I know that there are a number of people on my f-list who suffer from clinical depression. I don't. Nor am I a qualified psychologist or anything like that. I therefore am emphatically not an authority on the subject, and am coming at this from the point of view of an interested¹ outsider.

Having read the blogs of a number of people who suffer from depression² for quite a while now, something struck me today. I'm lifting a quote from daniel_saunders, but it could easily have been said by a couple of you guys. This morning, I read going through that process of finding hope and then having it taken away again and again and again and again and again and again and again is utterly soul-destroying. on his blog. It struck me that this seems to be (correct me if I'm wrong here) the prevalent world-view among my friends who suffer from depression. I read that sentence again, and thought, but that's life! That's what life does! We find a hope or an aspiration, we work on it, sometimes it comes to fruition, but mostly it doesn't. So you just pick yourself up and dust yourself off and find a new hope.

But then I thought: maybe that's just me? Maybe there ARE people whose hopes and dreams have mostly come true instead of falling at the first (or second or third) hurdle. Maybe my experience, that hopes and dreams are extremely unlikely to come true, and it's best not to put too much stock in them, is unusual?

So, the point of this post is twofold. Firstly, am I right to think that this is one of the differences between depressives, and non-depressives: that depressives find it much more difficult to deal with the fact that life in our society is designed so that the majority of people don't get to see their dreams come true, and those that do attribute it to their own hard work, rather than the sheer dumb luck it probably is, whereas the rest of us have come to some sort of acceptance of that fact? If I'm not, then please feel free to pick holes...

Secondly, if I am right, what coping mechanisms do other people have? Because I realise that my own brand of black fatalism is not exactly cheering, and maybe if other people shared their coping mechanisms, it could be of some help to people whom I care deeply about and don't like to see suffering?
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¹ Interested in that I care about my friends, and would like them to be happy, but also interested in an intellectual, if ill-informed, way in the causes of and possible remedies for depression

² I'm not going to type out a list on a public post, don't worry. You all know who you are.