The truth about how depression makes you feel is that you can’t really describe it.
Depression is..just everything you can’t put into words. Words can never do justice to how depression makes someone feel. It’s not just a feeling that comes and goes. It makes a home inside you. It makes you numb. You feel everything.. yet you feel nothing.
You try hard and hard to get out of it, but the more you try, the harder you fall in it. The harder you lose yourself. Depression takes you away from yourself. It’s not being sad or upset or low for a long time. It’s.. not feeling any sort of emotion. You’re just there.. existing. For what? You don’t know. Why? You don’t know. The purpose? You just don’t know anything. You’re just there breathing.. and letting every day pass by.
Sometimes even those breaths feel like a burden. You ask yourself, why am I breathing? And you get no answer. You lie down and tears just fall out. For no reason. You ask yourself, why am I crying? And again, there’s no answer. You stare at the ceiling, and tears keep falling. You’re not crying that very moment. You’re not screaming or shouting. It is that feeling of numbness that is flowing water out.
You get up and go to the bathroom. There.. right there.. depression steps out and stares hard at you right in front of the mirror. You keep looking at yourself on the other side of the mirror and you feel lost. You look at yourself and so many questions come to your mind, but none has an answer.
You give up and you don’t realize you’ve given up. You lose and you don’t realize everything you lost. People come to you and ask you, ‘How are you?’. Without a second thought, you say, ‘I’m good.’ You don’t lie on purpose or because of the fact that people won’t understand it. It just comes out because that’s what your ideal mind tells you constantly. That you’re okay, and good. Of course you are. What’s wrong? Nothing. Depression gets engraved so deep inside you that you aren’t able to figure out what is actually happening with you. As much as you want to, all of it seems impossible.
Some days, you don’t feel like getting out of bed in the morning. Because you feel you’ll never be ready to face the world. Some days, you get out of bed, something falls down and that is all it takes to bring tears in your eyes. You wish to go back to bed again, you wish to sleep, and sometimes you wish to sleep forever.
I’ve been there.
How It Feels According to People With Depression
Everyday you wake up to a new morning feeling heavy in the heart, with absolutely no desire to leave the bed, you feel miserable for no reason, there is indefinite sadness and you can not figure out why.. There is anger and frustration, and there is no vent for it. you are disinterested in everything, everything that you once loved doesn't excite you anymore. Everything that you do seems like a waste of time, you think of what would happen if you die, you contemplate if people will cry for you and end up thinking you aren't worth crying for. you hit the bed with the thought of never waking up. you drive and wish for someone to hit you from behind, or fall under a moving truck. You don't wish to bump into people because then you have to smile and put up a facade. you don't want to have any human connection. Depression is more like lifelessness and you're just another Deadman Walking.
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Depression to me feels like a mix of feelings and thoughts. Mine comes and goes throughout the day and I can be anywhere and if it hits I feel paralyzed. Right now its 4 p.m. my mood gets worse in the afternoon, always has. I feel guilty a lot, guilty for not doing anything because I’m too tired and un motivated. I feel guilty, for locking myself in my room, away from everyone because I do love my friends and family but its hard to socialize when you don’t feel good. I feel irritated and defensive and regret it later. I see people around me motivated to go to school, to go running, to go to the movies. Its hard for me to do it because I don’t see the purpose, I don’t see the purpose in anything really sometimes. Then sometimes when it gets bad my thoughts become a bit irrational. Thoughts like “no one cares or actually listens to me”, “‘I make everyone around me depressed”. I hate guilt.
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You hear the birds chirping, the alarm clock ringing, water running down the buckets. Sunlight peeps into your room through a little crack in the window and you know it's time. Time to wake up, time to bid adieu to the darkness that emerged from the night before, the darkness that once witnessed you sleeping throughout, keeps you awake now. It begs you to stay a little longer and inhale its silence, because the voices inside your head decided to hit the mute button and are still too loud to bear somehow. They shout and remain silent at the same time, they make you wanna leave your body and disappear into a tiny speck of dust.
The 3 am that once haunted you, comforts you and the 3 pm that once made you laugh, chokes you everyday.
