The depressive brain is insidious.
When I’m depressed, I get paranoid. Someone (person A) will
tell me something innocuous, or even positive.
My brain, when depressed, filters the comment through a
nobody-likes-you-everybody-hates-you algorithm.
[Ideally, I recognize the problem, take extra antidepressants,
and wait. Ideally, I do nothing to respond to person A or my own thoughts,
besides hide in bed and cry.]
Of course, if I feel bombarded by negativity (ie, normal
comments > hateful filter > malign attacks), I will reach out for help.
Asking for help is a good thing, of course. Except when my
brain decides that the method of asking for help is to cry and ask why
everybody hates me.
The next part is legitimately fascinating. Person A
(completely blameless, just happened to blunder into my dark thought process)
objects that their meaning was neutral, even positive. In an attempt to help
me, and naturally seeing that I am upset, they may even exaggerate a little bit
in reassuring me.
Right away, my brain hits on that exaggeration as being
false, and so I am justified in tossing away any positive comments and
believing only the worst.
If I continue to explain my martyrdom, person A will
(rightly) start feeling embattled and want to escape my neediness.
Thus the prophecy is fulfilled. Nobody likes me, everybody
hates me.
ps, The most helpful response to this is NOT “I’m sorry, are
you ok, want to talk?”—because I will perceive such responses as false at best.
[Like if you want someone to say “I love you,” it has to be spontaneous; it’s
ruined if you told them to say it.] The best thing to do, until the
antidepressants do their job, is understand that the illness is what it is, and
that I’m here—the real, non-paranoid me—underneath.
