[Wilduck]

I downvoted you and wanted to tell you why.

In this story someone just shared an experience of being in deep pain, psychologically and physically. While you may not intend to be mean, your response boils down to "you didn't feel enough pain to qualify for burnout." Even if you didn't intend it, this response has an aspect of shaming the author.

I think that it's really important for people to be able to talk about mental health constructively. Specifically, it's important to de-stigmatize the fact that people are susceptible to burnout / anxiety / depression / etc. These aren't necessarily conditions that "can be fixed with a lazy holiday, safe in the knowledge that all those Slack shares are vesting." Instead, they're often conditions that require tailored effort and outside help.

For someone who's going through a mental health issue, it's often really hard to go through the steps needed to improve the situation for themselves. Having others around them understand that it's a struggle, and not something they can "snap out of" is really important.

Again, I doubt you were intending to be belittling here, but I want to point out how important empathy is in this situation.

[forgottenpass]

>it's often really hard to go through the steps needed to improve the situation for themselves. Having others around them understand that it's a struggle, and not something they can "snap out of" is really important.

Having gone through some dark periods of my life, I'd much rather take "snap out of it" advice over the unintentionally patronizing "support". Both are the words of well-intentioned people unable to relate, but one of them mistakenly believes they've overcoming their inability to relate.

[yters]

I suffered from depression a lot while a teenager and early twenties, and I think lack of empathy from others has helped me snap out of it. Depression, at least for me, can be a form of feeling sorry for myself, and when others feel sorry for me that compounds the problem.