Listening to a Friend: Overcoming Depression

“It is hard. I feel nothing but paradoxically everything all at the same time.”
This was the response my friend told me when I ask him about his depression. He was recently
diagnosed with clinical depression.
According to him, he was self-diagnosed. For a very long time, he felt that there was something
wrong with him, a feeling that he cannot fathom. It’s like there is a huge void inside of him
causing him a lot of numbness despite the good things around him. There have been days and
weeks that he cannot sleep in the night, awake in three in the morning with his empty thoughts.
He usually fell asleep when the sun is rising and, even he tries to regain his lack of sleep, he
never felt rested.
It took him months before he concludes that it might be a symptom of depression—and he felt
afraid and alone. There is a huge stigma in the society that having a mental health problem is a
sign of weakness and he did not want to appear weak, especially, as an eldest and the
breadwinner, in front of his family. He tried to resolve his dissonance by telling himself that he is
okay, that this will pass, that he can manage on his own.
Until it felt suffocating. The void inside of him became a huge black hole, slowly sucking all his
energy to still try to sleep, to stand up from his bed, to brush his teeth, to eat his meals, to go to
his job, to answer calls, and even talk to anyone. And then one day, he felt all the weight in his
shoulders, and he broke into tears. It hit him. He told to himself: “This has to stop. I’m tired of
pretending that it will pass. I need to do something.”
Immediately, he called his closest friend and after a one-call away, his friend came. He told me,
“I was a wreck when my best friend came, but he didn’t say anything. He just looked at me and
sit on the floor. He was there for five minutes or so, dead silent. So, I decided to break the silence
by opening what I am feeling for the last couple of months. And he was there the whole time, just
listening.”
The stigma propagated in the society that depression is not real, that it’s an excuse for laziness
kept many people silent, like my friend. He dismissed and invalidated his feelings because
people led him to believe that these are not valid. Consequently, many people felt alone. And
even we tried to ask if they’re okay, we need to understand that they feel afraid most of the time,
to open up just to be shut down.
But what we can do is to wait amid their silence and be there when they want someone to listen.
In overcoming mental health problems like depression, we need to create solid support systems
and safe spaces for them. Make sure that no people with depression will be afraid to talk because
we are all ready to listen.