How do you describe your depression?

I've struggled with mental illness for a long time now, and have always felt able to put words to how it feels when I'm not well. Almost two months ago, I fell into a depressive episode worse than anything I've experienced before. I prided myself in the past on being able to "function" and "put on a smile" no matter what. But what I am experiencing currently has completely sidelined me. I rarely leave my bed. My body feels like it's a concrete slab whenever I try to move. I'm exhausted, an exhaustion I've never felt to this extent, and no amount of sleep will quell it. My thoughts and cognition feel diluted, like they are moving through water. I oscillate between depressed, inconsolable, and numb. It's frustrating for me, as I try to get a grip on what my life has become. But it's been incredibly difficult for my supports to understand how I could be so disabled by my depression. I try to explain but I feel like I'm not doing it any justice. I have family members that are psychologists, and even they have trouble conceiving the level of my lethargy and mental distress.

The best way I think I can describe it, is like someone reached into me and tore out my soul. Everything that I was (bright, active, achieving, brave) was so suddenly and completely obliterated. I wish I had a better way of conveying this to my supports whose earnest words and behavior show their lack of comprehension. I feel so helpless to help myself and so helpless to help them understand.

So my wordiness aside, my question is this: how do you describe your depression? What image, memory, state of mind best encapsulates it? How do you help others enter your mind enough to understand without overwhelming them?

Love and healing to you all,

runningonresilience

The Skeezyks' experience has been that no one wants to hear it. They just want me to be the person they've always known. So that's what I give 'em...

Everything is grey. I feel like I'm in a deep, black well or deep pit that I can't crawl out of because it is so deep. And, even if I somehow could - I don't deserve it because I'm a completely worthless person and a waste of space.

That is what depression feels like to me. I also forget to eat because it doesn't even occur to me, at all. My mind is in a total fog.

I describe it as... I have memories of a colour filled, wonderful world, but now everything is grey. Almost nothing brings colour into my world anymore. I feel, like I can't breath, like I'm drowning, but I can see everyone around me breathing.

I often visualize my depression as en empty shell, with fragments of a people left inside, much like you said -- obliterated. Fake smile, hollow eyes, going through the motions... until the time to be alone starts, and the broken pieces hit the floor again. That's how I would describe mine.

When I hit that low, it feels like I've fallen into this hole in the ground. Deep, dirty, and dark. I know I should try and climb out, but sometimes it feels like my feet are stuck. That feeling like when you are at the beach and your feet start sinking into the sand. Only instead of sand, it's mud. When I do, somehow, get myself unstuck, I try to climb the walls but there isn't anything for me to grab on to. I yell, but I'm so far down that no one can hear me. I tear at the dirt, but more just appears.
So I'm stuck, at this bottom of this hole, trying to dig or climb my way out, and waiting for a stick or some rope that will never come.

depression hits me like a load of bricks on my head and slows me down, but it is cyclical; I get frustrated by not pursuing goals or dreams, just don't have the motivation. With the right medications, at times, I do follow through with my plans. With productivity and more physical exercise I feel better.

I agree with Skeezyks - No one is really interested. Whenever I have touched on the subject, hoping that someone will care, they either get angry or embarrassed. Either way, it has stopped me from ever trying to talk about it with anyone in my life.

I have however, described it to my psychologist/counsellor as being in a deep dark hole in the ground. My 'normal' was that I could look up and see beautiful blue sky but that's all I could see and it is more mocking than comforting as being in the bottom of the hole means it is not part of my experience. Sometimes I would try to crawl up the sides of the hole and sometimes would even make it to the edge but when I grasped the edge the earth would fall away, tumbling me back to the bottom of the hole, here I then sit hugging myself in the dark.

I used to hope that someone would look over the top and see me and maybe throw me a rope or lower a ladder down the hole but no one ever even looks or calls down to me. Then I realised it is up to me alone to crawl and climb and even when I feel that there is a possibility that I might get out this time, I ultimately fail and fall to the bottom again.

In recent years I have climbed less and less and can usually be found sitting in the dark at the bottom, hugging my knees to my chest, not even looking upwards anymore. This has become my new normal.

Like PenguinExmachina and Sula B, I go down the black hole. I just sit there, cold and alone.

Yes, I'm in a deep, dark, black hole that feels impossible to crawl out of. to all!

Cold
Alone
In that black scary hole
Carrying and holding THEIR shame

A vast, grey emptiness; neither sad nor happy. Apathy all around.