You feel the heat, but you don't feel warm. You feel cold, but you don't feel the calm. The wind blows in your face, but it refuses to dry the sweat inside you. It rains day and night, but your insides remain covered in dust. The sun shines everyday, but you freeze away piece by piece inside.
Every emotion that you once felt, crumples up like a piece of paper and you don't feel pain anymore. It's part of your system now. Like breathing, it's constant. You hardly notice it anymore. It introduces you to numbness, your new companion. Numbness, that makes you look directly into the eyes of people and say that you're okay. You say it a million times before you start believing it yourself.
You feel suffocated even when the air around you is composed of oxygen. You feel trapped even when all the doors and windows in your house are wide open.
You think about putting an end to it. Every second of everyday, you think about escaping. So you start running, you run like crazy. And you don't stop until you realize that you've lost your way back home, to yourself. But it's too late now, and you've come so far that you feel tired in your bones. So you just sit there and stare into nothingness.
You try to make sense of everything and nothing, all at once. It makes you go insane to the point where you resort yourself to alcohol, self harm and meaningless music, where there's no melody but only sounds. Sounds that distract you from your own thoughts. You meet yourself only when you get high. But the meeting is brief and the next thing you know, your body flushes it all out and makes you sober again. The hangovers hurt more than heartbreaks, yet your body craves for intoxication every second. You kiss more bottles than people and feel no regret, because nothing matters anymore.
Every night, the silence around you, instigates a tornado of thoughts inside your brain until you doze off. Every day, you force yourself to crawl out of the bed, and enter into the haunted days that consist of the same monotonous routine where you scroll away your loneliness on your phone.
Everyday, you see the people around you. Smiling. Talking. Living. They all seem so happy and you ask yourself, why can't you be like them for once? You think for a long time and eventually stop searching for the answers. Your brain gives up and shuts down completely.
You do everything. You brush your teeth, you take baths, you eat, you pee, you read and you sleep. But every activity in your life loses its purpose.
You look everywhere but you see nothing. Not even a dead end.
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The feeling that “tomorrow” is guaranteed to be a “bad day” regardless of how much you try to prepare for it or anything that you try to do. That if there was any possible way to avoid tomorrow completely. Or to somehow postpone it. Or to never have to reach it or deal with it. Or to somehow skip over it. Then you would definitely take that option if you could.
THAT feeling.
Now imagine this same feeling being applied to ALL of your “tomorrows”. Every single day without fail or a day off from it. That feeling of desperately not wanting “tomorrow” to happen. Wishing always that tomorrow never comes. It doesn’t matter if it is your birthday, or if tomorrow is “payday”, or if you are catching up with an old friend that you care about and miss dearly, or if you have tickets to a concert to see your favorite artist. or whatever. That feeling is still there hovering over you poised to strike regardless.
Most people fully rested and at their maximum strength can reluctantly deal with 1 “dreaded day” they don’t want to face and do what they need to do quite easily. Or 2 of these kinds of days in a row with only a little push. Or 7 of these kinds days in a row if they have to. Or 30 of these kinds of days in a row if they have no other choice. Or 90 of these kinds of days if they absolutely can’t avoid it.
But what about hundreds of these types of days in a row? Or how about thousands?
The reason people can usually push through these kinds of long periods of crappiness is because they know (or hope) that it is exactly that. Just a “period” and eventually it is going to end and they’ll come out on the other side as long as they keep pushing forwards and get through it. But what if via the sheer persistent relentlessness of this experience put you in a position in which you no longer had that knowledge or hope. That it felt more like just 1 more step into an endless gaping void with absolutely nothing on the horizon to indicate that it even had “an end”. That any hope you once had for your “future tomorrows” to be or feel any different from the last was gone and each step you took is far more likely just going be the same as all of the rest?
Regardless of how strong you are, or how much you keep “toughing it out” and “pushing on through”, or how much you “don’t want to let down or disappoint those you love”… the sheer relentlessness of it gradually wears you down and wears you out in ebbs and flows. Until inevitably one day you find that you simply don’t have anything left to push with. The “tank” is officially empty… and there are not even fumes left. All of the “fight” that was left in you to push forwards is just gone.
