What does depression feel like?

I'm invisible, walking through a dark, smelly, underground tunnel, with no way out--and I have two balls and chains that are hooked up to my feet; I want to get out, but I know its not gonna be any better than where I am; its gonna be cold, grey, stormy, and there will be angry people dressed in black and demons waiting to stone and crucify me.

My depression feels like complete exhaustion that no amount of sleep will remedy. Not suppose to sleep "too much" yet only sleep gives me relief, especially when I am trying to maintain an appearance so others cannot see the pain and exhaustion.

My sleep is interrupted and I don't get enough deep sleep. It just makes me feel more depressed. I spent too much time with distractors that I don't work at what I usually need to work at. I guess that is when hopeless sneaks in.

Hi Radio,

I have been feeling like this too. I have been recently diagnosed with depression. Yet I thought that this was just me, being me! My sister-in-law, said I am talking like im depressed. One of the symptoms I am having is not getting up till lunch time, as I feel, what's the point. This is how I feel. I had Ocd a long time, and had therapy this year, which made me so down, cos they didn't help me properly.

I hope you can get some meds from your doc, and start to feel better soon. I am gonna have an appointment in the new year, for new meds. And therapy too. Wishing you a Merry Christmas!

Wow, sundog, that is the best description I've heard. It's just how I feel.

For me it's a constant ache that sucks out every positive feeling leaving behind negative ones like hurt, sadness, doubt and anger. I also feel like I have a burning ball of pain in my chest, kind of like heartburn.

I also have a hard time accepting it. I have a medical condition which doesn't really have many immediate symptoms which I have an easier time accepting. For depression it's evident that I have a ton of symptoms, but in my head I have a very hard time with it.

My depression ranges in its severity. When I am slightly depressed I lose interest in things I enjoy. I start to withdraw from family and friends and isolate myself. I just don't feel like being around anyone. Then I start to feel tired and fatigued a lot. It becomes hard to concentrate. Everything take so much enegry to do, like even making food for myself. I lose interest in hygine and just start sleeping and watching TV a lot. After that things start to get really bad. I get intense feelings of hopelessness. My self-esteem plummets and I feel worthless or I start to hate myself. I get suicidal thoughts. I also self harm as a way to cope with feelings when it is really bad. It helps me to feel numb or relieved for a while when all I can do is think about how much I don't want to live. It's only got worse than that, which ended in attempts to end it. That is what it is like for me. Everyone is different and depression can be different to different people.

It feels like being in hell, with no energy remaining but yet you still exist and have to endure it. It's being in an infinitely deep pit of sorrow and despair that you can't climb out of. It is overpowering, overwhelming, and it takes over your entire entity. It controls your thoughts, your mind, your physical body, it makes you slow, it paralyzes you, it mutes you, it kills you.

I don't know my official diagnosis because Im too afraid to ask my T, but I went to therapy initially because of depression/anxiety and mainly because I was really scared about my ruminations and si...For me, depression feels like a heavy weight that is on top of me and there is absolutely no way to lift it. It's a part of me now and I just have to suffer. There's no way out - whichever way I go, all is lost. It doesn't even matter anymore what I do, I'm worthless. I'm nothing. In fact, I'm hurtful to others with how bad I am so I might as well give up completely. My body hurts, my heart is broken and literally feels in pain at times, I'm sinking deeper and deeper but it's like no one understands me. The words won't come out to explain because I don't even know how to get them out. It takes too much energy to even talk so I don't. Yet, there's this restless feeling too at times that makes me uncomfortable - like I want to crawl out of my skin. Only there's nothing I can do to fix it because of the heavy weight. It's torture.

What does depression feel like? That is such a question. I have fought w/ it for 30 years, and it's hard for me to put into words what it feels like. I feels like death. The death of my soul. It feels like every thing that I love has been taken from me. It feels like endless nights not being able to sleep, but so exhausted I can't stay awake. It feels like endless days that I have to put up w/ people that have no idea what I'm going through, but I have to be nice anyway. It feels like somebody sitting on my chest. It feels like my heart has been ripped from my chest and I'll never be loved again. It feels like every bad thing that has ever happened to me happening over and over again, and I can't stop it.

But I refuse to let the bastard win, and will keep going one day at a time.

I cycle between depression and anxiety...or sometimes a nightmare combo of the 2. It's feeling like you want isolate, but then not wanting to be by yourself. That causes agitation, whiich makes it unpleasant to be around me, so my b-friend goes out to let me be alone and that reinforces my negative thought that people can't stand me.

That's me on a bad day..sometimes this can last a few days until i force myself to go out to a meeting, wk out ,see a friend anything that changes my surroundings.

When I'm realy down and suffering it's difficult to remember that these things work to pull me out of a slump. I have really force myself to do these things. And that struggle is exhausting and sometimes I just don't want to have to put so much effort into daily life just to keep myhead above water.

Thanks for the interesting thread

Take care

A few days ago I had a conversation with my 2 teens- 14 & 16- about my mental state and tried explaining this to them. I've been having a lot of anxiety and started with that and they both got it.

