Negativity a sign of depression?

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As many of you have pointed out, I have often talked about negative experiences with other people and I wanted to know if being negative about everyone other than yourself was a sign of depression?

I'd say depression generally is more about dissatisfaction with oneself more so than with others, though it might be a sign of a personality predisposed toward depression.


I have known plenty of people though, who are constantly catty and mean about everyone around them, yet I never see any signs of depression in their behavior. They actually seem to thrive on tearing other people down. Psychic vampires.

That said, however, none of those people ever had the depth of character to question their own negativity. I don't think they were even aware of it, so you've got a leg up on people like that at least.

I'm no doctor and I certainly will not pretend to know, but I know that focusing on the negatives all the time is unhealthy for the mind regardless. I struggled with very negative thoughts for a long time myself and I was never diagnosed with depression during that time. It's just something that I had to pull myself out of, and it takes a lot of time and effort despite what people may tell you. Getting discouraged comes easy often. Whatever happens, if it's depression or not, I hope you find the peace that you deserve.

How do you practice learning to be more positive while also trying to balance out when I need to release some negative experiences? I am working on being positive now but I don't want to be superficial about it and rather just let this junk out in a healthy way.

Not inherently. To me that can be more a sign of frustration. My answer is to stop doing whatever it is that is not satisfying me, and find something that does. If it's relationships, then look for relationships that don't make you feel so negative.

It could be that your relationships are fine though, and the problem is something internal.

To diagnose depression, you'd need to look at more than one isolated factor.

It's good to set certain times, places and people to let out all of your negativity. It can be tricky when you're prone to talking about negative things or you're obsessing about them, but limiting these feelings is good in the long run as it interferes less with the relationships around you that you are trying to keep positive.

If there is a counsellor or psychiatrist you are seeing, they are an excellent outlet for letting these feelings out because not only are they nonjudgemental, they will help adjust your ways of thinking to work around these negative thoughts so that these are less likely to come about. As well, consider having a venting book...a private diary of sorts where you can freely voice your anxieties, tensions, obsessions and moments where you hate everyone. I own and utilize one which I keep in my purse...it works wonders for letting steam off.

Negativity can be viewed in several different ways. For example, often when making an observation about the likely outcome of some situation or event that is not positive, you may be viewed as being negative. This was often the case with me. However, the the important thing is to be honest and correct. Again in my case, I was often considered a very negative person, because I would point out what I viewed as the truth of a situation, which was often regrettably negative. But, as time passed, I was almost always proven to be right. So did this make me depressed? No, not really. My depression came from lots of other things.

BTW there was a study done many years ago that set out to determine whether there really were pessimists and optimists. There was a very surprising result. Yes indeed, there were optimists, who viewed things as better than they actually were, but they couldn't find any pessimists! Those who were labeled as pessimists were found to be viewing things as they really were, neither better nor worse than reality. Fascinating result!

Depression can be confused by lack of motivation, perhaps having some motivation in life can make your negativity decrease.

So far I found pessimism to be a completely impossible attitude to possess.

Not impossible as in hard to work with or undesirable, but as in by definition cannot be done.

As AspieWolf mentioned, life in itself tends to go towards bad outcomes. That much is also stated by Murphy's Law.

But I kind of disagree on 'pessimists' being correct about the situation. Maybe you live in a nicer country. Where I am, from all my experiences thus far, I've consistently been optimistic even though people call me pessimistic, and I considered myself realistic. Ergo, the worst thing I think could happen doesn't happen - something worse than what I can possibly think of happens instead. For saying a negative viewpoint people consider me pessimistic, I thought I was realistic in expecting crap to hit the fan, but it turns out it's optimistic because aside from just my own crap, an elephant walked past and dumped its crap into the fan as well, and I never expected said elephant to ever manage to get out of the zoo enclosure.

So yeah, you can't quite get depressed in this way. In my opinion, talking about negative stuff is normal, and realising that the stuff you talk about is negative in nature is simply a sign that you're becoming wiser.

In my case, yes. I think I had fetal achohol syndrome and reactive attachment disorder in addition to autism. I was always labled as a grump or a b***h but no one really looked into it any further. I'm one of those people who needs a reason to be happy. Whatever happiness is. I think I've just gotten used to being depressed all the time. I remember wishing I was dead as young as three.

I recently went out with two friends to a casual function which was a lot of fun and educational. I had a bad week week and I was trying to put it all behind me and have a good time with my friends as I thought that it would be good for me. I then ended up running into more trouble with one of my friends' authorities where they were pretty controlling and bossed me around. This caused me to be pretty upset and it pretty much got me to dwell on the situation after this friend and her guardians left. I then tried to seek emotional support from my other friend who is currently married had her husband with her but they seemed to analyze the situation and try to give the benefit of the doubt rather than be emotionally supportive. This frustrated me all the more since she used to be in a similar situation.

Has anyone else ever experienced this type of situation?