When Depression Makes You Feel Like Everybody Hates You

It’s a crowed room, people all around — laughing and smiling. And then there’s me. In the middle of everything, but still hopelessly lonely. It took me so long to realize this feeling isn’t “normal.” Being so afraid that everybody hates you isn’t “normal.” In a desperate attempt to act “normal,” I start up a conversation. But when you go int a conversation already thinking the person you are talking to hates you, it doesn’t go very well.

Once again, I am sitting in the middle of a crowded room, but feeling like I am all by myself. My phone is my cloak of social invisibility. When my phone is out, it looks like I am doing something important and I won’t look like such an outcast.

It hurts. Seeing people you want to be friends with all around you and being told by your own mind that you are a terrible person and they all hate you. Before being diagnosed with depression, it seemed like truth. Sometimes it still does.

What I didn’t know was that insecurity and loneliness were all a product of bigger monster in my life. A monster that is invisible but yet so real. Depression.

So what do you do? How do you learn to be the “you” that you don’t even want to be?

If I’m being completely honest, I have no clue. All I know is I was diagnosed a year ago and I still feel like everyone around me hates me.

One comfort however, is just because you think it, doesn’t make it true.

I believe the only way to fix loneliness comes from myself. So here’s my challenge, and hopefully yours too: learn to love yourself. If you listen to depression, you may continue to feel alone. Depression isolates you. It makes you feel less than. In my case, depression made me believe everyone hates me. I don’t know if it’s true, but my goal is to control my mental illness and not let it control me. I’m tired of feeling alone in crowed rooms. I’m even more sick of going home crying about things I don’t even know for sure are true.

The question is no longer what’s wrong with me. Now it’s: Will I let my depression control me, or will I control it?It’s my mind, it’s my choice.

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Thinkstock photo via ssSplajn.