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I Am Depressed But My Parents Don’t Believe Me
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This is Amy, and she’s depressed. And until recently, not even her parents believed her.
Since she became a teenager, Amy has always felt a bit…sad. But over the past few years, it has grown into something more. Until recently, she couldn’t understand what it really was. Most of the time, she felt so exhausted and miserable. Even getting out of bed was hard.
She felt like there was no point in anything. She didn’t care about her grades or her friends; it was like nobody cared about her and nothing interested her. She spent her evenings watching TV shows and crying, because the world seemed like such a bad place.
At some point she realized that she was depressed. She didn’t want to believe it at first, because nowadays everyone says they’re depressed. But she couldn’t run away from the truth any more. So she decided it was time to explain it to her parents.
She thought they would understand, or at least try to, but sadly that wasn’t the case. Amy’s dad just said, “kids are so soft nowadays, nobody was depressed back in my day”, while her mom was hardly any more helpful: “it’s all in your head, sweetie, you just have to be more positive”.
Their reactions made her even more miserable, because she couldn’t even talk to her parents. She had friends, but they clearly didn’t want to listen to her any more. She doesn’t blame them, because it was really annoying to listen to her talking about her depression all the time even for her.
She checked out some online communities on depression and people recommended that she go see a psychiatrist. She asked her parents many times, explaining how important it was to her, and eventually, they agreed, although they didn’t want to.
Amy felt hope for the first time in a long while. She went to the doctor with her parents. He was an older man, and he was kind of weird – he didn’t even look at her, and wasn’t really very interested in what she actually had to say. She explained her situation, but he kept asking her the same questions about school and stress, and in the end, he said that she was just tired because of school and needed some rest.
Amy was shocked, but her parents were basically happy with his verdict. To their credit, they really did try to make her feel better. They allowed her to skip a few days of school and have a bit of fun. Only she really didn’t want to have fun. She didn’t want to do anything except stay in her bed and cry.
After she went back to school, things got even worse. Her teachers were angry with her for not doing her homework and not paying attention in class, but she didn’t respond, so they just stopped bothering her entirely. The same thing happened with her classmates – they didn’t pay any attention to her because she always sat alone, staring out the window or reading a book or something.
At this point Amy started to believe that her parents were right, and she just had to be grateful for what she had, so she tried to start talking to people and to study a bit harder. But she just couldn’t find the strength to do it.
One day, her dad got angry with her for being ungrateful and spoiled. He said “you don’t want to talk to us, you don’t want to study! Tell me, what DO you want!?”
She stared at him, because she didn’t know what to say. She didn’t want anything. He kept berating her, and she couldn’t take it any more, and she started crying loudly. She never cried like that; it was always silent weeping in her room, but this time it was like she had a mental breakdown.
Through her tears, she said a lot of stuff like: “I’m worthless, I don’t even feel like a person, I don’t know how to do anything and I’ll never get better!” This was only a small part of all the thoughts that were inside her head, most of them were way worse.
Her parents were shocked, because this was the first time that she had revealed her real feelings to them. After a few days, her mom came into her room and said: “I talked with dad, and we believe you. What can we do for you?” For Amy, this was the first time in a while when she felt like something good happened to her. She asked them if they could try another psychiatrist. They agreed.
Amy’s new psychiatrist was younger than the previous one, and he was very attentive to her and asked a lot of questions – and this time actually listened to her answers. She told him everything she had felt throughout the past few years, and it was so liberating to finally find a person in real life who would listen to her.
Eventually, he did a few tests with her and diagnosed Amy with chronic depression. Her parents couldn’t believe it at first, but she could see how worried they were and it was a nice feeling.
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