After having depression on and off throughout my life up until I was around 29, I spent my twenties thinking that I would never be happy. I would simply drag myself through each day, until my life ended. Sounds dramatic, I know.
I wouldn’t say every day is an absolute breeze. I definitely still have days where I tell myself I’ll never be happy again and I spend the next 6 hours fretting about having depression again before having a nap and realising I was tired or hormonal. However, I have learned how to manage my mental health a lot more and am genuinely the happiest that I’ve ever felt in my life.
Whilst depression is one of the worst experiences anyone can ever go through, I now look back and see just how much it taught me, both about life and myself.
I’m not entirely sure if it was all to do with having depression, my recovery or due to being in my late twenties (which I feel like this is a time to really get to know yourself for many people). All I know is that around this period, I learned a lot of important lessons which change my perspective on life for the better, and this has definitely impacted my mental health.
Here are some of the things that I learned:
1. You have to choose to be happy
Happiness is a journey, not a destination. It’s not achieving one big goal but all the small things in life that mount up. It’s making choices that are good for you every single day and prioritising yourself over everything else. It’s taking accountability for your life and how you live it. Only you can make yourself happy, and you have to choose to do that.
Now, this took me around 8 years to accept. I had been given this advice when I was sat in the taxi with my oldest friend (who had previously suffered with depression) and I couldn’t believe how heartless she was being – she knew I’d been struggling.
How can happiness be a choice when you suffer from depression? I said to myself during my silent frustration. It felt like she’d just punched me in the face – how could she say that after she had been depressed a few years before? Now I understand that it’s one of the lessons that depression teaches you. And it’s a really tough lesson to learn, but once you do – it does change your life.
If you wake up every day and tell yourself you don’t want to be here, chances are you’re not going to allow yourself to feel happy. This has to change. Even if it starts off small – introduce things to your life that will start to shift your mindset. Practicing gratitude was one of the biggest game changers for me and believe me when I say that I honestly couldn’t think of one thing to write down when I started. Not one thing.
But the more I tried, the easier it became, and I can definitely see a difference in my mood if I don’t practice gratitude even just for a few days. You have to find things to be grateful for, just like you have to find things to be happy about. Whether that’s enjoying an oat milk coffee in the morning, or reading an amazing book. It doesn’t have to be big, just find something that makes you happy and do it every day and see what difference it makes. You have to choose this for yourself, and it usually starts off small.
When I was going through depression, I probably wasn’t able to choose to be happy at that point. But I had to want to help myself. That’s probably the place to start as happiness feels impossible when your mental health is in the gutter. But start off by understanding that you need to help yourself, and go from there.
2. Victim mentality gets you nowhere
This was another huge lesson that hit me like a truck when I heard it. I remember hearing it on a Saturn Returns podcast with Caggie Dunlop (these podcasts got me through my late twenties).
I didn’t even know what a victim mentality was, but I heard the speaker saying that feeling sorry for yourself in every situation doesn’t get you anywhere.
This was right as I was recovering from my depression and going through a particularly bad breakup with a narcissist and felt so sorry for myself the entire time, so this was a huge wake-up call for me.
I realised that I used the victim mentality as a coping mechanism for dealing with everything, but it didn’t get me anywhere. It simply made me feel more defeated and like I had no control over my life and happiness.
Since then, I started to become more conscious of when I felt like a victim or blamed the world for my problems. I decided to take accountability for my life; started being more grateful for things and stopped trying to find the negatives in everything. If I wasn’t happy, I had to sort it.
This was also when I decided to quit the job I hated and start again – I had to take action and I had to try something new. You can blame everyone else for your problems but nobody else is going to resolve your issues – that’s up to you. You can either choose to take accountability and sort your life out or continue to hate the world and everybody else for your problems. And you know what, as soon as I started to take control of my life this was when I started to have hope.
I stopped feeling like the world was against me and realised that nothing is personal. You have to pick yourself up and go again, even when you don’t feel like it. Now I get that when you’re depressed it isn’t easy to make decisions to sort yourself out, but even becoming aware of your tendency to blame everyone else can help.
When something bad happens or I’m feeling hopeless during a bad day, I allow myself to mope for a little while and then I decided that’s enough and look at what I can do to help myself. It’s not easy, but I make myself do it and it stops my dark thoughts from escalating which used to be very dangerous territory for me.
3. Life is a lot easier when you accept who you are
I spent my life trying to fit in with everyone around me. I hated myself for being shy and wished I loved going out drinking and being in a relationship like everyone else seemed to. I would constantly battle with myself and force myself into living a life that I didn’t enjoy because I thought it was the right thing to do.
It wasn’t until I was in lockdown in 2020 that I read ‘Quiet’ by Susan Cain. This book changed my life. I no longer hated myself for being shy and quiet around people I didn’t know and felt very proud to be an introvert.
All throughout our lives, we’re told that extroverts are the best, they’re the go-getters, we should all aspire to be like them and that living like that is what will bring you happiness. Well that isn’t the case for everyone, and it certainly isn’t for me. When I realised that I didn’t want to spend my life going out, appeasing everyone else and spending time and money on things I didn’t care about, I finally felt free.
I love spending time by myself, reading, and writing. I no longer wonder what is wrong with me and resort to asking Google why I’m not like everyone else (I Google everything).
Since learning that I’m an introvert it’s led me to continue learning more about what I enjoy doing, whether that’s seen as cool or not. One thing I’ve learned is that I enjoy spending time by myself and prefer being single than in a relationship for the sake of it. I’ve now been single for almost four years, and it’s allowed me to learn so much about myself in that time.
