What Does Depression Really Feel Like?

What Does Depression Really Feel Like?

“Mental pain is less dramatic than physical pain, but it is more common and also more hard to bear. The frequent attempt to conceal mental pain increases the burden. It is easier to say, ‘My tooth is aching’ than to say ‘My heart is broken’.” ~ C.S. Lewis

“It’s so difficult to describe depression to someone who’s never been there, because it’s not sadness. I know sadness. Sadness is to cry and to feel. But it’s that cold absence of feeling—that really hollowed-out feeling.” —J.K. Rowling

“What they don’t tell you about depression is that sometimes it feels a lot less like sadness and a lot more like the emotional equivalent of watching paint dry.” —Alexis, Tumblr

“That’s the thing about depression: A human being can survive almost anything, as long as she sees the end in sight. But depression is so insidious, and it compounds daily, that it’s impossible to ever see the end. The fog is like a cage without a key.” —Elizabeth Wurtzel, author

“I am in that temper that if I were under water I would scarcely kick to come to the top.” —John Keats, poet

“You may be surrounded with all the comforts of life and yet be in wretchedness more gloomy than death if the spirits are depressed. You may have no outward cause whatever for sorrow and yet if the mind is dejected, the brightest sunshine will not relieve your gloom. … There are times when all our evidences get clouded and all our joys are fled. Though we may still cling to the Cross, yet it is with a desperate grasp.” – Charles Spurgeon

Read this description of depression from an anonymous source:

“As a person who has experienced clinical depression nearly my whole life, I can identify with each of these quotes.  It is a lonely trudge through each day. My depression started as a young child. I don’t remember any time in my life that I haven’t experienced it. It is like a tumor growing larger and larger everyday until I can bare it no more. Growing up in trauma and then continuing that trauma throughout my adult years has been the cause of my depression.  It’s much worse at times than other times.

When my depression is at it’s worst, I feel very hopeless and down. I can’t even cry because I can’t feel any feelings. I am numb. I see no future and no reason to live. These are the most difficult symptoms to overcome. I don’t feel any happiness or joy and things that sounded enjoyable at one time, mean nothing. I sleep all the time and I still feel tired. I can barely drag myself out of bed and then I go to work and pretend.  It’s exhausting. All I wanted was to feel better, so I would eat things that were fatty and sweet and comforting but unhealthy.

I feel extreme guilt that I can’t manage to even come home and fix dinner for my children and husband. I know I am letting them down. I’m irritable and easily frustrated with them and I will yell a lot more than normal.  Then they say, “Why is mom always yelling?” Once when my depression was so extreme and I knew I was yelling literally all the time at them, I knew they would be better off without me. I got some pills and went to say goodbye to someone who I wanted to see before I died. That person knew me well to know I was in danger.  They took my pills and I was admitted to the hospital. I was then admitted to an intensive outpatient program. The program helped me to hear the truth about my life. Their psychiatrist helped me with medication. I got better. There is always an underlying clinical depression, but they gave me some hope and tools to use when I think I can’t go forward.

What do I need when these times come? I need to feel listened to so I’m not alone. I need others not to judge but just to listen.

~ Anonymous

A Poem: The Rain

Why rain to describe pain and suffering?

Why not sun? Beating down, parching, cracking the ground, arid where nothing grows.

Drought hardens even the best soil.

Why not ice and snow, freezing me to my core, causing tissue to die, exposed unremittingly?

Muzzling the grass and stifling growth.

Blizzards, more accumulating minute by minute

Why not wind, a tornado sweeping me away, leveling all in its path?

Debris lying scattered, buildings and structures ravaged.

A cyclone flooding coastal soils, showing no mercy, dismantling the earth beneath its inward rotation.

Why rain? Why rain? Floods that sweep me away, rapidly taking me places I do not want to go. Trying desperately to keep my head above the waves. How can I breathe when the hands of the waves push down on my head to submerge me, suffocating? Do I try? Do I give in?

Maybe a storm? Spheres of crystal penetrate my body to fracture it, damaging the surroundings.

Soon hail turns to sleet, slowing, transitioning into rain.

Succeeding the rain, the clouds may remain.

Ultimately life breaks through.

I chose a wildflower for another, displaying the beauty of the rain.

~Anonymous