ruminative mode: [depression] What's It Like to Suffer from Depression?
What is it like to suffer from depression?
That's a question I get asked a lot, since people never realize it to look at me. Because I, y'know don't look depressed. (You may wanna visit butyoudontlooksick.com for more insight from other people with invisible illnesses.)
Actually, yes, I do. I look depressed. People who suffer from depression look just like everybody else. It doesn't mean we're incapable of smiling. We're not incapable of laughter or happiness. It's just more difficult for us. That we're not crying all the time doesn't mean we're not struggling every day. That people believe depressed people should be crying all the time or they're not really depressed is an ignorant fiction put forward by the media.
So I am gonna try to explain it, in words --which is harder than you think because this is a mental/emotional disorder-- for people who don't get it. This is the explanation for me -- it may resonate for other people, it may not. But hopefully, what it does for anyone who reads this (or passes it along) is make them stop and think before they see a suicide standing on a ledge overpass and yell "JUMP!"...or complain afterward about how inconvenient it is to have traffic messed up by the jumper. Or even before they roll their eyes and call someone "emo"
or say "just GET OVER IT" to anyone who seems to be depressed for what they consider "too long".
For the purposes of this essay, the first thing I want you to do, reader, is imagine you are a telekinetic. Your mind lets you move or hold things. Okay? Good. Cool, right?
Wait.
Now imagine that your telekinesis must be used to hold a 20 ton weight eighteen inches over your head.
From Drop BoxYou know, one of those big cartoon weights, like on Bugs Bunny. Got that mental image firmly in place? Good. Now imagine you have to live your life from day to day with that huge weight over your head -- that will CRUSH YOU FLAT if you waver in your telekinetic vigilance. You cannot relax even a little of your mental energy, except when you're asleep. Keep in mind that no one else can see that weight, nor could they take it off you if they could see it. But it's there. And if your strength and concentration wavers, it could drop an inexorable inch toward your head. Or it could come all the way down and flatten you like a pancake. Medication may make it a little easier to hold it up, but that's all it does.
You have to get out of bed, and brush your teeth and take a shower, and get dressed with that weight overhead. And you can't let your concentration waver while you're brushing your teeth, or soaping up, or picking your outfit for the day. You have to walk outside and get in your car with that weight held up. You have to navigate the traffic. Find a parking space. Walk into work or school and greet your coworkers who have no idea there's a 20 ton weight one concentration flicker from smashing you where you stand. And then you have to do your job, and do it well. You get your breaks and your lunch, but that weight is still there while you eat.
You have to get back in your car after working all day and navigate the traffic again and drive home with that weight nobody can see overhead. Then you have to run any errands you need to run. And then you can finally, finally get home. And fall into some activity that lets you relax a little and put the majority of focus away, even though you still gotta hold up that 20 ton weight, at least now you're home and in a relaxed place, but even as you have dinner with that weight overhead, you endure the knowledge that the weight will be there even when you close your eyes to sleep, and that tomorrow will be the same thing all over again. And so will the next day. And the day after that.
Forever.
Until you die.
And now, keep in mind while you're negotiating your life, day in and day out with a weight overhead you can never remove, you have to watch the world blow off what you're dealing with on TV as nowhere near as horrible an experience as you know it is. "Take your meds" and "seek help" are terms society treats as codewords for normal people without depression who are just acting in a way some person finds inconvenient. "Emo" is a term society treats as a codeword for "teenager who just wants attention". Medication is "happy pills" because popping a pill is considered an instant cure. It's not a cure. The medications just make the weight a little lighter. And they don't work for everybody, so the ones they might work for don't take them as seriously as they might because people blow them off as "happy pills".
Society -- at least in the US -- has this idea that mental illness is just weakness on the part of the sufferer. That we're just "not TRYING hard enough" and that "everybody gets depressed but you don't stay depressed forever unless you do it on purpose." The world is telling you that the weight you know for a fact -- because you deal with it every day -- is over your head is not really there, and you are just a weakling, or an attention whore for having trouble coping with life since you have to work so hard not to be smushed by it.
And oh, by the way -- without insurance? Those prescription medications often dismissed as "happy pills" usually cost about about one-sixth to one-quarter of a paycheck. And that's if you have the job I have and make what I make. You make less than I do, you're gonna have a harder time with affording it. So good luck holding up that weight without help.
If that analogy doesn't work, there's a breakdown beyond the jump because there are those who might find it triggery.
