Most People Suck (and Other Sometimes True But Wildly Unhelpful Thoughts)

Three days into a depressive slump, I’ve established permanent residency on the couch beneath the same blanket, wearing sweatpants that may or may not be permanently fused to my body.

The TV is throwing its hypnotizing blue light across the coffee table, and there is a half-finished Celsius beside me that has reached the exact temperature where it tastes like carbonated cough syrup.

Naturally, I’ve chosen a television show specifically designed to make me feel worse. Depression has impeccable taste in self-sabotage.

The episode is sad. I am already sad. Somewhere between the paraplegic billionaire deciding on medically assisted suicide and his caretaker turned love interest unexpectedly inheriting his fortune, my brain cracks open a painful memory and starts running it from every possible angle.

This is the part of depression that’s hard to explain to someone who hasn’t lived there. Sometimes you’re not dramatically sobbing into a pillow or unable to get out of bed. Sometimes you’re just sitting very still on a perfectly normal Tuesday night while your own brain quietly ruins your life.

Give my depression one painful memory and it will build a six-part mini-series about one comment from a bully in the 10th grade.

Or at least it used to.

After roughly twenty years of treatment-resistant depression, trauma therapy, failed medications, new medications, therapists, psychiatrists, ketamine, TMS, and enough questionnaires asking me to rate my sadness from zero to five to qualify for Diamond Platinum Status.

And one of the only reasons I keep writing about my stupid mental health is because most of the advice out there is...how do I put this kindly...abysmal.

For the love of grapes, why does the advice always sound like a kindergarten teacher wearing an enormous bow who has just discovered the healing power of laminated affirmations?

Ma’am, I am currently horizontal under a three-day-old blanket. Unless that walk includes a brain transplant, cool your jets.

The real problem with the overly-optimistic crap is sometimes life DOES prove the thought to be true.

Someone really did leave you. That person really was cruel. You really were excluded from the thing. Life really gave you a pile of crap and gave that bully from 10th grade perfect teeth and lake-front property.

My depression-prone brain can take “that person hurt me” and turn it into, “people always hurt me.” One rejection becomes proof that nobody wants me. One season of loneliness becomes evidence that I’ll always be lonely.

So maybe stop trying to force the positive stuff if it doesn’t work for you, and instead ask yourself the two questions that have helped set me free:

1. Is this useful?

2. Is this helping me build the life I want to live?

Because, people do suck sometimes. (Spoiler alert: so do you.) AND (always insert AND, YET or BUT to those thoughts) that is a miserable bedrock to build your life on.

So today, from one sarcastic traveler to another, here are nine mostly true but wildly unhelpful thoughts that deserve a little less airtime.

Some people have hurt you in ways that still make your stomach turn when you think about them.

But spending tonight mentally retrying State v. Jerkface only guarantees they get to ruin tonight, too. Haven’t they already taken enough?

Instead, try: Make a note to actually talk about this with your therapist. If therapy isn’t accessible because our healthcare system is a cluster, try processing it on paper or use ChatGPT to help you ask better questions.

• What part of this am I still secretly trying to change, even though it already happened?

• If I could write this person a letter I never send, what do I still need to say without editing myself into being nice?

• Is there actually something I need to do here, or are we just running the same miserable footage again?

• What did I decide this experience meant about me, and do I still believe that?

• Is there anything here I want to carry forward because it could actually help me next time?

And maybe nobody ever will completely. But friend, let me hold your hand when I say this: nobody has a chance to get you if you’ve already decided they won’t.

Saying “nobody will ever get me” just gives you permission to stop trying. It’s hard and it’s scary, but you can learn to trust people again.

Instead, try: Tell one safe person something you usually keep to yourself. Give them a chance to know you before deciding they can’t.

Deeply. Randomly. Infuriatingly. I love that you want a world with less of that crap, but sweet child, eventually you have to get out of bed and get your hands dirty.

Endlessly cataloging everything wrong with the world without ever taking action isn’t helpful, it’s self-torture.

