As an introvert who’s been diagnosed with depression, anxiety, ADD, etc. throughout her life, I often spend a lot of time to myself, lost in my own mind.
It’s always been hard to try and organize my thoughts, because they literally come to me as unfinished pieces.
A sentence that breaks off into a different question. An answer that’s interrupted by the line in an incredibly annoying song that repeats itself over and over.
Sometimes I literally struggle to maintain a straightforward sentence in my mind. I dare say that it’s mentally exhausting.
Anyway. I’ve been thinking about how depressed/introverted people have a hard time reaching out to people.
Lord knows I have a terrible problem with it. And that’s when I started wondering …
Basically, sometimes when one gets depressed and isolates themselves from friends and family, those loved ones probably assume that the person doesn’t want to be bothered. Just wants to be alone.
Maybe they even think that the isolated person just doesn’t like them anymore.
Maybe they stop talking for a few days. A few weeks. Years …
Meanwhile, that depressed person could possibly be desperate for human connection, but they don’t know how to ask for it. So they expect others to “check up on them.”
Then, when they don’t, the depressed person assumes that their friends and family don’t care about them anymore, or have just moved on from them. Forgotten them.
And they never end up reaching out to them because they get this idea in their mind that they are unwanted.
And time goes on …
I guess, what I’m trying to say is that keeping those social connections really matters. A lot.
I mean, it’s ALREADY hard to keep in touch with people as it is!
So … if you ever feel like reaching out to someone. Maybe a friend or family member you haven’t spoken to in a few years, then don’t be afraid to say “Hello again, my good friend!”
Yeah.
Something like that.
—kaitlynjane
Flommist KAiTLYNjane has been drawing and writing stories ever since she knew how to scribble on a piece of paper, or her sister’s forehead when she was just two weeks old. Copyright © 2020 KAiTLYNjane.
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