When Your Brain Is Lying to You

One of the hardest things a depressed person must fight through is their own brain lying to them. When I first had depression, I had never really experienced my brain lying to me. I mean, of course I had. I’d been wrong plenty of times before. But that is an entirely different thing, or at least it felt so to me. The lies depression tells are lies that are on such an enormous scale on untruth and yet they feel so true, so deeply true, that it feels like lying to talk back to them.

When I was depressed, my brain told me some of these things:

Everyone would be better off if you were dead.

You make everyone miserable.

You are a burden to everyone you meet.

Your dearest family members actually hate you.

You will never do anything that matters.

All your dreams have turned to dust.

Nothing you have ever done in the past matters.

There is no point in trying to struggle through this.

Nothing can help you feel better.

These were the big lies. If you know a depressed person, you will have heard some version of these coming from them. You will likely have been startled and dismayed to hear them. You will have tried to tell the depressed person that they are wrong…