And, by the way, while there is certainly merit in asking what you yourself could have done to prevent bad stuff happening to you, this line of thought is what drives people into depression and suicide, particularly the bolded part.
Then that's also their own fault. It's certainly not driving me into depression or suicide.
Uh....
Okay, I wasn't going to post in this thread, but now it's on a different topic. I'm going to spell out my position in great detail and then go back to lurking this thread.
1. You can be healthy mentally even when you're hard on yourself. (aka, what faust said)
2. That being said, people who suffer from depression or have suicidal thoughts are almost always very self-critical, to the point of blaming themselves for things out of their control. The drive for suicide isn't "Fuck you world! You don't deserve me!", it's "I don't matter, I've always messed up, my friends and family would be happier if I was dead"
3. Clinical depression is not something you can just break out of. This is why antidepressants are a thing. When I think depression, I mean clinical depression. If you're just sad for a day or a week, it means something shitty happened and you got over it with time. That doesn't always happen.
4. Telling a depressed person that it's their fault they're making themselves sad by self-critiquing themselves so much is probably the worst thing you can say to that person. Like, by far, because you're reinforcing their viewpoint and making the depression worse.
5.
This is not saying you're doing that now because presumably faust is not depressed. I'm saying this is a very bad mindset to have if you're dealing with someone who suffers from depression, and that you really really shouldn't think this way if you do meet one of those people.
6.
This is also not saying you should stop thinking in this way about yourself. If you can take it, I don't see anything wrong with your position, as long as you recognize that it
could lead to making yourself depressed if you go too far.
Unsolicited life advisor, checking out. (Hopefully this is better advice than the Dominion advisor.)
Edit:
The corollary is that if someone says they're not feeling great, you should let up on the criticism and tell them to take a break, like many people in this thread did. They may or may not have suicidal thoughts, but it's better to be safe. If they keep posting afterwards, then they're either trolling or actually can't stop for some pathological reason. The proper response in both cases is to stop replying. Of course this doesn't actually happen because the bait is too tempting, but maybe we'll get there someday. Or not.