyway. Because that way you never have to feel like you should have done something, or that you were dumb for not preparing. No need for regrets. And after all, there are always things that you can prepare for in some capacity. If you’re afraid of earthquakes, come up with an evacuation plan. If you’re afraid of spiders, learn about their likes and dislikes in order to repel them. While you cannot have complete control over everything in your life, you can choose to take actions that allow you to be well-prepared regardless. And you can feel somewhat more assured in knowing that you’ve got a plan.

You can’t fix the future. You can’t do anything to it, because it doesn’t exist. But you can prepare your present self for anything that you fear you might face. If you’re worried about diabetes, you can change your diet. If you’re worried about being self-sufficient in your old age, you can save money or invest in other people. Just because you can’t control everything, or prepare for every future situation, that doesn’t mean that you can’t do your best to control what you can, and prepare for what you can.

So that imagined future is never going to happen. Still, as the present continues to flow onward, you can do your best to steer your life boat, and prepare it for any storms that you see approaching on the horizon.

So you know how it’s really cool when people are decisive? Like, when they make up their mind, do something, and then never look back? Meanwhile, you find that the choice between whole grain or white bread is overwhelming?

Decision making is hard when you’re trying to make thirty of them at once, as quickly as possible, and hating on yourself all the while. When you’re depressed, prioritizing becomes incredibly challenging because everything is weighing on you at the same time.

With decisions the goal is: take them one at a time, and take your time with each one. Yes, if it’s a matter of immediate survival, like escaping a burning building, take that one first, and take about 5 seconds. However, if you’ve got a bit more time on your hands, then think through the matter at hand, debate the pros and cons, and come to a reasoned conclusion. Then write it fucking down so you don’t forget that reasoning.

Because coming to the conclusion is only half the battle. The real fight starts right after the decision is made, when the self-doubt and what-ifs take hold. “What if that was the wrong choice? Why did I even do that in the first place? This other choice is a million times better, I should go do that. Man, I chose the wrong thing again, maybe I can still change it…” And so on and so forth.

The only thing different between a person who constantly changes their mind, and one who sticks with their original conviction, is whether a person does what they decided on. If you want to be decisive, then follow up on your decisions. Now, that requires dealing with the self-doubt, which can easily undermine all of your certainty. And then there’s that fear of regret, that you’ll make the wrong choice and never be able to fix it. If you want to avoid regret, you need to know why you’re making a decision, that way even if you doubt yourself in the future, you can trace back the logic.

So you can take your time coming up with that decision. And you can pay attention to the process of how you came to it. That way you can spend less time wondering why you made it later on. Have conviction before and you’ll have it after. Writing shit down doesn’t hurt either.