Depression does not necessarily mean that you feel sad.
When I got diagnosed with Depression, I remember thinking, “That has to be wrong.”
Shocked at the diagnosis, I told the therapist, “But I’m not sad.”
I looked down at the notebook in my hands, full of lists of scribbled words.
I had been carrying that notebook around for two weeks, writing down everything that made me feel like something was wrong with me.
There were a bunch of feelings on those lists. But sad was not one of them.
I wrote:
I feel empty. Like a shell of the person that I was.
Nothing interests me anymore. Even the things I am passionate about and always enjoyed do not interest me. I’d rather do nothing.
It feels like there is a heavy fog around me. I can actually feel the heaviness weighing on me.
It is impossible to concentrate or think straight most of the time.
I am so overwhelmed.
I’m irritable and impatient. I feel myself get angry over minor things.
My stomach hurts more than it should. I am never hungry. When I do try to make myself eat, I am so nauseous that I can’t get much food down.
Sometimes I can’t sleep and stay up all night.
Other times I sleep way too much and can’t get out of bed.
Regardless of how much I sleep, I am always tired.
And I mean deeply exhausted, beyond my body being tired.
The crushing fatigue is the hardest part. I have no energy. I am always completely drained, even when I get enough sleep. I am dragging myself through every day.
I feel worthless. I can’t stop thinking about past mistakes and losses.
I am usually zoned out and feel detached. I am aware of reality; I just don’t feel like I am part of it.
Sometimes I get stuck in place. Like I am frozen and momentarily paralyzed, standing awkwardly in the middle of the room or hallway.
That last one is weird. And kind of scary when I think about it.
(Turns out, there is a name for that symptom: Psychomotor retardation)
I understand sadness as an emotion, and none of this was that.
To me, this felt like the absence of joy, but not sadness.
“I guess I don’t know what depression is. Because I don’t think that I am depressed.”
The therapist told me that it doesn’t just mean being sad. She took out a diagnostic book and showed me what the diagnostic criteria are.
I read through the list of symptoms and realized that Depression was what I was experiencing.
Look for my next article, where I go through the clinical definition of Depression.
For this one, I am going to tell you what it actually feels like.
What does depression feel like?
The best way that I can describe what depression feels like is that it feels like you have a heavy wet blanket on you.
It feels like you are walking slowly through molasses, dragging yourself through the day.
Sometimes it feels like you are stuck in quicksand. The more you try to move, the more you sink.
It feels like you are empty. Emotionally numb.
It can be easy to spiral into negative thoughts. Constantly replaying old pain, fixating on past mistakes and losses. The more you feed that thought pattern, the more overwhelmed with guilt and shame you feel. Then you sulk in feeling worthless.
Depression feels like grief, sometimes with no logical explanation. Sometimes the pain does make sense, but depression makes it unbearable.
There is a complete loss of pleasure or interest in things that you once enjoyed.
Everything feels too exhausting and overwhelming to deal with.
The fatigue is crushing, weighing heavily when you already feel drained.
It actually does feel like a heavy weight on you.
All you want to do is sleep.
But when that time comes, you lie there unable to relax and drift off to sleep.
When you finally do get to sleep, you do not want to get up.
Getting out of bed feels impossible.
If you keep lying there, you just stew in shame and feel like a failure.
You are not lazy. It’s not that you want to stay in bed and do nothing.
But it feels like you can’t do anything else.
Unless there is something forcing you to get up, you cannot motivate yourself to get going.
When you do try to function like a normal human being, every task seems like it weighs more than it normally does.
You become unreasonably irritable and impatient. Minor inconveniences trigger a rage that doesn’t make sense.
You feel overwhelmed and overstimulated.
There is a brain fog so thick that it makes it impossible to concentrate or think straight. Decisions are more difficult than they should be.
Depression is like a dark gray filter on your life. Everything seems dull and bleak. Colors look less bright, and the beauty of the world has faded.
Sometimes depression means you are sad. But being sad is not a requirement. For me, it feels more like an absence of joy than actually being sad.
This is how the experience of depression feels.
Check out my next article, where I explain the clinical definition of Depression and the diagnostic criteria.
💜,
Violet