People with depression: How do you describe it?

[Darkover]

Depression is not like sadness. Everyone has been sad. Everyone has been depressed on one occasion or another. But clinical depression is something else entirely.

What is it like?

Forgive me, but I'd like for you to imagine the worst day of your life. Maybe someone you love was killed in an accident. Maybe a loved one got a terrifying diagnosis. Maybe you abruptly lost a job you need to support your family. Maybe you caught your husband or wife cheating on you. Maybe you found out your son or daughter is addicted to drugs. Maybe you experienced some dreadful public humiliation.

Remember how that felt, at the worst part of that day? Now imagine you feel that way most of the time, for months at a time.

Think of the most stressed and worried you have ever been in your life, and then imagine that your stomach feels like that all the time.

Imagine that you are constantly gripped with overwhelming feelings of dread and crushing hopelessness — irrational, not governed by real risks or challenges, but still inexorable.

Imagine that you are often fatigued to the point of weakness and irritability because you can't get to sleep until late at night, or because your mind consistently shakes you awake at four in the morning, racing with worry about the day's activities as your stomach roils and knots.

Imagine that most social interactions become painful, the cause of nameless dread. Imagine that when the phone rings or your computer dings with a new email you get a short, hot, foul shot of adrenaline, sizzling in your fingertips and bitter in your mouth.

Imagine that, however much you understand the causes of these symptoms intellectually, no matter how well you know that you are fully capable of meeting the challenges you face and surviving them, no matter how well you grasp that these feelings are a symptom of a disease, you can't stop feeling this way.

Imagine that you have moments — maybe even minutes — where you forget how you feel, but those moments are almost worse, because when they end and you remember the feelings rush back in like a dark tide that much more painfully.

Imagine that you know you should talk to someone about how you feel — but you can't bring yourself to do so. Have you ever been so nauseated — from illness or from drinking — that you can't bear for someone to touch you or talk to you? Imagine feeling like that — that the human interactions that might ease the pain are too painful to endure, that every word on the subject is a blow.

After a while, this wears you down a bit.

 

[iloverachel]

Depression is something that has destroyed my life

 

[lnlybnny]

Something that painfully, gradually and slowly eats you from inside out

 

[Felodese]

Like there's a aching black hole inside of you. You feel painfully hollow and it swallows up every positive emotion, thought or feeling. And it taints everything in your life. It makes you hate yourself, hate others - makes you think everyone hates you. It takes away your ability to think, to move, to do anything. It cuts you off from the world, like you're stuck in a bubble of numb despair - you can see the world around you, but you can't reach it, can't feel it. And it keeps eating away at you, till there's nothing left but that painful emptiness, and you just don't want to live anymore.

 

[sserafim]

I don't know if I have depression, but I just feel bored and empty. I'm apathetic towards everything. I'm anhedonic. I don't find joy in anything. Everything is meaningless to me. Nothing matters to me

 

[EmptyHeaded]

I don't know if I have depression, but I just feel bored and empty. I'm apathetic towards everything. I'm anhedonic. I don't find joy in anything. Everything is meaningless to me. Nothing matters to me

Same for me, though I'm very certain that I don't have depression.

 

[divinemistress36]

I don't know if I have depression, but I just feel bored and empty. I'm apathetic towards everything. I'm anhedonic. I don't find joy in anything. Everything is meaningless to me. Nothing matters to me

Those are signs of depression

 

[sserafim]

Those are signs of depression

I still get dopamine rushes though. I feel pleasure but not joy. I think it's because I'm a nihilist

 

[Guy Smiley]

I still get dopamine rushes though. I feel pleasure but not joy. I think it's because I'm a nihilist

I'm a nihilist, too! I'm nihilist/hedonist. I believe in nothing, so I might as well just seek pleasure while I'm still alive.

 

[Eudaimonic]

i feel like everything is less vibrant, and am mildly depersonalized; the "pane of glass" metaphor sort of fits
i feel apathetic and hopeless a lot of the time, have very little energy (mentally and physically), a low interest level in everything, and diminished pleasure
i am never happy. i feel relief at most, and even that is fleeting
i feel dread a lot of the time when i think about the future
i struggle to do basic tasks and take care of myself
i don't leave my home much, and i mostly lay or sit down all day

idk i guess the best way to put it is that i feel like the life force has been sucked out of me

I still get dopamine rushes though. I feel pleasure but not joy.

same, it's partial anhedonia
what about your interest levels?

 

[Red Moon]

I don't find happiness in anything and no drive/energy to do it. Little motivation, feeling numb/empty and everything feels pointless.

