You imply we aren't teaching emotional regulation on a daily basis? We have always placed a great deal of emphasis on talking about feelings and developing "tools for our toolboxes" to deal with them. Unfortunately those tools are largely inadequate when there isn't a rational cause for a debilitating emotional state.

You can use me as an example! When I got diagnosed I was very physically active and also quite clean.

One of the hardest things for me with depression is the incredible guilt I have. What right do I have to be depressed when my life is objectively fine? Why should I get therapy when that might mean one less space for someone who is dealing with trauma or poverty or something else that gives them a "right" to be depressed? This causes a feedback loop of guilt leading to more depression and vice-versa.

Like I tell my kids, it's normal to sometimes feel depressed or hopeless. If you're dealing with a difficult circumstance then it's reasonable to have those feelings, and the only way to address those feelings is to deal with the circumstance. What's not normal is feeling depressed and hopeless for no logical reason at all.

It’s pretty tough to exercise or clean your house when getting out of bed feels like an insurmountable task.

Depression isn’t like an infection or cancer—it’s a diagnosis based on established criteria, as are most mental disorders. Experts may disagree on diagnosis or treatment, but that doesn’t make it useless.

By that logic, you might as well say autism is caused by avoiding eye contact—since there’s no blood test for it either.

This is a pretty nasty line to double down on.

I hope you can take your personal anecdotes and add them to a larger body of research and other people's experience to refine your understanding. If you're right that everyone who has Depression is actually just lazy, you'll see lots of support for that. If, instead, you find a lot of different experiences you might conclude that Depression is a pretty nuanced and complicated topic, which might both expand your understanding and help you bring more empathy to the suffering people around you.

I know several depressed people that exercise every day and live in a clean house.

Black swans do not exist. I have never seen one.

You should shut your mouth and stop talking about things you know nothing about.

It's almost as if depression reduces your executive function, making it more difficult to exercise each day or consistently clean your house.

And then you feel worthless for not being able to do those things, reinforcing the depression.

you have the causality reversed....