Being depressed means that every minute of every day, you're fighting your own brain chemistry. In some people, this means serotonin imbalance. In some people it means other things. In some people, it can be fixed with a little St. John's Wort. Some of us need prescription medication. I'm one such. This means that I have tried:
Cutting out caffeine
Cutting out sugar
Cutting out meat
Cutting out carbs
Vitamins
Drinking more water
Eating more protein
Eating less protein
Sleeping more
Sleeping less
Having more sex
Feng shui
Stop watching TV.
Thinking happy thoughts
Getting right with God
Eat three meals a day
Don't eat after 7 pm
Don't eat after 4 pm
Eat six little meals a day
Avoiding "stinking thinking"
Getting more sun
Those last two work -- the avoiding stinking thinking takes a lot of hard work and a lot of practice. And because I suffer from Seasonal Affective Order, which means lack of sun contributes to my depression, that also works. But not for everybody depressed.
Being depressed means that the voice in my head that I refer to as nega-Indigo tells me I'm an IMPOSTOR. That I am only dancing as fast as I can trying to be a responsible adult and a good person, and no matter how fast I dance, it'll never be fast enough. I don't have the steps right, and my rhythm is wrong, and I'm a clumsy klutz. I'm wearing the wrong costume. And everybody knows it and can see it. Not only can everybody see it, but there's nothing I can do to change it. No matter how reality may say otherwise, and how much validation I get, that voice is always there chipping away at any and all self confidence I get as soon as I get it built up. It's always there. From the moment I wake up, until the moment I finally get to sleep. With meds and with concentration I can focus past it or push through hearing it so it doesn't cripple me with self-loathing, indecision, and lethargy. Without them, it is a herculean effort just to get out of bed, and keep moving through the day. Without the meds, the effort of moving through the day is sheer habit and going through the motions. Self care is done for other people if I can do it at all because I'm not worth doing it for myself.
Being depressed means being withdrawn because I don't want to annoy/bother/burden/whine to/annoy my friends and loved ones by telling them I'm hurting because there's nothing they can do, it's frustrating both me and them to know they can't help, and even if they say they want to hear me talk it out -- they really don't (this may or may not be true...but people have limits for how much they can hear before they decide that I really don't want to get better and give up offering to help or trying to help. I've lost more than one friend this way and that hurts too -- and is often a reason depressed people don't let anyone in after they've experienced it a time or two). 
From Drop Box
Being depressed means honestly believing the world and everyone in it would be happier without me. Rationally I know this is not true. Emotionally, when on meds, I know this is not true. I know I have friends who love me. I have family who love me. I have a boyfriend who loves me. But the imbalance in my brain tells me different. The nega-voice tells me that nobody would notice if I just vanished off the face of the earth. It tells me if someone noticed, they wouldn't grieve. Or if they grieved, it'd only be for a minute before they realized how much better their lives are without my presence. Again, I know rationally this isn't true, but this is what it's like to be medically depressed -- that this looms over your every waking thought.
Being depressed means that compliments are appreciated on a rational level, but not believed on an emotional level because the nega-voice is always there to counter, "Oh, they're just saying it to be nice, they don't really mean it. You are ugly, worthless, stupid, useless, and they just don't want to be the one to tell you."
Being depressed means that insults and slights are magnified multiple times. Even playful ones are taken to heart as "this person who says they love me really doesn't, and really means the barb they just flung at me."
Being depressed means eating junk or other things less good because it's too much work and effort to make more and I'm so tired all the time. As I write this, I'm in bed, and hungry, but I can't focus long enough on what I want to eat -- and the effort it takes to get out of bed is just not enough that the hunger is enough to get me moving forward.
Being depressed means not having energy to exercise even though everybody says it will help me feel better. In fact the pain and the sweat make me feel worse and more disgusting. (Though I am told water-based exercise may help because it doesn't cause the sweat or the pain).
Being depressed means that although I appreciate gifts from friends, it takes me a very long time to use them because I have to fight for weeks or months or years to convince myself I deserve to have the nice thing and enjoy using it. It also means I lose stuff because the nega-voice knows I don't deserve to have a nice thing and enjoy using it. And it reminds me when I wonder where that nice thing I had went.
Being depressed means that little things can reduce me to tears that I know rationally aren't worth crying over. Knowing that doesn't stop the tears. Having one of those parents who said "I'll give you something to cry for" when I cried didn't help. Now it takes a good bit to get me to actually cry, but I feel like crying at least once a day over someething that would make a mentally healthy person blink in confusion.
Being depressed means sleeping a lot, because being awake means listening to the nega-voice tell me to just kill myself already so I don't keep wasting oxygen, and the time of all the people in my life. Sleeping means I don't have to exhaust all my willpower fighting that voice.
