The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
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Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
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Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.
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Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.
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Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
I've always been somewhat stoic (I've been called a soulless automaton and an emotionless sociopath at different times by different people), but I think this would be normal for me as well. The only times I have ever cried as an adult that I can recall was losing my infant son, and losing my wife (at different times, just to be clear). One was sudden and unexpected, the other was after a long slow battle with cancer. An acquaintance is unlikely to get more than a passing feeling of sadness. Though of course my wife's feelings would be more of what I would focus on helping with in your case.
Having said that, while both of those losses made me heartbroken, it didn't particularly last, I never fell into a depression. I don't think I have ever been depressed, no matter how bad things get. You have to move on, no matter how bad things were, things will get better. And I did find my (innate?) optimism did get some odd reactions from people who expected me to be depressed for months or more perhaps. I cried on and off for maybe a day or two, then very sporadically when something reminded me of the loss for another few weeks. In both cases though I was supporting other people, my wife or my other kids as well as dealing with all the practicalities, so there was a limit to how much falling apart I could allow myself.
I do have very distinct memories, of thinking to myself, ok, time to put a lid on this, it hurts, but there is nothing to be done except to deal with what needs to be dealt with and get through it.
Friends don't understand how man not depressed
I'm kind of the same though. I don't I'm think I'm really capable of depression, at least not in the way some people around me are.
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