A Plea to the FFXIV OF Community

[MageBlack]

Why would someone choose to be depressed or anxious?

I know I never chose it and had no clue where it came from. I don't think you truly understand what its like to have thoughts shouting in your head that you know are not your own telling you terrible things. There are different kinds of "depression" situational and chemical. One you can think your way out of, the other you always live with and end up like Robin Williams, Anthony Bourdain, and many many others.

I'm glad that worked for you but dont dismiss or discount someone elses experiences based on your own life. I know you dont care but empathy is a useful tool, more people need to use it. What you are doing is like saying since you just ate a nice big meal at White Spot then look at people in Ethiopia and blame them for being hungry cause they just didnt work hard enough. It is a despicable way to look at the world.

(Sorry for the late edit, remembered this excellent explanation of depression and had to hunt for it)

"You don’t know why, but now everything you eat tastes like mashed potatoes and nothing you eat is satisfying," it reads. "You keep eating because you must eat to live, but the effort that it takes to prepare food is taxing and there is no pay off. You just know it will taste like mashed potatoes. You just know you will still be hungry. So you stop bothering with seasonings."

"You still feel hungry and you’re sick of the taste and you don’t know if you will ever enjoy food again and you don’t know why this is happening," the post continues. "If someone comes up to you in this scenario and says, 'Well have you tried spicing your food? Using different ingredients? Eating foods you used to love?' It isn’t necessarily helpful because the reason you stopped doing all that in the first place is that everything…tasted…like mashed…potatoes."

[Namallama]

Also I apologize to Kaiva for this shitshow of a thread. I don't blame you for ditching the forums for a while.

[Rogatum]

As someone that suffers from depression, anxiety, and a litany of other issues. For those that do not have to deal with them I do understand why they would feel it is a first world problem, or a selfish one so to speak.

[TouchandFeel]

I feel that the main hindrance when discussing or trying to understand emotional and mental health are that people often view the subject with blinders on, focusing only on their limited view which is shaped by their experience in the matter or more often their inexperience.

Emotional and mental health are things that overall we know relatively little about and due to societal stigma are often misunderstood or misrepresented.
On top of that the sheer variance in factors that effect emotional and mental health are as numerous as all the differing situations of all the different people in the world, all of which will likely require different solutions to tackle the different problems.

Sometimes the problems are clinical and based on biological issues that may require medication. Sometimes the problems are "situational" in that they are a result of the circumstances that a person is being effected by, including but not limited to environment, personal relationships and upbringing; and may require some change in the persons life to alter their circumstances. It's also not uncommon for there to be a combination of both, with a complex interplay occurring between the two.

With how varied and complex the problems, their causes and their symptoms can be, we should avoid making hard-line determinations on what "is" and "isn't" regarding mental and emotional health.

We shouldn't say that "people who are depressed or have anxiety are weak". It's not that simple.
We shouldn't say that "people who are depressed or have anxiety can't do anything about it" and that it's "out of their control". It's not that simple.
Above all though, we should avoid feeling that there is something inherently wrong with feelings of depression, anxiety or any of the multitude of other potential emotional or mental issues that we may suffer from. It's not that simple.

We all suffer from mental and emotional issues to differing degrees and in differing ways and we all try to cope in different ways.
While our own personal pain is as unique as the individuals we all are, in a strange way it is this shared commonality of the universality of pain and suffering that provides a path to bringing us all closer together. Through the knowledge of your own pain and what such pain feels like, combined with the knowledge that others feel pain too, it hopefully can grow a sense of compassion and understanding between people.

Additionally, since we all share in feeling suffering and pain, we should be more willing and open to the sharing of our experiences of suffering and pain with each other instead of this odd societal proclivity of burying our heads in the sand. We as living, thinking and feeling beings are made up of joy and suffering, and to ignore such a large part of our own make up is folly. Denial is rarely, if ever, a good solution; whether it is others we are denying or ourselves.

In the end, or at least for now, the best we can do is to seek understanding. Understanding of our own pain which may provide insight into the pain of others and understanding of other's pain which may provide insight into our own pain. The best ways to gain understanding of our own and other's pain is through self-reflection and communication. Through understanding we can gain compassion, compassion for others and compassion for ourselves. Through compassion we build acceptance and if we can accept not only other people but ourselves as well with all the beautiful and ugly bits we are made of, the pain that we will all inevitably suffer may just become more bearable.

[Rogatum]

And I'm sure that I can speak for everyone else posting in this topic, the people who have actually suffered from mental depression and anxiety on numerous levels and even the ones who have not, but can understand it far better than you seem to be doing....to just take your own advice and back out of this argument before you look even more foolish and can still retain some semblance of dignity.

You are the prime example of why mental depression and anxiety issues aren't taken as seriously as they should because more people are inclined towards listening to the nonsensical things coming out of your mouth than the actual people suffering from the issues or the family members suffering from watching their loved ones go through with such a fickle problem that never has a clear, 100% satisfactory, and perfect solution.

I suffer from depression and anxiety issues bashing Crystal is not going to help them understand. As with everything lack of experience leads to lack of understanding, this is one of those topics that trying to educate someone will often fall on deaf ears since without experiencing them they are difficult issues to understand. So Crystal, I get your view point, I do not agree with it, but I do understand why you feel the way you do.

[Elamys]

I have always wondered why people think the brain cannot get sick or "malfunction" when literally every other part of the body can.