… and THAT is a description of the gradual process of what depression feels like to experience over time.
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Look at this picture. How did you feel? I assume you feel nothing.
Yes! this is how you feel when you are depressed. Did that break your bubble? It did mine.
Initially I thought depression was about someone crying the entire night with their face buried in the pillow and tears dripping down their eyes. Oh! I wish it was. I would have been depressed all the time. In fact 90% of the population would have been depressed. But it isn’t. Crying is better, atleast you can feel the pain. The rush of emotions that goes through your body, you can feel them all. How lucky is that?
Then comes the DEPRESSION.
The depression that I came to know is waking up 8 in the morning with puffed face, smeared make up, bloodshot eyes and feeling nothing. Yes nothing. The white ceiling becomes the only view you are going to have in the next few days. Lying horizontally is the only posture you will be in for the next few weeks.
What about the pain? you ask. It isn’t there. You see that’s the worst part. You shut down your senses. Pizza tastes like broccoli. Or it doesn’t? You don’t know or maybe because you stopped caring.
You don’t laugh but you don’t cry either. You don’t want to live but death is not what you want. All you need is the emotions that you’ve lost.
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All I am feeling right now is numbness. I am not happy for the things I should be happy for. I am not sad for the things I should be sad for. Nothing is affecting me and that's affecting me.
Sometimes, I feel that there is something in my brain which is trying to explode but is unable to. I don't find things interesting. I don't find people interesting. I talk to 2–3 people because I know only they can save me from drowning in this dark sea.
I have lost interest in things I used to admire. I want to cry but I am not always able to. I want to shout and express what is going inside but I am unable to.
I have been faking smile and laugh for days or months or may be one year. People know about me only the way I want them to know about me. Because I have been called as “sentiqueen” and “attention seeker” every time I tried to open up and tell people what I feel. So I try to keep myself busy. But every day at least once, I feel like giving up. I feel that I can't take it anymore.
Everything is going pretty well in my life. Be it my career or my family. I have everything and still, I feel that I have nothing. I am unwell. Nobody accepts it. Nobody understands it. Not even my family. And I won't blame them.
If this miserable feeling is depression, then yes, I am depressed. And I am not ashamed in admitting that I might seek professional help.
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Imagine if you will wake up tomorrow morning to a complete feeling of utter hopelessness, helplessness and despair.
Imagine that no matter how hard you try to get out of this deep dark hole something within your mind/brain keeps pulling you back to that place of helplessness. Every thought is an effort, every action feels like an impossibility.
Imagine being a bystander to your own life. Yes, life is happening all around you but you don’t seem to be a part of it. Now, once you have imagined all that imagine what it must be like to be told to ‘just think positive’ ‘exercise more’ ‘pray harder to whichever god you have chosen to follow’ ‘eat more vegetables’ or my personal favorite’ just snap out of it’
I know it’s impossible for you to imagine all this unless you have been through it because you have nothing in your experience to relate to. Depression isn’t about being sad or disappointed that life hasn’t lived up to your expectations, it’s an illness that can be life changing and life ending.
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The color is gone from life.
You are emotionally void. You feel nothing but emptiness, and you mourn the happiness you've lost.
Concrete desires dissolve. You don't want to engage in activities you usually like, be it socializing, hobbies, work, or school. With nothing you want to do, there's no reason to get out of bed. With nothing you want to do, there's no reason to even move or think, so you feel like you're living in slow motion. With nothing you want to do, there's no hope for the future, since you can't be happy or fulfilled if there's nothing you want.
Your mind is occupied with the events that triggered your depression, since there is nothing else. You ruminate on the source of your misery. You feel worthless. You feel like a miserable failure who let yourself and everyone else down.
You're either chronically sleep-deprived or lethargic from oversleeping. You have no appetite (but may still eat to fill the void). Your body aches, especially when you are anxious.
Your only desire is to escape this. You fantasize about death's release. You wonder if you might have the courage somewhere in you to end it.
You distract yourself in any way possible, and there are many unhealthy ways to do this. You may fill your time drinking, eating, smoking, or moving on to harder drugs. You may resort to cutting to lift the veil of numbness.
