[e_i_pi]

I think this is a "misery loves company" sort of thing. When you're depressed you don't want people to try to help you be happier, and you don't really want to be happier in a deep sense - you want them to be depressed with you so you feel less alone. I think the fair analogy here would be someone in a wheelchair trying to get other people to use wheelchairs so they have someone to share the difficulty with.

[AnIdiotOnTheNet]

That's a pretty bad take, in my opinion. Having spent the majority of my life in one level of depression or another, I don't say negative things and have a generally negative outlook because I want to drag other people down, it's just how everything looks to me[0]. You trying to cheer me up sounds to me like a salesman bullshitting me[1]. I know people don't like this, which is one reason I generally avoid other people when I'm at my worst. Seriously, if I'm avoiding you and you don't want to deal with negativity just leave me alone already. Don't ask about my day and get pissy because I tell you the (very negative) truth, unless you're just exchanging pleasantries and are ok with me straight up lying to you.

[0] There's an argument to be made for depressive realism that would say I'm pointing out how things really are, but I'm not going to make it because there's also thousands of years of philosophy that makes a compelling argument for reality not being so easy to pin down anyway.

[1] It occurs to me that the seemingly increasing rate of depression in a lot of developed nations may be due, like almost all of society's ills, to advertising. Advertising confronts us constantly trying to get us to do things we don't want to do, namely spending money on shit we don't need, and so we develop a defense mechanism. That mechanism takes the form of a contrarian inner voice that argues against the bullshit advertisement telling you you'll be happy if only you buy whatever it is it is selling, but the contrarian voice doesn't have an off switch and recognizes all the little sales pitches of every day life as a threat too.

[joshgrib]

Maybe I'm implying too much intentionality but that's not how I meant it. I'm not trying to say anyone truly _wants_ it to happen - just that it happens one way or another, whether subconsciously or as a second-order effect of something else.

I think we're in agreement that a depressed person generally doesn't want to be cheered up and won't be receptive to it, so you can be positive as much as you want and it won't do much.

I've been on both sides of this, and as the depressed person it seems most helpful to remember that I need to put in the extra effort to try to be positive especially when I don't want to. And as the partner it's helpful to remember that you need to create some separation so you don't get too pulled in and then are unable to help in any way.

[goodpoint]

This narrative is provably false and harmful (and insulting) to people with any mental illness.

Psychologist has been fighting such social stigmas for decades.

[joshgrib]

Do you have a source? This is coming from how I feel when depressed so at least for me it is definitely not false. But that's just anecdotal and I don't have any studies to back it up. Just on intuition I have a hard time believing a depressed person would rather be surrounded by happy people they won't be able to relate to, then they would to have someone to share and talk about the bad feelings they're both experiencing.

I'd also add that (again maybe just for me) it's a way more helpful way to view it. It helps me recognize when I need to just go through the motions of being positive until I can get back to doing it naturally. It usually feels a lot better in the moment to focus on the negatives but somewhere in my head I know that's not going to help me.