I teach social psychology to our homeschool group on a high school level. Last week we discussed social norms, and I had given the class a homework assignment: Pick a social norm, and violate it for a period of time. A day, a week, whatever, and note people's reaction. Examples of social norms are holding the door for someone who is following close behind you, saying "excuse me" when you burp, dressing in baggy clothes if you are overweight, or not encroaching on someone's personal space. These are accepted concepts that most people don't have an explanation as to why we do them, other than "It's polite." or "It's how I was raised." These responses are erroneous, because who determines what is polite? Why were you raised that way? In Italy, a burp is considered a compliment after a nice meal, and if you visit a large city on a busy day, you'll hardly see anyone bothering to hold the door for people. Social norms are not rules, they are understood ways of behaving that can greatly vary from place to place.
I asked my students about the norms they chose to violate the previous week, and about their results and observations. One student (a female) decided she would "not sit like a lady". Wearing pants, of course, she made a point all week long to sit with her legs apart. She said she got weird looks from people, and eyes directed at her crotch. Another student (a Latina) made a point to walk around with her phone to her ear and speak loudly in Spanish. She said people looked at her funny, and one person even approached her and asked her where she was from. (How is that relevant?) Another student wore formal attire all day long and visited McDonald's, the bowling alley, Walmart, and so on. He got odd looks and whispers.
Since I'm the teacher, I didn't think it was fair for my students to violate a norm and me not violate one also. So for the previous week, anytime someone asked me "How are you?" or "How's it going?", rather than give the expected answer, such as "Fine." or "Good.", I literally told them how it was going. I chose something that was happening to me that day, (good or bad) and proceeded to tell them all about it. As you can imagine, this really threw a lot of people. They wanted (or expected) me to give a one-word answer that would respond to the question politely. It made a couple of people very uncomfortable, and you could see the look in their eyes that said "Wow. Yeah. See, I didn't really want to know about your day, I just said it to be polite."
Now we all have good days and bad days, and most of us would agree that we usually just say "Fine." on bad days just as easily as on good days. We do this because we don't want to burden others with our troubles, or we don't want to discuss our problems with this particular person, or we don't want to admit life stinks today. We feel like expressing our problems is complaining, being ungrateful for our blessings, or just plain over-sharing.
People without depression know what it's like to have bad days. Days when nothing is going right, or days when you just feel a little "blue". You can usually count on there being activities and people you engage with that will pull you out of it, though. On days you feel "blah", watching a specific movie, seeing a specific friend, or going to a specific place would fix it, although you may not be able to do those things. You take comfort in "Gah, I feel so down today. I need some Starbucks!" or "This week has been horrible. I need to hang out with my best friend for a recharge." (Or maybe start planning your next vacation, or dreaming of Disney.)
But what if your down moments come without warning? What if you woke up feeling amazing, and on the drive to your first stop you suddenly felt like the world was crashing down? What if the place you looked forward to visiting all week long (because you can always count on it to make you feel on top of the world) became dark and gloomy the moment you walked in? The environment hasn't changed of course; you have. Everyone else is going about their time as they always have, making polite conversation and laughing. Meanwhile you want desperately to join in, but you feel so lonely and scared, and have no idea why. So you sit in a corner and play on your phone. People see you over there, of course, but they see your posture, and your mood, and think "They look like they need space." and so they give it to you. Your heart cries out "Come talk to me. Please!" but your brain and body say "I just want to crawl in a hole and hide for a week."
That happened to me a couple of weeks ago. The place I was at at that moment was a place I look forward to all year long, and instead, I found myself sitting in a corner, screaming internally that here I am in one of my favorite places, and I'm wasting this precious time hiding in this dark place. I wanted so badly to go over and interact, because this was a moment I knew would be gone in just a few short hours, but my body was frozen in this place of despair. What made it even more difficult, is that this was a place I already felt like the world saw me as an outsider in. "What is that guy doing there? This is a place for moms, not dads."
My point in this blog post is that people with depression are violating a social norm every day. We are consciously aware that we are violating it, and also that there is seemingly nothing we can do about it. We know that when we go to this place, or do this activity we should be happy. In fact, we may have looked forward to it all day (or all week, or all year) and now we are here and just want to hide in a hole. We have no idea why, and we just want it to be fixed. We want to run over and join in and feel the same joy we have felt in the past, but we remain rooted to the spot we stand in, and feel the darkness encircle us like a cloak of night.
I want to come up with some sort of creative little way to write the conclusion of this post, because there is already a part of me that says "Why are you writing this? Nobody wants to hear it. You're bringing the mood down. Instead of saying "Fine", you are oversharing, and making people sad. That's not what social media is for. If you post this, people will hide you from their feed, because they want pictures of kittens and puppies, not to read about your problems."
And I'm right on that. If I post a photo of a puppy, it'll get many more likes than this post will. Because who doesn't love a puppy? It takes no effort to love the photo of a puppy. It takes one click. Reading a blog post takes time, and who has that? I remember a friend telling me once "I saw your blog post. I didn't read it, though. Too long." and I thought "It took me about 3 minutes to read it when I double-checked it. I bet you spent at least three minutes looking at memes after you scrolled past it."
What I want you to take away from this blog post is this: A lot of people on Facebook (and social media) are dealing with clinical depression. Most of them won't actively discuss it, for the reasons I've discussed here. What they will do, is post a picture of a puppy.
Remember that as you scroll.
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