A Guide For The Professional Depressionist

I have been a depressed for many years and, though I have had many relapses, I feel that my experience has given me enough insight on how to be a professional depressionist. What is a depressionist, you ask? A depressionist is a person who knows that the purpose for which they live is to be entirely and tirelessly depressed. In fact, for this entire year I have been unfailingly committed to depression. As such, I am writing this guide for anyone who wishes to live out depression with commitment.

First, avoid sunlight. The sun is a bright, warm object that typically shows up in most parts of the world every day. It is a scientific fact that people who live in milder climates are typically less depressed. A good depressionist must avoid this. In fact, it is best to avoid the sky altogether, since even the moon and the stars at night may cause a shift in self-perspective which takes away from the many causes of depression (we'll get to how you can embrace those later).

In general, we must avoid all things that cause a complete change in any sensory experience. That is to say, no sense of ours must be overwhelmed or shocked by anything. Neither sight, sound, smell, taste, or touch should be affected in any dramatic sense. We must learn to live in a simply gray world, a world of distant unidentifiable noises, a world of slightly dirty air, a world where we only eat lukewarm water and a world where nothing is soft, hard, itchy, hot, cold, or comfortable. No orgasms, either. The best way to accomplish this is through a mindset of all thoughts leading to a state of aloneness resulting in a lifestyle that is filled with isolation and avoidance. Anything that interferes with such an experience is to be considered a sin if we are to become professional depressionists.

On the subject of sinning, we must mind ourselves to have the best of perspective judgments and the worst of history of wrongs. This is a difficult balance to accomplish since it is all one-sided. One good tip is to continually tell yourself that your memory is damn near perfect, well-rounded, and fair to all parties involved in it. In this way, you can both believe that you are intelligently judging yourself and constantly reminding yourself of all of your past failures. Another way to accomplish this is to simply believe that you embrace all forms honesty, especially with yourself. Hence, the best you can do is to remember all of those things that have turned you into the completely fucked up human being you are. Both of these tips will lead you directly into the seemingly bottomless abyss known to all professional depressionists as home.

Now, here are six practical skills you must learn to do every day to depressionize yourself. An easy acronym is to remember these by is B-L-A-H-H-H.

B – Blame Yourself
L – Loneliness
A – Avoidance
H – Hopelessness
H – Helplessness
H – Homely

In order now, we'll start with B, which stands for Blame Yourself. You must strive every day to be good, bad, great, stupid, etc. and for every day that you are not, you must blame yourself. For example, try to feel or act a certain way all day, like happiness or sadness or accomplishment, and when you cannot, Blame Yourself for all of it. Remember, you have the best of judgments and the worst of failures. Your perfectly recorded track record of everything in life speaks for itself. It's just that easy.

Next on the list is Loneliness, which is an emotion, and one that we must accomplish feeling whether there are people around or not. The key to controlling the Loneliness emotion is to pay close attention to your negative thoughts about yourself, others, and the world at all times. For example, if you are hurt or if someone is angry with you, then you probably deserve it. If you want to talk or be yourself with someone else, remember that no one you know can be completely trustworthy or loving. Besides, you don't really deserve such a person in your life anyway. In fact, no one in the world can be completely relied upon for anything. A simple fact to remember is that everyone is flawed (especially you) and as such, you shouldn't really be interacting with anybody. Loneliness has no one to affect or be affected by.

Avoidance is unavoidable on the road to depressional abyss. We've already talked about avoiding changes to your senses, but we can generalize this to avoiding everything in the world that is real. I recommend starting this practice by continually lying, exaggerating, being two-faced, fake, or just being an undiscoverable mystery. Children shouldn't talk to strangers and, since everyone pretty much is a stranger in one aspect or another, we should continue to practice that general rule as adults. A quick and short way to practice Avoidance is to become addicted to something that negatively alters either your mindset or activities. Become an alcoholic. Look up depressing websites. Look at or listen to things that remind you of painful memories. Whenever you start to barely feel discomfort, let it become instinctual for you to choose flight over fight, and keep running deeper into it.

Hopelessness can be a tricky thing, so I need to be quite clear here. In order to become truly hopeless, one must pay far more attention to the largest of hopes rather than the smallest. What are some of most heartfelt hopes you've had in the past that have never been fulfilled? Realize this absolute fact: hope is just a plan for future failure. Give it up like you did with drawing, painting, musicianship, or practice when you were young. For example, instead of hoping for a specifically small success today, hope that your entire day goes exactly as you want it to. Dream Big!!! You're virtually guaranteed some disappointment, which when dwelt upon dutifully, leads to those grand dark shadows below.

Helplessness is similar to Loneliness but with a slight twist. Despite all of the negative thoughts we maintain with regards to ourselves, others, and the world, sometimes we might be offered an opportunity for help with coming out of depression. In these times we must specify our negative thoughts towards the help we are being offered. For example, if we have an opportunity to pursue professional therapy, we must remember than every professional therapy must undergo psychotherapy themselves in order to practice therapy. So, if we're going to see a “professional” who lacks adequate experience in depression themselves, how can they possibly help? They cannot. Likewise, you are a very special and unique person, how can anyone possibly hope to understand you, much less help you? Specific negative thoughts about help are the butter to our burnt toast. It won't really help.

Acting Homely every day is probably the simplest and easiest task we can accomplish every single day. Picture an ugly, mutated duck and simply act like it. Shower? No. Brush your teeth? No need. Clean clothes? Fuck no. You're butt fuck ugly and nothing is going to change that. Constantly change your sleeping pattern so that you end up not even being able to pass a sobriety test. Homely is disgusting to all, and that's where the heart is.

Let's review: Avoid the sky and your senses. Believe yourself a master of memory and judgment. Have faith in negative thoughts about yourself, others, and the world. And finally, practice BLAHHH every day.

Happy Depressing,
The Professional