I also wonder what sort of benefit I'd have to gain from "choosing" to have depression or anxiety. Yeah, it's really fun spacing out and staring at the wall for four hours.

[Sigma-Astra]

I suffer from depression and anxiety issues bashing Crystal is not going to help them understand. As with everything lack of experience leads to lack of understanding, this is one of those topics that trying to educate someone will often fall on deaf ears since without experiencing them they are difficult issues to understand. So Crystal, I get your view point, I do not agree with it, but I do understand why you feel the way you do.

I do so as well and I live with three people that have these problems also and despite my mental problems, I am literally holding up two other people sometimes with as much support as I can muster by myself despite my own feelings. There's bashing someone with angry responses and then there's telling them to stop as calmly as possible with a reserved tone, as I was doing, because despite all of the other explanations given to them by other posters, they refuse to even listen or acknowledge it. They made it clear that they are beyond the point of wanting or trying to understand anything else that's not their own viewpoint.

I don't consider telling someone to simply just stop speaking ignorantly about something they are sorely lacking the understanding as bashing. There was no name-calling, no threats, no extremely detrimental personal insults being used, but lo and behold, they saw fit to make blanket and generalized statements, as well as assumptions against individuals suffering that they are either weak, faking it, a millennial (somehow this makes a difference or matters, I have no idea as to why), etc.

They are free to have those viewpoints, but they come with social consequences and they've already shown extreme disrespect towards other people's viewpoints in trying to help them understand why they're seen as wrong or not accurate. It's clear that they never wanted to understand in the first place and were just looking to spout vitriol because they can, and because they will since it's the internet. This person reeks of trolling as no one who has suffered from depression would call or tell another who is inflicted with that kind of mental anguish that they're being "weak". If someone was on the verge of a mental breakdown or close towards taking their own life, that would be the only push that they'd need to cement the deed being done in some cases.

Again, people who harbor Crystal's viewpoints are the reason why a lot of others don't see or take mental issues as a big deal, let alone realize that the impact and weight of their own words on other people suffering could have negative implications and lead towards pressuring that person down a much darker road than where they were at beforehand.

[Rogatum]

You are right it is a public space so they are viewpoint is not free from consequence, but in my eyes telling someone to stop posting in a public space because you do not agree with their view is the worst form of bashing in my eyes. No matter how hard you try to explain the situation, if one does not experience they have no context to understand the issue one should not blame them. I for one am jealous that they have never had to experience such issues or if they did face them they had the ability to muscle through them with seer willpower. I get it I do not agree with what they are saying, and it does bother me that people out their do think this is a choice I made, but getting upset with them does very little to help our case, since if they do believe what they are saying, by telling them to stop posting will only support their claims or they will feel we are creating an echo chamber. With time they may understand, but if we push them away they will never understand. Hope that makes sense.

Long story short my parents harbor Crystal's view to a tee, and because of that I did not get the help I needed until I went off to college after I sought it myself. They will never understand if we simply push them back because they are woefully ignorant to the issues. That is just my view on the matter.

[Sigma-Astra]

You are right it is a public space so they are viewpoint is not free from consequence, but in my eyes telling someone to stop posting in a public space because you do not agree with their view is the worst form of bashing in my eyes. No matter how hard you try to explain the situation, if one does not experience they have no context to understand the issue one should not blame them. I for one am jealous that they have never had to experience such issues or if they did face them they had the ability to muscle through them with seer willpower. I get it I do not agree with what they are saying, and it does bother me that people out their do think this is a choice I made, but getting upset with them does very little to help our case, since if they do believe what they are saying, by telling them to stop posting will only support their claims or they will feel we are creating an echo chamber. With time they may understand, but if we push them away they will never understand. Hope that makes sense.

I'm telling them to stop, not so much that I don't outright agree with their posts, and I trust me I don't, but mostly because I feel that if we start to tolerate and accept that sort of behavior from the get-go then we're allowing the stigma to continue ourselves. I understand where you're coming from, I truly do though and it does make sense. If they were willing to see from other points of views, even after some people have gone above and beyond in trying to help them understand, it would be different. But, they don't seem receptive towards change and there's no guarantee that time will help make all that was once unclear suddenly clear either. People only change their own views when they want to themselves naturally and if someone doesn't want to change, then there's not much either you or me can do about it in the long run except hope as you've said.

After saying that they too themselves had suffered from mental depression and that if those still suffering from it need to "get over it" as they have done because if they can do it then so can others, then it really makes one cant their head towards the "...you can't be serious..." or "....did you really actually have depression or did you just have a bad day..." kinds of thoughts. It really makes you wonder how they can say those things towards others without so much as an empathic thought just like that without really taking into consideration the gravity of their own statements.

But, their comments seem more harmful than helpful, so while we shouldn't create an echo chamber either...I don't think we should allow that sort of thing to continue either if it can be helped and say that it's definitely not okay and while we understand, we don't have to tolerate said behavior.

Our viewpoints are generally close towards the same, but our methods are just different not that there's anything wrong or terrible about it. We take different routes with dealing about the same situation, yet can respect each other all the same.

And while normally, I'm a very tolerant person of differing opinions and would normally never tell someone to simply "just stop" speaking, but they seem to just be digging themselves a bigger hole each and every time in doing so.

[Penthea]

Well it looks like the mods deleted the majority of the posts relating to the validity of depression/anxiety and the heated debate over that.

We should probably take this as a sign and let this back and forth in the thread rest.