If you're lucky, someone will be there to help distract you. It's incredibly hard to reach out once the depression settles in, so you can't assume you'll get this support.
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In Short- it feels horrible.
I've been battling with mental illness for a while now; we don't realize the gravity of mental illness until and unless it is leashed to you like bubble gum on shoes. While growing up, I was sexually abused by my cousin for three years almost. And that thing stayed in my head- caused paranoia and trust issues. It started with occasional zone outs followed by skipping meals and then losing feeling for people, and at one point, I lost it all, and that's when I attempted my first ever suicide in class 8th. I was never a bright student, at least not in maths and science- I hated looking at equations, solving them and watching my other friends do it and me sitting clueless in a class led to people avoiding me. I brushed it off, tried multiple times and somehow managed to make it and finally no more maths or science.
Depression is like...nothing.
And I mean it.
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The most interesting thing about depression is that you don't get to know you are in the trap unless you come out of it and look back few months later.
Depression never hits you, it'll come to you like your loving pet when you're all down and it'll sleep in your lap and it'll stay there until you shoo it away. Most of the times it won't go away no matter how hard you try. It won't leave you!!! For the world it'll look like you're irritated because of something, even better, they call you arrogant for your behavior.
They don't see the battle you're in. They don't want to see. They just can't see it!
You won't speak of it because you've tried discussing it with people who were supposed to help you but even they have given up on you. You have given up on yourself. You don't know what to do. What not to do. You know you're in some trouble, sometimes you know what the problem is, you know that issue to the core of it, but that doesn't help. Knowing what the problem is doesn't help!!!
You've fought the same battle before, but that doesn't help. Nothing helps.
You skip meals for days yet you don't feel hungry. You don't have energy to wake up, to engage in anything productive, so you choose to sit on your bed, because sleep has left you long back. The only times you get sleep now is when your body is not able to keep you up, when it goes to doze mode, but even that doesn't continue for more than 2-3 hours.
You are sleep deprived. You are not eating. And you are having nightmares.
Few weeks into this, and people start coming to you, start giving lectures and their advice for what you should've done to avoid that failure. They give advice like some expert. They speak like they have been through what you're going through. But they don't know a thing about it! It feels like they are accusing you for all your failures.
They accuse you of not trying enough. But they don't know you tried your ass off. You tried whatever you could. You almost killed yourself trying to make it work. But it didn't! It just couldn't work!!!
Tired of all the people, you start seeking "the alone". You start hating people. You make distance from everyone. You want the people who "understand" you to call you, to meet you, to talk to you, to help you out of it. But people disappoint. Yeah. They do. Always.
You realize that "Don't ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody" is perhaps the greatest line ever written in any book! You think of suicide but you can't do it. You won't do it!
Because depression doesn't let you do anything! Any thing!!
Retrospection, Introspection and all other
inspections don't help you. They never did. They never do. They work in theory. Your situation is not mentioned in any theory. You are not living a life lived by anyone else before. Nobody has any idea about what is inside you.
You give up. You give up on everything/everyone/anything/anyone.
Because that makes sense. The only thing that makes sense is "Giving Up!".
And you never know when you are out of it. You don't have any idea when the battle came to an end! It happens one day.
And then you see someone else fighting the same, and you know telling them that you understand won't help them. You know they have tried.
And you sit back and think that depression is some sort of mixture of Love and Death.
Love because you never know when it came to you and when it left you, you are in the trance and your whole perspective changes. Death because deep down you know what is lost, you know what it means , you know an empty stomach and sleepless nights won't bring it back, but you don't want to believe it so easy. You perhaps loved that lost thing so much! You wanted it like anything!
And
Depression is like nothing.
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Depression is pain. The worst kind of suffering.
It becomes increasingly hard to sleep at night — every morning begins on a morose note.
The scariest part about depression is not the endless blanket of darkness that covers you.
The scariest thing about depression is the moment of realization that repeatedly shows that you have lost yourself.
Each time you close your eyes, your soul sinks into the depths of the primordial ocean of pain.
You can’t sleep. You can’t escape. The thoughts keep haunting you.
2 a.m.
