Zen Pencil Comics: 89. STEPHEN FRY: Ultimate self-help book
Honestly, if I had written that book I would have written the same thing. It really is a matter of just stopping the self hate. It’s not easy, I know. Believe me, I know more than I would like to. I’ve dealt with depression since 5th grade and have been in and out of therapy, on and off various medications and such for years and years. For a good chunk of my childhood and teen years I was depressed and full of self pity. Sometime during college I failed a semester because I was having so many issues with depression.
I woke up and really looked at my life. I saw that all I was doing was laying around feeling sorry for myself. I would look at my life and art and hate it and I would drag all my friends into my little spiral of self loathing. I sort of had a moment where I was just like what the hell am I doing? I’m wasting so much time and so much of my life just sitting around feeling sorry for myself. So I started working towards putting an end to that frame of mind.
It was really hard and I did have to cut a few people and other influences from my life that were making me so negative. And to this day I still have troubles here and there (we’re only human), but for the most part I conquered it.
When I see people I know that do nothing but lay around and feel sorry for themselves, I try to be supportive but I also try to be realistic. If someone’s depressed you should totally be there for them. But if they’re stuck in a cycle of hating themselves and what they do, do your best to put a stop to it. Obviously you can’t just make someone go “welp, time to feel better about myself”, as ultimately that person has to have the courage to tackle the problem. But don’t be an enabler. Help them get out of the house or be productive because that’s far better than just allowing them to lay around being depressed. Just sitting around them being all “of course you don’t suck, of course you’re great” is more harmful than helpful.
We are what we spend our time with. And if we spend our time thinking about how life sucks, our life is just going to suck.