What does depression feel like?
Sometimes it’s hard to explain, and sometimes it feels realer than anything else in the world.
Depression can be a feeling. A feeling of dread, numbness, sometimes pain. Other times it can take on its own form. A shadow that overcomes and overwhelms you. A thick smoke that clouds over you and takes over your mind. It whispers invasive thoughts, meant to fill you with self-hatred, feeding on your insecurities, your worries, and your biggest fears.
Some days it’s like what you see on a commercial. A raincloud over your head that just dampens your day. Other days, it becomes you. It feels you with its thoughts, until everything is flipped around, and ruined for you. You question yourself, your life, the people around you, even your own sanity. Making a mistake, means you’re a complete failure. Having a flaw, means you’re worthless. Not being the best at something, means you’ll never be good at anything. Feeling lost, means you have no place in the world.
Then there are the days where it is your attacker, and you are its prisoner. It feels as if you’re locked in a tiny room, overcome with that thick, shadowy figure, engulfing in its presence, surrounding your every being. Suffocating you with its thoughts, its words becoming the only thing you hear. A broken record, replaying those dark thoughts over and over again. “You’re worthless.” “You’re meaningless.” “Nobody likes you, nobody cares about you.” “There is no point to your life.” Until you start to believe them. Until it hurts to listen. Until you can’t think about anything else but that.
There are times when all you want to do is escape those thoughts. Or sometimes, it just makes you believe those thoughts, to the point where you don’t see why you continue on living. In those times, the conclusion many people will come to is to end their own life. “If I end it, the thoughts will end soon too,” or even “If there really is no point in my life, why not end it now?”
No one really likes to talk about it. People with depression can feel embarrassed, or don’t exactly understand it themselves, sometimes can’t even explain it if they tried. It’s hard. It’s not like other illnesses. You can’t see it. Not exactly. I could argue that you could see it in their eyes, in their presentation of themselves. Or hear it in their voice, how they talk about themselves, how they let others talk about them. Possibly even feel it. However, it’s a physical illness so people like to think it’s not really there.
“It’s all in your head,” Some people will tell you. Well, of course it is. That’s what makes it even more real. It’s in your head, it’s in your thoughts, it’s in the way you perceive the world, it’s in the way you perceive yourself. It’s everything. It’s an invader, an attacker, another darker version of yourself.
“Why can’t you just be happy?”
I’ve heard this so many times. It’s simple. It’s not that simple.
If we could just change our way of thinking, think “positive thoughts,” look on the “bright side” and be “optimistic” we would. But we can’t. We’ve tried. We’ve fought the thoughts, maybe sometimes we win. Not all the time. If we could be happy, we’d be happy. There is something in the way we’re wired, something blocking that trait that everyone else seems to have access to. Therefore, we just can’t.
Maybe it’s not all the time. Maybe it’s something that comes up once in a blue moon, or once every year, once every couple of months, once a month, once a week, once a day, or maybe it’s endless. But it’s there. It’s real.
I don’t know how to tell someone with depression how to fix it. I’m still learning myself. However, I know that having someone to listen to you, that will try to understand, can help a lot. Having friends be there for them, family who will listen, or even being able to try and work through it with a professional will severely help. For those with depression, don’t be scared to reach out for help. For those without it, don’t be so quick to brush it off, and try to understand that depression is profoundly real. The best thing to do is try to understand it.
