this post was submitted on 23 Jan 2026
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Showerthoughts
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A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The most popular seem to be lighthearted clever little truths, hidden in daily life.
Here are some examples to inspire your own showerthoughts:
- Both “200” and “160” are 2 minutes in microwave math
- When you’re a kid, you don’t realize you’re also watching your mom and dad grow up.
- More dreams have been destroyed by alarm clocks than anything else
Rules
- All posts must be showerthoughts
- The entire showerthought must be in the title
- No politics
- If your topic is in a grey area, please phrase it to emphasize the fascinating aspects, not the dramatic aspects. You can do this by avoiding overly politicized terms such as "capitalism" and "communism". If you must make comparisons, you can say something is different without saying something is better/worse.
- A good place for politics is c/politicaldiscussion
- Posts must be original/unique
- Adhere to Lemmy's Code of Conduct and the TOS
If you made it this far, showerthoughts is accepting new mods. This community is generally tame so its not a lot of work, but having a few more mods would help reports get addressed a little sooner.
Whats it like to be a mod? Reports just show up as messages in your Lemmy inbox, and if a different mod has already addressed the report, the message goes away and you never worry about it.
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If everyone decides to hate you and treat you like you're contagious for having depression because mental health stigma has come back with a vengeance over the past five years, then that absolutely is your problem.
If you can't land a job because potential employers always ask about that gap in your resume that you can't explain cause you were too depressed to function, that's definitely your problem too.
I'm sick of this "Oh just stop caring what other people think of you, it'll be fine." It's no better than saying "Why are you depressed? Your life is fine. Just pick yourself up, dust yourself off, get out of bed, take a shower, eat healthier, get some exercise, find a hobby, go out and meet people, make friends, yadda yadda yadda."
It puts the impetus on the person suffering from depression to somehow magically bootstrap their way back to perfect mental health by some imaginary force of will as if it were as simple as flipping a light switch, when for many people with depression the reality is that they've tried all things and can't manage to do them with any consistency, the depression itself makes them infinitely harder, and often some of these options simply aren't on the table (like "making friends" in a word that's collectively allergic to depressed people). If you cant remember the last time you were genuinely happy, because you were basically a young kid at that time, then your physical brain has developed in ways that leave it deficient in the structures and functions that produce the experience of happiness.
What is so hard to understand about that?
Is anyone who's backed into a corner there because they backed themselves into it? Cause that seems concerningly adjacent to victim-blaming mentality.
We don't do it for abuse victims, we don't do it for people in poverty, and we don't do it for people with chronic (physical) illnesses or permanent injuries. So why is it okay to do it for people with depression?
I think that's the spirit of this post.
And just because I don't have a viable miracle solution doesn't mean I can't tell you what doesn't work. That's a silly notion. If the solution is so simple, I wouldn't have been suffering from depression for so long.
People like you seem to believe we choose to be depressed, because why? You think we just like the feelings of helplessness and hopelessness? You think we enjoy constant despair and don't ever want to be lifted out of it?
Yes. The corner doesn't actually exist. A big mental hurdle is realising there's nothing stopping someone from doing whatever they want. We have social contracts, but they're also a part of the problem if taken too seriously.
I frequently remind myself, "If I were born the only human on earth, knowing none of this, what would I be doing right now?" and I aspire to be that person, because that's the true me.
99% of people's "life problems" are rooted in other people existing. Others are not to blame, of course, but it's just something to be aware of when taking care of one's mental health. The corner only exists and feeds on acknowledgment.