Being depressed doesn't mean I'm completely incapable of happiness. It just means that I treasure the precious moments of happiness I get.
Being depressed means that I am an expert, Oscar level actor, capable of making pretty much anybody believe I am "normal" and happy at any given moment if I have enough spoon theory spoons. I have learned how to act like nothing is wrong, and most of the time, nobody can see through it unless I tell them or let them. And if I'm pulling off the act, I can guarantee you someone you know in your life may very well be pulling off the same act because otherwise, that thing a few paragraphs ago about not burdening friends could come into play, which then leads back to the suicidal thoughts because what kind of a friend burdens their friends with their stupid, lame, unsolvable problems, and then that causes friends to say things like "oh you really don't want to get better anyway" which only encourages that nega-voice. I know now, after years of hard lessons to the contrary that people who say such things are either not real friends or are exhausted in their own way and come to regret having said it.
Being depressed means taking distraction from that nega-voice anykindaway one can. For some people that means drugs and alcohol and other self destructive stuff, which is just the depression contributing to the self destructiveness because like most disorders and illnesses, it feeds itself so it can keep going.
Being depressed means having a hard time coping with happy events because I can't always muster up the strength to focus past my own brain chemistry.
Being depressed means contending with all of the above in varying levels every waking hour of every day.
Being depressed means fear of abandonment because who wants to be around somebody so depressed/worthless/ugly/stupid/fat/unlovable?
Being depressed means struggling with apathy over things you love doing when the depression is not so crushing a weight on mind and spirit.
Being depressed means that some days are better than others and some days may have only a few items on this list happening, some days may have more, and some may have all, or new things I haven't thought of at this writing.
Being depressed means sometimes having to stay away from upsetting or triggery conversations or topics because they make the nega-voice stronger which can cause a spiral that will last for days or weeks or longer.
Being depressed means having to deal with suicidal urges at levels of strength that vary from simple ideation fantasy to having to stay out of the kitchen because of the knives, to needing to sleep because really there are a lot of different ways besides knives and pills one could kill oneself with and they light up like important items in a video game when the urge is at its worst.
Being depressed means having to struggle remember to take the medication for the depression and for everything else you need meds for because that nega voice is still there asking what the point is. I take mine before bed, and even then I don't always remember until I can feel my mood plummeting. Or I can feel my blood pressure climbing which manifests as pain in my ankles.
My depression is why I seek a compassionate life and why I try to stay away from things that hurt and upset me. Why I speak up and encourage others to be compassionate.
My depression is why I speak up against the "I'm just being brutally honest" thing that usually is just a dodge for "I feel like being an asshole but I don't feel like taking responsibility for my intellectual dishonesty and cruelty".
My depression is why I wrote this very long post so that people who don't suffer from the clinical types like I do might understand better if they care to. I get the feeling caring is not much in vogue these days, but that might just be the depression talking. Help prove me right?
My depression is why I will laugh in the face of people who say there are people out there faking depression. Or who just do it for attention.
* Stress image by webslinger9 from deviantArt
Feel free to copy and repost as long as it is used in its entirety and credited.
That's a question I get asked a lot, since people never realize it to look at me. Because I, y'know don't look depressed. (You may wanna visit butyoudontlooksick.com for more insight from other people with invisible illnesses.)
Actually, yes, I do. I look depressed. People who suffer from depression look just like everybody else. It doesn't mean we're incapable of smiling. We're not incapable of laughter or happiness. It's just more difficult for us. That we're not crying all the time doesn't mean we're not struggling every day. That people believe depressed people should be crying all the time or they're not really depressed is an ignorant fiction put forward by the media.
So I am gonna try to explain it, in words --which is harder than you think because this is a mental/emotional disorder-- for people who don't get it. This is the explanation for me -- it may resonate for other people, it may not. But hopefully, what it does for anyone who reads this (or passes it along) is make them stop and think before they see a suicide standing on a ledge overpass and yell "JUMP!"...or complain afterward about how inconvenient it is to have traffic messed up by the jumper. Or even before they roll their eyes and call someone "emo"
or say "just GET OVER IT" to anyone who seems to be depressed for what they consider "too long".
For the purposes of this essay, the first thing I want you to do, reader, is imagine you are a telekinetic. Your mind lets you move or hold things. Okay? Good. Cool, right?
Wait.
Now imagine that your telekinesis must be used to hold a 20 ton weight eighteen inches over your head.
