Why don't my family and friends understand that Depression isn't something I can overcome on my own?

Depression is really complicated and people who have never experience it do not understand the depth of it. Of course the people around us want us to feel better and sometimes they minimize our pain so that they can feel better. Once people start doing that we push it down and put on a happy face when they are around, which can in turn cause you to isolate. If you are a person that has lived with depression, believe me you have 'tried' just about everything to understand and stop the pain. I believe that some people are prone toward depression. It can be anything from an extended sadness, drug or alcohol induced or mind body spirit disconnect. Whatever the reason, the only way to deal with a family member or friend that is in depression is unconditional love, just listen and don't try to fix anything. Unconditional love goes a long long way. ~ Soul

Family and friends don't understand that depression is something you can get over because they don't believe you actually have it. They think you just want attention.

My depression is built upon my own self hatred and insecurities. Its difficult to help myself when I hate myself. When I’m on my own, my mind consumes me with viscous thoughts and it overwhelms me. I hate it. The feeling of depression makes me feel unwanted, not needed, a waste of space. Every part of my brain will point out the flaws in me, pushing me to further inflict pain upon myself, breaking my mental walls, pushing myself to unrealistic standards. Depression is hard to overcome by yourself, its not something I can push aside or confront directly easily.

For many people, unhappiness is a temporary experience that disappears on its own. Because, they have not experienced clinical depression, they simply assume your situation will heal itself (like it did for them.)

Sometimes family becomes rooted in old fashioned beliefs that predate medical advancement in mental health. These beliefs insist that things like depression are simply a state of mind one puts oneself in and that changing your outlook can effectively rid you of the illness. Of course, we know that isn't true today, though some therapies revolve around restructuring your thought processes to approximate something like that outcome. Depression usually arises from something interfering with our ability to grieve about something in our lives. The sadness which would have been temporary becomes stale and rots in our minds. Instead of coming and going, it sits there and festers and it doesn't go away. It eventually creates physical, measurable changes in the brain. When people hear 'mental illness', they associate that with 'invisible and made up', but we also know that isn't the case. It is a physical illness of the brain.

You must understand that depression has been very recently recongnized as an illness so unfortunately people still need to learn about it. What you can do is give them more information (youc an find tons on the net), propose them to have an appointment with your therapist who will explain them exactly what depression is are have them speak with somebody who recently overcame it.

I am here to help and guide you on this journey until you are able to face it by yourself. No one can help you change your life if you aren't willing to take the time to work on yourself you can't be the best you that you are meant to be. Your family and friends will never understand what you are going through and even some of your friends because everyone sees things differently. I know how lonely u must feel and no one should ever feel that way. If you want I can be there and support you because I understand how it feels like and I want you to learn some coping mechanisms so that you don't have to rely on anything or anyone else

In my experience many people do not take you seriously when you try to tell them that you suffer from depression, this is due to the fact that people often misunderstand what depression is. With the help of people who are qualified in these areas I brought awareness to people around me that depression was an illness that I had did not have control over but that I could get help to get better.

Most people, I've found, don't really understand depression as a disease-- rather, they see it as something like an attitude. It doesn't help that the word also has a non-clinical context as well, which fuels the confusion. It may help to use a diagnostic term (e.g. monopolar depression) when describing your depression to friends and family that aren't all that familiar with mental health.

It's hard to understand things that you're not going through personally. There's a lot of stigma around depression. If in the end you can't make them understand, you may just have to steel yourself against the things they say as best you can when you're not doing too great. Stay strong and do the best you can.