Our brains are special, fascinating miracles of the natural world, but they are also organs of the body. They are flesh and water and electricity, and the fact that they are the seat of our thoughts does not negate their physicality or susceptibility to sickness. Depression is, without any doubt, an illness and should be thought of as such.
If a virus hijacks the machinery of your cells to manufacture more of itself, you wouldn't talk ownership of the decision to produce viruses, would you? If you have a reaction to poison ivy, you wouldn't measure your self-worth by the itching of your skin, would you? Can you imagine considering chickenpox to be an indictment of your life or evidence that you are lesser than other people?
No.
So how is it that our self-worth and the value of our personhood becomes tied to the painful negative thoughts that depression sufferers neither willfully create nor invite into our lives? Depression is not a mirror held up to our identities, nor a yardstick with which to evaluate the quality of our essential selves.
It's the flu. It's a rash.
It's the emotional equivalent of a persistent headache.
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