I also love living back with my family (even though I’m 31) and spending time with the dogs, enjoy rainy weekends drinking cups of tea and working on my own projects. Just as I enjoy walking around the lakes and listening to a book or podcast. I wished I’d known what I enjoyed more when I was younger and stopped trying to be like everyone else all the time, but I’m also just so grateful to finally understand myself.
I feel like one of the biggest reasons for my depression was not understanding myself and who I was, and I always tried to learn how to be happy whilst making all of the wrong decisions.
Once I understood myself a lot more and accepted this, I actually learned to love who I am and accept that I’m different to others and it’s fine. There’s no right or wrong way to be (unless you’re going around killing animals or other humans etc.) but as long as you’re not hurting anything then who cares!
4. Set your own life goals and don’t be afraid of going against the grain!
This kind of ties into my last point of understanding who you are but takes it a bit further. I’m a big goal-setter, I enjoy making bucket lists and setting short and long-term goals. I used to think that I’d be happy if I went to university, worked my way up in a company, earned a ridiculous amount of money, and settled down with a partner in a house of our own.
I worked towards these goals in my twenties and had moved to Manchester when I was 24 for my career. However, at the age of 27, I finally realised that none of these goals brought me happiness. In fact, striving to achieve these goals and finding no happiness as a result really affected my mental health. I was in the worst place I had ever been, even though I should have been happy according to societal expectations.
Over the next few years, I broke up with my boyfriend, quit my job after five years and moved back to my parents at the age of 29 (almost 30). I couldn’t believe that I’d been working towards these goals for almost 10 years to realise that they weren’t right for me – I was devastated.
When I first moved back home, I remember thinking that I had wasted the last five years of my life – I was back to exactly where I’d been before I moved to Manchester to pursue a career in Financial Services. What I didn’t consider is that I was a completely different person to who I’d been five years before.
My life isn’t what other people would necessarily dream of. Being single at 31 and living with my parents, but I no longer feel lost in life and am excited to see where I am in the next five years. I feel like I have the chance to start all over again and create a life that I genuinely want.
If anyone would have told me that I’d be back where I am now when I was in my early twenties, I wouldn’t have believed them – but I’m so grateful to be here.
When I told people I was leaving my life in Manchester, I expected them to shake me and ask what the hell was wrong with me. The reality? Pretty much everyone said they wished they could do the same and good on me for making the decision to start again. I couldn’t believe what people were saying but they were so supportive.
So don’t worry about what anyone else thinks, live the life you want and set your own goals. It’s your life.
5. Never compare yourself and where you’re at in life
When I was depressed I used to tell myself I was the most miserable person in the world and had the worst life ever. I would look at everyone else and think about how perfect their lives were and how I wished to be that happy. I’d go on social media and look at the happy couples on there, whilst hating the relationship that I was in and thinking I was to blame (narcissists will make you think that tbf).
Social Media is bullshit. What people make out to others is usually bullshit. So stop comparing yourself and your life to everyone else and focus on your own. This also applies to seeing where everyone else is at in terms of life goals – there’s no rush with anything. Just focus on yourself and work out what you truly want as that’s all that matters. And if you don’t know yet, that’s also fine – who made up the weird timeline to be married by 25 and have a house and kids by 30? Why on earth do we expect that will work for everyone?
It’s also easy to look at others and want what you think they have, but that wouldn’t necessarily make you (or them) happy. When I first moved back to my parents, I saw that the girl who I’d moved to Manchester with 5 years before had just got engaged.
That really made me think about how much I’d failed and how different our lives had become since moving to Manchester. She was in a long-term relationship, in a dream career and living in a house with her fiancé that he owned. All whilst I was single, had just quit my career, and had moved back to my parent’s house. My life was nowhere near as glamorous.
But I remembered things that my old friend had told me in the past, and I’d seen the way her boyfriend had treated her over the years and it really wasn’t right. I genuinely think she stayed with him because he had money and his own house, and she had a very secure life in Manchester which was what she always wanted. I’m not saying it’s right or wrong, but I know it’s not what I’d want.
When I realised that, I knew that I couldn’t compare our lives because we had very different goals and views on happiness. Just because someone is showing you a dream life on social media, you don’t know what’s going on behind closed doors so please do yourself a favour and try not to compare yourself or assume that everyone else is happier.
If anything, I feel like the most content people are those who don’t post anything and just focus on their lives rather than trying to prove their happiness to everyone else. Just remember that everyone is human and most people are figuring their shit out just as much as you are. People just like to hide that.
Summary
Whilst going through depression really did make my twenties very difficult to navigate, I can honestly look back and be grateful for how much I learned from it.
Sometimes I wish that I learned things a bit quicker and sometimes even catch myself wishing I could go back and redo things knowing what I know now. But there’s absolutely no point in wishing to change the past and so I understand that everything had to happen the way it did for me to get here now. All I can do is use everything I learned to create a future that I want, and be the best version of myself.
It’s not always easy and takes a lot of effort. I still have moods where I feel hopeless and have to remind myself that it’ll pass or look at where I’ve been neglecting myself and get myself back on track. But I am also so proud of how far I’ve come and how resilient I am, and I wouldn’t feel that way if I hadn’t had such a tough time with depression. I don’t know if I’d say I’m grateful for having depression, but I’m grateful for how much I learned during my recovery and how it’s changed my life. Sometimes, you just have to take what you can from these thingshearing it