Instead, try: Pick one injustice you care about and take three actual steps toward helping. Donate twenty bucks. Send the email. Volunteer. Make the phone call. Turn outrage into motion.

No matter how hard some of us toil at showing kindness to every person in the tri-county area, plenty of people seem delighted to center an alarming percentage of their personality on criticizing other humans.

You can spend your life auditioning for their approval, or go build a life you actually like while they talk.

Instead, try: Before changing yourself to avoid someone’s judgment, ask, Do I even want this person’s life? If the answer is no, perhaps we can stop giving them a seat on the board of directors.

I have nothing profound to add here.

Instead, try: Shove it in the drawer. We have bigger fish to fry.

As a millennial, I can basically guarantee another historically unprecedented event is penciled into the calendar.

But you have already survived every horrible thing that has happened to you so far, which kind of makes you a little badass. That is substantially better energy to emit through your pores than spending Tuesday emotionally rehearsing Thursday’s possible disaster.

Instead, try: Ask yourself, Is there anything useful I can do about this today? If yes, do that. If no, stop making yourself experience the disaster before it even arrives.

Relationships end. Seasons change. People move, grow apart, get sick, die, or occasionally turn out to be spectacular disappointments.

Knowing you cannot keep someone forever does not make loving them while they are here a bad investment.

Instead, try: Love someone according to what is true today. Text them. Make the plans. Say the thing. Stop making a future goodbye steal time from a relationship that still exists.

They may never understand what they did, admit it, regret it, or experience the beautifully scripted reckoning you have directed for them in your head.

Eventually, healing asks you to process what happened without requiring the person who hurt you to become emotionally competent first. Do that until it feels a little less miserable. Or until the doctor ups your dosage. Whatever gets us there.

Instead, try: Write down what you wish they would finally acknowledge. Then ask what part of your healing still requires their participation and whether you’re ready to reclaim it.

Look, some of us were parked in front of a forty-two-ton black box on wheels for an attempt at animated biblical indoctrination called VeggieTales.

The main character was a TOMATO. You do not get to rewrite my childhood now, science.

Instead, try: Reject botanical tyranny. Put the tomato in the fruit drawer and move on with your life.

Look, my dear friend with the beautiful sad brain. I know some of these thoughts didn’t come from nowhere. You learned them the hard way. And that trauma rooted itself deep in your body.

Something really did happen that you never saw coming, and now a part of your brain wants to make sure you’re never that surprised again.

But trying to pre-feel the hurt doesn’t mean it will hurt any less. It means you let what could go wrong in a future world that does not currently exist rob you a little corner of joy in the here and now.

• You are allowed to know that people can be cruel and still go looking for the kind ones.

• You can remember what happened last time without forcing the next person to answer for it.

• You can be furious about what is unfair and then put your feet on the floor and do something with that anger.

• You can acknowledge that everyone leaves eventually and still throw your whole heart into loving them while they’re here.

Sometimes I still catch myself on that couch, staring through the television while my brain drags an old hurt back onto the screen.

I know the footage by heart now. I know every line, every betrayal, every reason it still hurts.

But it is possible to change the channel.

Maybe not today. Maybe you do not have the tools yet. Maybe you still need more processing, more support, more sleep, more movement, more medication, more therapy, or the right combination of tiny things that helps your brain loosen its grip. That is okay.

What I can tell you, is that the reruns do not have to play forever. You can learn to notice them sooner. You can learn when to sit with the pain, when to do something about it, and when to stop giving it another hour of your life.

And eventually, you can turn on the lamp, dump the warm Celsius down the sink, peel yourself off the couch, and go back out into the world to spend time with the few non-sucky people.

Because despite running into a few truly terrible ones, that cheery Kindergarten teacher is right about one thing:

Life is better out there trying to live recklessly alive than being sad on the couch by yourself revisiting every mostly true but wildly unhelpful thought.

See you soon.

Love, Sam.