I told them it's like the sick feeling of dread you get when you did something really, really bad and you know you're going to have to deal with it. If you try to hide it- you're gonna get busted and if you confess, you imagine taht you're in big trouble. It's that same feeling of fear and dread and it doesn't go away and the worst part is, with anxiety- you didn't do anything wrong. They both understood this right away.

When I tried to describe depression, it was so much harder. I couldn't come up with desriptions for the feelings I have. So I tried to explain the deep sadness that is just there no matter how hard I try to think of positive things or try to be rational. The crying and not knowing why and the feeling that you don't deserve to be loved.... I didn't have any good analogies to use. My daughter uderstood the crying bit. As a 16 year old girl, she's had to deal with hormone changes over the past couple years. My son, although very concerned and wanting to understand, told me that he has absolutely no concept of what I was describing. I told him I was glad he didn't.

What my son did understand is that I've had no control over it. I told him that it is and illness that I have to fight with treatment and there is no way for me to just think my way out of it no matter how hard I try. His response was, "Of course. That would be like me trying to think my way out of an athsma attack. It doesn't work."

Take the worst day of your life and feel that way all the time. Welcome to depression.

In terms of where misunderstandings arise, people are trying to understand depression within the limits of their own experience and what they can imagine what’s happening to themselves, the chief difficulty with depression is that people tend to confuse depression the emotion & depression the illness. Because everybody knows what it’s like to feel depressed they assume they can imagine what it’s like being depressed, or they make a link between the two which doesn’t exist.
The chief difference is; depression the emotion will come up like any other emotion then go away- emotions are fleeting they don’t last, you will feel an emotion in response to something and after a while it will go away cause you’re going to respond to something else or something new will come up and your emotions will change in response to that.
Emotions to a certain degree you have control of, like actors get paid to control their emotions. There are certain things you can do to influence your emotions say if you’re feeling really sad or down in the dumps there are things you can do to make you feel better, like someone telling you to go for a walk or take a bath, the things they would do if they are depressed, the trouble is that doesn’t work for being depressed, because being depressed is a state of being- it’s something that is continuous and it lasts a long period of time, to be diagnosed you have to be depressed for 2 weeks or an extended period of time & it’s not something that you can control through your own volition , you can try to influence it to a certain degree & it’s true going for a walk might be quite nice & do you good for a while but the effect will not last.
People have a neutral state of being, a normal feeling of contentment, imagine a graph where happy is high and average[neutral]is the middle & sad is low, most people are in the middle where they are going along, they sometimes go up or sometimes go down but they will always come back to that average, that neutral state in the middle.
Someone with depression as an average which is much lower than what a healthy person would be feeling, So say when a healthy person gets upset going along the middle line they do something to make them feel better and brings them back up to that standard and they carry on. Someone with depression is going along at this lower level and something happens to make them sad they go down even further, and if they do something to try and cheer themselves up like go for a walk or reading a book, it might lift them up even over their standard but in the end they will always come back down to that low standard and carry on.
What you can’t do with depression to raise your standard[low]just by doing things you enjoy although it may alleviate some of your negative emotions you’re getting, it won’t have a lasting effect. The standard you come back to is still going to be lower than somebody who is healthy and that’s something a lot of people don’t appreciate. I’m not saying that you do something you enjoy or find relaxing won’t help, it may last a while after but if you have depression the illness you will come back down to feeling rubbish, inevitably.
If you want to change the way that you are, normally it’s either therapy, medication or both. It’s true that depression can arise as a result of something and that is like the emotion depression, in the same way the emotion depression can happen as a result of an event & you feel crap for a while. That won’t cause you clinical depression; if an event does cause clinical depression than by default that event would be significantly distressing because you don’t get clinical depression from a broken relationship, if you do then it certainly means there was an underlying problem to begin with and it was bound to surface sooner or later, It just took that event to set it off.
Also its true that environment and circumstances plays an important role but everyone is exposed to that and not everyone gets clinical depression; there as to be a predisposition if you’re going to develop it. The main thing you need to stress for somebody to understand this is there is a clear distinction between depression the emotion and depression the disease [illness]. Depression the emotion which will come and go to a certain degree you can influence it, depression the illness is a constant state of being and it’s something cannot choose to stop feeling, you can try and do something to make you feel better but it won’t last.
People are often dismissive of depression telling you to “Pull your socks up”, “Get over it”, ”Stop wallowing” because they think that what’s happened is you have a healthy level of being which is normal or neutral and that you dropped down for whatever reason and your trying to keep yourself there like your just wallowing in your misery, self-pity & indulging in attention seeking, & that your keeping yourself down, whereas if you just “Snapped out of it” you would go back to your normal state, but the fact is if you have depression your norm will not be in the middle between happy and sad, your norm [neutral] is going to make you feel like rubbish, you can try to make yourself feel better for a while but you’re always going to come back to feeling miserable and it’s not something you can change through will power.
You cannot snap out of depression no more than you can snap out of the flu because it’s much more serious than a temporary alteration in your emotional state. If you wanted to change you have to address the psychological issue that might be a co-existing mental illness or your reaction to a certain trauma or a biological issue that’s causing it, for example your brain cannot regulate your emotions in the way that it should or both, in any case it is perhaps influenced by a traumatic event or stressful circumstances or a biological disposition to develop it, depression does run in families and there is a certain genetic influence going on there.