 

[xoirse]

i was diagnosed with depression but when i "got over it" i started feeling nothing at all. i may have lost interest into some things that brings me joy when i was in my lowest but when i was a bit better i never gained them back. i just do it all out of habit, i think it's because it brings me comfort remembering when my situation wasn't still so bad in the middle of my current state that's worse.

 

[DeIetedUser4739]

It's like having clocked a video game and still having to keep playing it despite no more missions or objectives to complete.

 

[astonishedturnip]

Ever read the Animorphs series? There were these slug aliens, Yeerks, that crawled in your head and could control you by taking over your brain. It was almost impossible for anyone to guess you've been taken over because they could read your mind and know exactly what you would say and how you would act in any given situation. All the while taunting you for being a prisoner.

That's how it feels... To have SOMETHING living in my brain that makes me act normal around others, all the while I'm screaming on the inside for someone to notice it's all bullshit and save me. Except instead of trying to take over the world, the parasite is constantly trying to get me to kill myself and whispering in my ear that things will never get better, reminding me of how good things used to be and all the horrible things that await me in the future, etc.

 

[Forveleth]

Ever read the Animorphs series? There were these slug aliens, Yeerks, that crawled in your head and could control you by taking over your brain. It was almost impossible for anyone to guess you've been taken over because they could read your mind and know exactly what you would say and how you would act in any given situation. All the while taunting you for being a prisoner.

That's how it feels... To have SOMETHING living in my brain that makes me act normal around others, all the while I'm screaming on the inside for someone to notice it's all bullshit and save me. Except instead of trying to take over the world, the parasite is constantly trying to get me to kill myself and whispering in my ear that things will never get better, reminding me of how good things used to be and all the horrible things that await me in the future, etc.

Oh my God I LOVED (love, still) this series and I never thought of it like that but you are totally right! It's a voice that isn't yours voiding any positivity from your life. Had a bad day, the voice tells you it's even worse. Had a good day, the voice tells you it was a bad day instead.

All the while, you have to fight to keep a smile on your face. In the books, the host was physically unable to communicate to anyone that this was happening to them, but it's a really good parallel for the societal pressure to always be happy.

Dang, I'm gonna view this series so differently now.

 

[viljalauss]

my depression has been called situational but it happens enough that i think i know it well :/ sometimes i will just feel very flat. sometimes it will be dread. sometimes it feels like i am being eaten from my heart outwards. sometimes it feels like depression in the truest sense of the word - like my head is being pressed or squeezed. it makes it hard to think. i know grief and sometimes (maybe quite often) it feels like i am grieving for hours on end with breaks of maybe a few minutes, little lulls in the deluge and then it comes lurching back. i feel a lot more physically tired all the time. i'm more and more mentally worn out and it feels like i lose myself with each passing day, even though those i talk to when i'm in a better situation don't see it. the idea of going to new places, doing new things (especially those that cost money) fills me with dread when i am depressed, as i'm expected to enjoy them and can't and know i will be seen as ungrateful or just distress other people because throwing novelties at me didn't work. sleep feels fuller than wakefulness.

 

[MidnightGloom]

It feels like I'm living in a world separate from everybody around me. It's sickening have to pretend that I'm happy, pretending that I'm normal, acting like I'm who everyone thinks I am. Sometimes I even convince myself that I'm happy, because I try so hard to act happy even when by myself. Of course, it doesn't work as the happiness I thought I gained is gone in less than a second as I think, "what am I even doing, trying to pretend like this?" Sometimes I try hide my depression, sometimes I try to let people know through subtly. I want people to notice, want people to care, but the moment an off word comes out of my mouth, I immediately play it off like it's a joke. Depression makes me feel uncomfortable in my own skin. I'm just the body for a parasite, which digs further inside of my skin as it finds a more comfortable spot to dwell in and to rest, until I finally die and it can move onto another host.

 

[J&L383]

Agree with everything except "After a while, this wears you down a bit" it wears you down A LOT!

 

[dinosavr]

To me it feels like swimming in jello. You're technically able to get stuff done but requires more energy, more time and basically there's no point in doing that

 

[untothedepths]

A sinkhole.

 

[xinino]

I am swinging between the two, both are form of depression believe me, don't trust the grin.

 

[Gelos82]

The feeling of being hopeless, sad and miserable all the time. Not looking forward to anything and getting no enjoyment from anything, even the things you used to enjoy. Not interested in doing anything. Not wanting to interact with anybody. Not wanting to get out of bed. On top of all that also feeling anxious all the time.

 

[Saturn_]

You become a paradox of time. The days feel extremely short and empty, yet you become indescribably world weary. You feel like you have lived a billion lifetimes of torture when other people have merely lived through decades.