From Drop BoxYou know, one of those big cartoon weights, like on Bugs Bunny. Got that mental image firmly in place? Good. Now imagine you have to live your life from day to day with that huge weight over your head -- that will CRUSH YOU FLAT if you waver in your telekinetic vigilance. You cannot relax even a little of your mental energy, except when you're asleep. Keep in mind that no one else can see that weight, nor could they take it off you if they could see it. But it's there. And if your strength and concentration wavers, it could drop an inexorable inch toward your head. Or it could come all the way down and flatten you like a pancake. Medication may make it a little easier to hold it up, but that's all it does.
You have to get out of bed, and brush your teeth and take a shower, and get dressed with that weight overhead. And you can't let your concentration waver while you're brushing your teeth, or soaping up, or picking your outfit for the day. You have to walk outside and get in your car with that weight held up. You have to navigate the traffic. Find a parking space. Walk into work or school and greet your coworkers who have no idea there's a 20 ton weight one concentration flicker from smashing you where you stand. And then you have to do your job, and do it well. You get your breaks and your lunch, but that weight is still there while you eat.
You have to get back in your car after working all day and navigate the traffic again and drive home with that weight nobody can see overhead. Then you have to run any errands you need to run. And then you can finally, finally get home. And fall into some activity that lets you relax a little and put the majority of focus away, even though you still gotta hold up that 20 ton weight, at least now you're home and in a relaxed place, but even as you have dinner with that weight overhead, you endure the knowledge that the weight will be there even when you close your eyes to sleep, and that tomorrow will be the same thing all over again. And so will the next day. And the day after that.
Forever.
Until you die.
And now, keep in mind while you're negotiating your life, day in and day out with a weight overhead you can never remove, you have to watch the world blow off what you're dealing with on TV as nowhere near as horrible an experience as you know it is. "Take your meds" and "seek help" are terms society treats as codewords for normal people without depression who are just acting in a way some person finds inconvenient. "Emo" is a term society treats as a codeword for "teenager who just wants attention". Medication is "happy pills" because popping a pill is considered an instant cure. It's not a cure. The medications just make the weight a little lighter. And they don't work for everybody, so the ones they might work for don't take them as seriously as they might because people blow them off as "happy pills".
Society -- at least in the US -- has this idea that mental illness is just weakness on the part of the sufferer. That we're just "not TRYING hard enough" and that "everybody gets depressed but you don't stay depressed forever unless you do it on purpose." The world is telling you that the weight you know for a fact -- because you deal with it every day -- is over your head is not really there, and you are just a weakling, or an attention whore for having trouble coping with life since you have to work so hard not to be smushed by it.
And oh, by the way -- without insurance? Those prescription medications often dismissed as "happy pills" usually cost about about one-sixth to one-quarter of a paycheck. And that's if you have the job I have and make what I make. You make less than I do, you're gonna have a harder time with affording it. So good luck holding up that weight without help.
If that analogy doesn't work, there's a breakdown beyond the jump because there are those who might find it triggery.
Cutting out caffeine
Cutting out sugar
Cutting out meat
Cutting out carbs
Vitamins
Drinking more water
Eating more protein
Eating less protein
Sleeping more
Sleeping less
Having more sex
Feng shui
Stop watching TV.
Thinking happy thoughts
Getting right with God
Eat three meals a day
Don't eat after 7 pm
Don't eat after 4 pm
Eat six little meals a day
Avoiding "stinking thinking"
Getting more sun
Those last two work -- the avoiding stinking thinking takes a lot of hard work and a lot of practice. And because I suffer from Seasonal Affective Order, which means lack of sun contributes to my depression, that also works. But not for everybody depressed.
From Drop Box
Being depressed means sometimes having to stay away from upsetting or triggery conversations or topics because they make the nega-voice stronger which can cause a spiral that will last for days or weeks or longer.
My depression is why I seek a compassionate life and why I try to stay away from things that hurt and upset me. Why I speak up and encourage others to be compassionate.
My depression is why I speak up against the "I'm just being brutally honest" thing that usually is just a dodge for "I feel like being an asshole but I don't feel like taking responsibility for my intellectual dishonesty and cruelty".
My depression is why I wrote this very long post so that people who don't suffer from the clinical types like I do might understand better if they care to. I get the feeling caring is not much in vogue these days, but that might just be the depression talking. Help prove me right?
My depression is why I will laugh in the face of people who say there are people out there faking depression. Or who just do it for attention.
* Stress image by webslinger9 from deviantArt
Feel free to copy and repost as long as it is used in its entirety and credited.