Churning thoughts have robbed your sleep away.
A nightmare — except it’s all happening.
It’s real. It’s not something that will go away once you wake.
It seems like the nightmare is here to stay.
You have even lost your tears. Those tears of acid have already broken you.
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It is a tough time that anyone has to go through. It’s like you are pushing yourself to the edge again and again without knowing why it has happened. You don’t feel like doing anything just stay where you are. Mostly it is your room, which makes the situation even worse. And people around do not understand it as they have never experienced the same.
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Speaking as someone who has wrestled with this condition my whole life, including hospitalizations:
You are in an exhausted haze, and are forgetful.
You can't concentrate, and it therefore consumes a great amount of energy to concentrate enough to perform even simple tasks.
You don't care about anything you normally would have, because you just don't see the point of doing the activities you normally do.
You don't reach out to anyone because you figure they will judge you, or minimize your problems, or think you are crazy, or that you will just bring them down.
Tears fall down your face so often that you stop noticing. You start crying at the drop of a hat, sometimes for no reason.
Everything in your life feels like an Everest too high for you to climb, too big to manage, impossible to control.
You still love the people you love, but, you figure they will be better off without you in the place that you are, and you don't want to upset or concern them.
Stuff falls through the cracks in your life, and you don't care.
You'd rather be asleep than awake.
You don't want to be in public because everything and everyone reminds you of how unhappy and messed up and alone you are.
Your appetite decreases, or possibly increases because you try to fill yourself with comfort food that never really comforts.
You can see yourself going in a downward spiral.
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I’m going to assume that you don’t have depression but merely wish to know what it’s like.
Imagine picking up your favourite ice cream from the store, taking it home, and when you put a spoonful in your mouth it just tastes … okay. Not great, not mouth watering, not even special or different. You figure it must be just this batch or maybe it didn’t pair well with the dinner. So the next time you go for ice cream you’re hopeful that it’ll be good this time. But it’s still bland and boring.
So you go back to the store and stand in front of the ice cream section, and your favourite ice cream doesn’t call out to you anymore. You WANT it to, you WANT your ice cream to taste great, to be that little escape, but it doesn’t work. You find yourself not buying ice cream anymore.
Now instead of ice cream, imagine that it’s your hobby or a relationship that you’re in. You used to find photography interesting, but now it’s just something to do. You know you have a strong connection to this person, but they don’t make your heart race anymore.
You go outside on a sunny day and you can’t see the vibrancy or contrast, I mean you can see it, it’s there, it just doesn’t make you feel any different. It could be grey for all you care. You smile at people on the street not because you’re feeling happy but because that’s what people do, they smile at one another. People ask you how you feel and you honestly say you feel fine. Not terrible, not great, not anything, just … fine.
You lie in bed looking at the ceiling wondering what you can do but none of it matters. You don’t feel drawn to do anything, to get up, to go anywhere, to see anyone. You can laugh, but the joy doesn’t stay. You are staring into a bleak void no matter where you turn and no matter what others do. You feel like rubber, where things can press against you, but nothing makes an impression anymore. Sure it may be fun in the moment, but the truth, the reality is that it’ll be over, this too shall pass, and you’ll be looking at the ceiling again.
That’s how crippling depression has felt to me. I don’t feel sad, not really, I just feel empty, listless, like a ship without wind, without water, in a bottle on someone more interesting’s shelf.
“If you know someone who’s depressed, please resolve never to ask them why. Depression isn't a straightforward response to a bad situation; depression just is, like the weather.
Try to understand the blackness, lethargy, hopelessness, and loneliness they’re going through. Be there for them when they come through the other side. It’s hard to be a friend to someone who’s depressed, but it is one of the kindest, noblest, and best things you will ever do.”
~~~~ Stephen Fry
It is essential to make people who are suffering from depression feel like they are not alone. People don't talk about mental health that openly- it starts with making one feel comfortable enough to come out and talk about it- don't make one feel like an alien because they suffer from it, let them in and soak their emotions and try to feel what they think before they think that only way out is through death.
Hope you found this article helpful? Feel free to share with others and don’t fail to let me know how you feel via the comment box.