I've been dealing with depression since I was a sophomore in college.
Of course, I always had my bad moods and bouts of self-hatred before then -- who doesn't? But I didn't start really feeling the weight of everything until I got older, when I had just moved houses, I was sent off unexpectedly to live in a single room in Sanford, and I sentenced myself to hours of social isolation because my executive-function-challenged ass didn't have the energy -- or willpower -- to work on relationships. The dining hall itself was scary enough.
It was the perfect environment for depression to grow: anxiety about change combined with too much time alone to process it, to beat myself up about how poorly I handled the whole thing. I think I rotted away a bit in that room, even with meds and therapy.
For me, depression was and is like a mold: gross and dark and all-consuming, feeding off of what feels to be your sense of self until it seems like you're not in control of your mind anymore. Like you've been victimized by that diabolical zombie-fungus that eats the brains of ants. You don't want to lay on the floor, unable to move, feeling like you're almost in physical pain and debating self-harm. But something in your head that's not even really you suddenly has control, and dammit, that thing demands that you gotta.
Yeah, these times suck, and it feels like we can't control when our brains decide it's time to kick back and suffer. The depression-fungus is fully at the wheel when we do; we're stuck with a parasite and we're always just along for the ride.
What if I told you, though, that's just an illusion?
Not the "I feel terrible" part, of course, because whatever you're feeling you have a right to feel it. Feeling like crap because you're depressed isn't something you can just brush away with a smile and a cute cat video. I get it, believe me; you don't know how many times people have told me "just find happiness inside you, count your blessings, you have nothing to be upset about!"
Non-depressed people are missing the point. I haven't felt true happiness in at least a few months. I can't just make myself truly happy because I'm a little rusty on what that feels like.
That said, these non-depressed people may be on to something.
Depression destroys your will to fight, then it feeds off of the idea that you can't fight it in the first place, and that you never could, because you're a spineless person who deserves death. It puts the idea in your head that there is nothing you can do to affect your own happiness, because you are clinically depressed and therefore the only way you can feel better is meds and therapy -- other people helping you out of a hole you can't climb out of yourself. This isn't just feeling sad, this is depression, and normal things that people do to feel better are not going to work.
But you can help yourself. You're not at your mind's mercy, or at least not entirely.
The idea that depression is solely caused by a chemical imbalance in the brain is probably a bunch of hooey. According to a Guardian article about depression,
1) "Being acutely lonely is as stressful as being punched in the face by a stranger – and massively increases your risk of depression."
2) "If a community feels it has no control over the big decisions affecting it, the suicide rate will shoot up."
Other large-scale organizations also claim that depression is probably caused by environmental factors.
If external forces also play a role in falling into depression, then you can do something about those external forces. We are not the fungus-possessed ants that our minds make us out to be, we have the ability to take steps to feel better ourselves.
I do not discount the effectiveness of medication and therapy (I use both!). What I am trying to say here is that in addition to these things, there are actions and lifestyle changes we can make ourselves that are incredibly effective in making us feel better.
So do a little "extro-spection," instead of introspection, and figure out what changes you can make. Sometimes the best antidepressants are the ones we find for ourselves.