“You’re just looking for attention.” Thank you.

“Stop being so sad all the time!” Poof! My depression, anxiety, and anything wrong is suddenly better. Thank you, oh great and mighty wizard. You have cured me.

I wish it was that easy to get rid of depression, but even if you think you’re helping by saying those things, you’re not. You’re making it worse. Some people do say those things for attention. But that’s just a couple of people. That doesn’t mean everyone else is faking it for attention.

Are we really taking mental illness as serious as it is, or are we just pushing it off to the side? Clearly our school does’t take this into consideration, otherwise last year, we wouldn’t have air horns being blown in our ears.

I used to be a life guard, and in our training, they drilled it into our minds that air horns meant danger. Every day, I would jump and become very aware of where the danger is, and I found out the only danger was the person blowing the horn.

On another note, every where on social media, and people saying, “Oh. My. God. I’m so bipolar. LOL!” When they haven’t even shown the crippling signs of bipolar.  Or something bad happened, “I’m so depressed, by boyfriend just broke up with me!” You can be sad, but stop pretending to show signs of depression when there is nothing wrong with you. It’s offensive to people who have it, and people who have had it, because it gives people who don’t have it, the nerve to say it’s not real.

A brain with depression showed less activity than a healthy one. A depressed brain has less activity in the frontal lobe, and the right side of the brain, which controls your creativity, and emotions. A depressed  brain literally shuts part of itself down, to numb emotions. (Mayo Foundation). So don’t tell me what I have and struggled with isn’t real. It doesn’t help any, and it’s rude.

If you want to learn how you can help me, educate yourself.

If you see someone having a panic attack, don’t tell them to “calm down”.

Don’t pretend to know everything about an illness, and don’t pretend an illness doesn’t exist when it has taken so many lives, and hurt so many families. You wouldn’t say Cancer doesn’t exist so don’t say depression doesn’t.