Happy people tend to spend more time with other happy people.
That being said, happiness is NOT about ignoring or abandoning friends in need; or friends who’re struggling.
Rather, happiness is not just about feeling good but also doing good.
So if you have friends who’re down and depressed and if you want to do some good and connect better with them, here’s how…
via TED Ideas by Bill Bernat
When I lived with severe depression and social anxiety, I found it extremely difficult to talk to strangers. Yet the one conversation that uplifted me more than any other occurred in the dining hall of the mental health wing of a mountain-town hospital. I met a woman who told me that a few days earlier, she’d driven her Jeep Wrangler to the edge of the Grand Canyon. She sat there, revving the engine and thinking about driving over.
She described what had been going on in her life in the days and months leading up, what her thoughts were at that exact moment, why she wanted to die, and why she didn’t do it. We nodded and half-smiled, and then it was my turn to talk about my journey to our table in that fine dining establishment. I had taken too many sleeping pills. After the doctors treated me, they were like, “Hey, we’d love it if you would be our guest in the psych ward!”
That day, she and I talked shop. She allowed me to be deeply depressed andsimultaneously have a genuine connection to another person. For the first time, I identified as someone living with depression and I felt, oddly, good about it — or rather, like I wasn’t a bad person for having it.
Now, imagine one of the people at that table was a member of your family or a close friend who told you they were really depressed. Would you be comfortable talking to them?
Depression doesn’t diminish a person’s desire to connect with other people, just their ability…
…keep reading the full & original article HERE
No comments:
Post a Comment