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For me, deoression is exhaustion. I'm always so tired. But not the I want to sleep tired, more like heavy. My whole body feels kind of heavy. Like breathing and even sitting up takes work. And often I get confused. My head feels full and I get confused easily. I lose concentration easily and find myself drifting off to a world where I just think about nothing. But a lot o the time during this I feel trapped and like I need to do something. I feel restless and move about because I don't want to jut sit there and I feel like I might explode if I don't do something.

Some times I have bad days where everything is worse. Suddenly everything is way too much work and ill stop walking half way up the stairs and just sit down or curl up on the stairs because its too much. Sometimes I'll sit down and I can feel gravity working on my head and feel the top half I my body slowly being pulled down. At this point everything slows down, including my brain. My breathing slows down. And my thoughts are very slow.

I'm sure I've replied to this thread before. I can't remember and don't feel like looking through the pages to see. I, also, haven't been here since 2011. So, I've grown a little as a person and have been through more ups and downs in the past two years than I could have ever dreamt up... so, I'm sure my answer will differ slightly anyway.

Depression is... that's such a strange way to start a statement. I suppose the easiest way to explain it would be to say that it's almost maddening. Some days, I feel like I'm going stark raving mad. It's looking in the mirror and not recognizing yourself. It's looking in the mirror and wondering who that person staring back at you even is. But it's much more than that.

Depression is finally falling asleep at the crack of dawn and not wanting to wake up because you just don't have the energy to face the next day. But you have no choice but to wake up because your thoughts won't let you rest comfortably enough to fall asleep again. Check the clock. Two hours. Two hours of sleep. Depression is lying in bed in the middle of the night, wondering when your life is going to start. It's staring at your dog as he stares at his leash, wondering if you'll have the energy to walk him today. Or if you'll walk him for ten minutes and decide you just can't be outside much longer. It's when you try to do all those things you once enjoyed, but find yourself deriving no joy from them any longer. Instead you just stare at the computer, or the tv, or the book. Staring blankly as you wonder why you tried to do it again in the first place.

I've barely scratched the surface here. It's still so much more. For me, I go through periods of different emotions. Almost different personalities. Perhaps it's not just depression in my case. But when it is, there's two extremes. On one end, I feel absolutely melancholic. I become despondent, even. These days, I spend most of the day in my room. Sometimes I'll cry. Sometimes I won't. Either way, my mind will never shut up. On the other end, I feel completely apathetic. Like I don't care about anything any more. These days, I become non responsive. I may leave my room, but I feel like nothing more than a zombie.

Whatever depression is, I try not to let it define me. It's hard. Some days are better than others. But I'm determined to win the fight. But maybe I'm only saying that because right now is an okay day. We'll see.

everyone said it above but..
It feels like you in a bottomless hole that no matter how much you try, you can never get out of it. You feel like you're stuck and that you're life won't go anywhere. You feel trapped and restless. you're heart feels like there's always something crushing it. You no longer have hope in anything. You no longer care. You just want it all to disappear. You feel like everything you do is forced. You're bored and empty. You wonder often "what is wrong with me?" You long for someone to understand but everyone around seems to be unable to comprehend your feelings.

Depression to me feels like I am walking uphill through a dense fog, while wrapped in thick blankets from head to toe, with heavy weights strapped to my shoulders and legs. My senses are dulled, and every move I make requires tremendous effort. All of those things are physically welded into me, down to the bone, and I can't just choose to take them off any more than I could simply unattach random body parts when they're in the way. Others around me are living their daily lives in the sunshine, running here and there, doing everything they need to do. They can't see the things that encumber me, so they don't understand why I'm having trouble moving my butt and getting things done. Then they start judging me, calling me lazy. When I tell them about the weights and the fog and the blankets, they answer that I must like suffering or else I'd just put them down and go on.

it is simple you have a moderate depression.people go into depression several times a DAY so what u r feeling is true my advice dont be sensitive to it. just be glad that u r alive and have things in possession bcuz some people around the world dnt have shelter or even food its a reality so just be thankful to god. always look for the ones that are lower than u not the ones that are higher.. listen very carefully, talk to some friends anything just come out with a plan and even if its to hang in a friends place just u and him try not to do the routine things today do something out of your schedule ex, go drink coffee in a public with someone then come back before u sleep say to urself today i went out i socialized, when u are wid someone ul naturally be talking and the feeling of your thoughts will minimize but maybe wont go but u hav to start somewhere, dnt listen to ur thoughts if u r telling self i prefer staying maybe have studies to do then going out i dnt have even the funds,,,,just my advice do the opposite dnt stay at home do like 2 things today ex go drink coffee and then go watch a movie have a ride...,,,, my advice: nothing is permanent in this life!

Depression is a draggy feeling. It sucks all the life out of you. It makes you tired of everything. It is deep, profound sadness. It can make you literally psyically hurt. Depression is just a big bummer that you wish would go away.