Depression Understood Forums

I have come to a conclusion. The older I get the more depressed I become. I find that the source of my sadness is growing up. The moment I entered high school, things changed. I was smacked in the face with reality. I had responsibilities. If I didn't fulfill them, I would face the cruel reality of not amounting to anything. I was also forced to be out on my own. It made me fear that people will take advantage of me. I learned people are "mean" for no reason, they just like watching you suffer. Whenever I learn something, my expectations are crushed, and life becomes bleak. The further deep my learning experiences have gone the harder I fall. It's like growing is causing me to wilt. I had such high hopes for myself, and now life is cruel, unfair, capitalist, and inescapable. Then I remember it's only going to get worse. I just have to bite the bullet and hope life doesn't become tragically unbearable.

This sounds tragically familiar brit; It's a song that gets stuck in my head quite often. All except the '...mean for no reason'; I think people have their reasons, usually rooted in selfishness; might as well be no reason.

Expectations...hmm, now there's an important word...cruel (check), unfair (check), inescapable (check). Yup, it's all very familiar. I shouldn't be reading this before work; makes me want to crawl back into bed.

But I have a task; I've set it for myself, one that is honorable. I'm off to work so I can come back and work on completing this honorable task. The world is surely crumbling around me. But I have this one task....

Involve yourself in some voluntary work – thinking about helping others can take the focus off self introversion and self obsessiveness and can help with self esteem. When you learn to respect and value yourself you can come to enjoy your own company and eventually others will too.

I think my, I take that back I know my depression comes from when I was younger and has gotten worse as I have gotten older. Up till a couple years ago I was able to fight it on my own and I think I did a pretty good job of it. The last two years have been very difficult for us personally and it's like every time our family turns around it is just not good news. But we still fight the fight and hope for some of the good days.

Hi Brit,
Frustratingly, I finished typing up a lengthy response to you, only to lose it somehow!
I'll go ahead and offer you the gist of what I wrote though.
First off, I'm sorry you're feeling the way you are. I believe that depression, for some, can worsen over time for a variety of reasons. One reason, is that the passage of time diminishes the carefree innocence of childhood.