[-jimi-]

If something bad happens, and you are "used" to have depression come and go or similar, do you get depressed by the bad event, or do you get sad, like a healthy person would get sad?

[anw014]

I'm actually dealing with this right now. I feel like my depression comes and goes with time and seasons. In about October I can feel it coming back and when the summer hits I feel better.
But something happened at work on Monday and ever since then I've felt like my depression came back so fast and is hitting me hard, which is weird since it's only July. I'm moody and irritable and can cry at the drop of a hat- which is normal for me in the winter months. So Yes I do get depressed when a bad event happens, not just sad like a healthy person.

[bronzeowl]

My original answer was going to be yes.

Then I really thought about it. When my depression was milder, I went through sadness like a healthy person. However, now, not so much. Now, sadness triggers a depressive episode.

So, I'm going to say no, that I don't. But I like to think that someone who is recovered from depression can.

Just the other day, I told my mom that I wanted to be 'happy' like a normal person. When she started to explain that everyone gets sad, I interrupted her to say 'That's my point!' and went on to say that I want to experience sadness, and bereavement, and all the other things healthy people go through, too, because it would be worth it to not be depressed.

So, I take back my knee jerk answer, anyway. If I said that to my mother, this has clearly been on my mind in some way, too.

[IrisBloom]

I had a doctor explain it to me like this one time: Imagine a horizontal line on a graph. Your moods/feelings/mindset naturally go up and down day to day. So on the line you will have a gentle wave of ups and downs. When you are in a depression, you can still go up and down, but the lows get lower and the highs get less high. Even after starting meds or therapy you can still continue to go down, but you will start up real soon. To answer your question, my answer is, yes, a depressed person can feel normal sadness, but depending on where they are in the downswing, it might not be possible to fight off the low feelings.

[Rohag]

I rarely feel genuinely sad anymore. Sad things tend to provoke anxiety and sometimes fear.

[LastQuestion]

My normal level of depression is as you explain, incapable of sadness. I had a serious crisis in April which led to intensified depression. During late May I suffered a concussion due to my sleep aid causing me to faint into a hard floor and also a door frame (eight stitches). The two weeks after the concussion I had less than seventy hours of sleep, increasingly poor memory, and was entering psychosis.

Yet, also during that time I experienced emotions so terrible that I truly cannot convey them with any accuracy in writing. Just the memory of them, the life experiences that they were produced by, disturbs my normally cool unfeeling depressive state. It was terrible, awful; it was emotionally violent in every part of my mind, and yet I relish it. Feeling, even just feeling terrible like that, I am nearly envious of because it is pain that has meaning, purpose, and can be used to understand oneself. Now, medicated and with sleep I have meaningless depression and some part of me thinks I should be sad that this is the case.

Absolutely although I'm sure the emotion is colored by my depression. I can also distinguish between melancholy and depression.
Just curious?

[healingme4me]

Yes. I am able to distinguish.

[TheOriginalMe]

When deeply depressed I enter a state of indifference. In that state, I'd be unlikely to register the "sad trigger" let alone respond to it. However, part of the problem that sends me spiralling down into deep depressions is that I am very sensitive to "sad". I have always seen the sad aspects to life and rarely the happy ones. So when mildly or moderately depressed then I feel deep sadness when triggered.

[greentires4me]

Sadness is like finding you cat dead because some asshole doesn't know when to stop or slow down on the road.

we all feel it or experience but in different norms