The Internet is an enormous universe with a plethora of information, facts, fiction, opinions, people and what not. It has always been said that there are clearly two sides of the internet, the good and the bad one. But then there’s this one cringy and insensitive side of the internet which makes most people suffer. No, we are not talking about the comment boxes of social media websites. It’s the place where people have started to romanticize mental struggles.
Almost every day there must be at least one meme, picture or blog on your feed where someone is talking about depression, anxiety or a mental struggle, captioned as ‘so damn relatable’. Everyone can now relate to depression and anxiety. They are the best of friends, as the memes say.
There’s a whole crowd of people who are suffering from ‘existential crisis’ and in order to find the purpose of their lives they are now anxious and depressed. There are people who easily hurt other people and say mean things just because they are depressed. The idea of absurdism also adds up to the mean behavior. The internet savvy youth forgot their own individuality while trying to go with the flow and it’s sad to acknowledge that depression is now a trend!
Greyscale pictures of women/men gazing into infinity, with a nonsensical philosophical quote like “I want to die a lovely death” or a girl smoking cigarettes with a caption saying, “I want to die as much as I want to live”, is not only weird but also normalizes self-harm.
The Internet is full of thousands of articles with the distorted vision of what it actually means to be depressed. People might also term it as something ‘wonderfully tragic’ or ‘beautifully sad’ without even realizing that it makes absolutely no sense.
It is an ugly feeling, and it’s not something you could wish upon anyone, not even yourself.
What is even more tragic is that some of these people might not even have depression. Maybe some of them do have it but then going the poetic way about it is definitely not how it works. They are so insensitive and full of self that they won’t even realize that this kind of behavior could refrain the people, who are actually suffering terribly, from speaking out loud.
The real sufferers choose to keep quiet and sadly they struggle all alone instead of involving the whole social media. One thing people need to understand is that depression could be anything but insensitive. Here’s why people who romanticize mental struggles need to shut up about it-
It’s offensive to people who actually have depression.
Romanticizing mental issues is definitely nothing about making fun of it but it doesn’t help either. ‘I know what you’re going through’ or ‘I can feel you’ is the last thing you should tell people with mental issues. There’s a difference between being generally unhappy and having depression or anxiety.
When life gives you lemons, this isn’t the way to make lemonade
Romanticizing mental struggles is a really twisted way to go about ‘making most of the situation’. Trying to make it sound ‘cool’ is actually a very dark way because the ‘cool’ could inspire countless others to join in bandwagon that is actually depression.
Romanticizing struggles could actually be conditioning you into it
Draping oneself in a constant state of sadness may actually be subconsciously a push into depression. But depression or ‘anxiety’ isn’t about feeling sad all the time or poetically ‘suffering’. It is much more than that and honestly, if someone really finds it ‘so relatable’, they should read and research more to learn how uncomfortable that state is.
It’s not a substitute for depth
People need to understand that depression is not a substitute for having a personality. Depression does not equate to depth and breadth of understanding, and especially not intelligence. The artists, scientists, and people of any background who have succeeded in their respective fields did not achieve it as a result of depression. There is no direct connection between depression and art.
People need to get through their own or their loved one’s struggles in the correct way which is, by seeking medical health. Taking anti-depressants and clinical treatment for mental illness is still a taboo. It’s more important to normalize the treatment than normalizing the disease and sufferings. It’s completely okay to seek medical help.
You don’t need depression to be special. People are special with or without sufferings and it’s important to have empathy and sensitivity. It’s not just art and depth that can make the world a better place, it’s also humanity and love.