Personify Your Depression: If my depression were a person... [fill in the blank]
Personify Your Depression: I learned about this coping technique today. Imagine that your depression is a person separate from you. The idea is that personifying our depression helps remind us that depression doesn't define who we are ourselves, and that invasive self-critical thoughts we experience often come from our depression and not our healthy minds. Some things to think about are: what kind of person would it be, what kind of hobbies would it have, what would it look like, what would its name be?
So, if your depression were a person, what kind of person would it be?
If my depression were a person, she'd be a master. Sometimes, she'd leave me to my own thing and rarely intervene. And in other moments, she'd be looming over my back, examining every move I make, casting me into shadowy pool of darkness. She's always there, no matter the circumstance... just less present at times. She's the reason why I'd plunge myself into work and physical exhaustion just to stop feeling for a bit. She's the reason why I want to feel pain, the reason why I can't feel much happiness. She's like a net preventing the light from coming in, and only letting the dark come in. And the worst thing is no matter what I try to do to escape, she's always there in the end.
if my depression were a person it would be an overbearing grandmother, always lingering, always commenting, always knows exactly which wounds are the most sensitive.
if my depression were a person it would be someone that constantly reminds me that I am trapped, that I can't leave them. Almost like an abusive partner, who blames me for everything yet seems to cause all of my problems.
Depression for me is...shadow. Watching me from the distance in those "good" days but on those bad ones...
It s on my chest when I want to breathe, it s next to me, squeezing my throat when I want to shout for help. It's breathing behind me, walking behind me.
I just want to turn around and...hug it. To my depression, it s not your fault, I created you, you are all the thing I hate about myself, all the thing I fear about myself. I m sorry I made you but it s time to go apart.
it would be stabbing me
if my depression was a person, she
If my depression were a person she'd cry a lot, have an inferiority complex and wear funky glasses and pants with suspenders.
if my depression were a person it would be an absolutely beautiful girl whom i'd fall in love with. she would give me everything only to take it all away. she'd tell me all the reasons i'm so hard to love. she'd make me feel worthless.
If my depression were a person, she would be very dark and snakelike, coiling around me until I can't breathe and hissing lies in my ears.
If my depression were a person, she'd be a little all over the place. Somedays she would be distant and let me breathe without her clinging down onto me. Somedays she would be hostile and have her hand tight on my wrist, hip-to-hip, telling me everything I don't want to hear. Somedays she would be mopey and needy and force me to stay in bed with her - to sleep through my classes and ignore all my texts.