As I look into depression I find that many people have had pretty traumatic experiences that triggered their depression. Divorce, death, bullying, abuse, low self-esteem: it seems as if most depressed people have problems such as these. But mine just came out of the blue, and the doctors haven't found any chemical imbalance that could have caused my depression.
It just sort of happened. One day I guess I just woke up feeling not-so-great, and it spiraled down from there. I began to withdraw from most social activities and stopped talking to my friends- at the end of the semester I hadn't eaten lunch with my friends in over three weeks. By now there's really only one friend left that I have to talk to and I feel as if I can't bring up my depression to her because she cares so much that it hurts her as well. But back to the point. I began cutting for the temporary relief it provided from my overwhelming amount of thoughts and feelings and it's been getting worse over time. I've also been having more and more suicidal thoughts and during a particularly bad week that translated to 6 near-attempts (as in actually having everything in hand to go through with it and having serious thoughts about suicide). I've been experiencing anhedonia, difficulty concentrating, frequent bouts of crying, and other of the typical signs of depression, but I can't find a reason. I just started questioning existence I suppose and it went downhill from there.
However, this makes me feel horribly guilty because what reason do I have to be depressed? The more I think about it the more I believe that this is somehow my brain subconsciously making an excuse for myself to gain the sympathy of others. Other people have gone through so much and here I am with a perfectly happy (albeit pretty stressed- thought that's mostly because I have difficulty coping with stress) life, depressed and lazy and suicidal for absolutely no reason. My grades have dropped because I haven't been completing or even starting on homework (although that was a pretty normal occurrence before) and I've found it difficult to focus during class (even more so than usual) because of the amount of negative emotions I felt. I thought that maybe it would get better since I'm now on break, but I was only able to stop cutting for about 5 days and then I started again. The lack of focus due to emotions has been overwhelming even without any obligations- most days I just stay in my room jumping between tabs on the internet searching for more information about why I feel the way I do.
I have been clinically diagnosed with depression and am in therapy, but that hasn't really helped because I'm not any closer to figuring out the cause of my depression, which makes me feel worse when I remember how many people are even worse off than I am.
Could there be any other reasons why I feel this way? Has anyone else had a sudden onset of depression without any reason, psychological or otherwise?