I found all the descriptions in this thread very fitting, and they all touched me in a way. Also, a lot of the images which have been used I had in my mind too. Like that of the black hole you try to climb out of, but when you grab the dirt, it crumbles away.
I often feel like Jacob Marley from A Christmas Carol. Like I had long chains with weigths at the ends tied around my arms, legs and throat.
I also share Skeezyk's and Sula's perception that people don't seem to care, are angry or embarrassed if you try to talk about your symptoms.
Resilience, I don't know if there is a way to describe to someone who has never been affected by this how it feels. Maybe you could try to ask people about their own experiences of sadness, like maybe not dperession if they didn't experience that in their lives, but maybe how they felt when they lost someone or when a relationship ended. This may be comparable. You seem to be very mature and calm in the way you talk about your current crisis. You seem like a capable person to go through this, you can do this. I wish you all the strength you need now.

Hi Nimportequoi, Thankyou for your comment and kind words.

Your description of Jacob Marley's chains is very fitting. Sometimes when the tiredness, that cannot be properly described, hits it does feel like dragging chains or walking in a lake a molasses.

I think that grief and sadness is familiar to most but its not quite the same as long term, often treatment resistant, depression and that's why it is just so foreign (and frightening) to those who have not experienced it. They can see a reason and a rationale for grief or sadness due to some misadventure but not for what we are feeling. Hence places like this are very useful because there are people here who DO get it as evidenced by the consensus in the descriptions in this thread. Winston Churchill referred to his depression as The Black Dog and you can see where that comes from - and this is coming from someone whose best friends during the course of my life have been black dogs so I mean no insult to those beauties

I think that some of us have lived with depression for so long that we ARE quite calm about it as it is our normal, but it can be isolating so it is good to have somewhere to talk and share without feeling judged or misunderstood. I think maybe we are very resilient folk or we simply would not be here. It takes a lot of strength to keep facing it day after day and still manage to be kind to others but I find that being open to others even though their experiences may be vastly different from mine, and to be supportive towards them, is something that eases the daily burden.

For me it is more than lethargy and basically not giving a crap about anything besides my pain, though that's all there... It physically hurts! I feel like someone opened up my head and poured a bunch of lead in it and then they squeeze my head as hard as they can! It's a really awful feeling. I feel like that now... Can't stay out of bed. I've got so many cool things I could be doing, but I can't manage, my thinking just goes to hell. I can't concentrate on anything for any length of time. I've been like this for a month now, and I'm getting to the point where I just can't stand it anymore! I'm hanging on, though, I see my T tomorrow. I really need to see my pdoc, but he had to go attend to a family crisis so they moved my appointment back another two weeks. I DONT WANT TO FEEL LIKE THIS ANYMORE!!! I'm tired of hurting!

Situational.

It's like falling down a well, feeling like drowning, trying to climb back out. It's disabling. Unfortunately, I SH and don't cope with it well.

Now I am avoiding the triggering situation, and I am curious to see if I have more attacks for other reasons.

I hope you can avoid the triggering situation. Your description of that deep, dark well resonates with me.

If you do fall down that well, PM me if you need to reach out. You are not alone.

Depends on how bad my psychosis and anxiety are.

Sometimes it is:
warm
comfortable even relaxing
self-hatred

Yes, I am aware of how twisted and contradictory that is. I guess over 2 decades of dealing with it, it has become part of me.

With my anxiety and psychosis amped up:
Pain
Fear
Seething self-hatred
Panic
Hopelessness
Strong desire to self injure

I never feel sad though. I find that odd.

It's like finding yourself all of a sudden at the bottom of Hell where there's nobody but only rocks, lava and darkness.

depression to me is like a deep dark canyon you can't get yourself out from while looking for the light .





Diagnosis: Anxiety, depression and PTSD
meds: Cymbalta 60 mgs at night
Vistrail 2 25 mgs daily for anxiety prn
50 mgs at night for insomnia with an additional 25 mgs = 75 mgs at night for when up past 1:00 in the morning

I just feel blanked out, as if there's nothing substantial left of me. And that if I tried to explain, no one would want to listen.

"Today has been canceled due to lack of interest."

I wouldn't describe my depression like a black hole. It's terrible and lonely and I'm trapped, but it's not a black hole for me because I am still partially present in the world -- and people can partially see me. They don't see what I'd like them to see, and they can't reach me, and I can't reach them. But I'm partially present and partially visible. Others don't see how badly I want to engage with them like a gregarious, fun-loving social person; how badly I want to be happy; how badly I want to be able to laugh like them; how badly I want to connect and how badly I want to stop feeling so sad, and alone, alone, alone; how badly I want to tell people nice things and be loving. They see me, or part of me, and they think I prefer to be quiet and subdued and distant and reserved, when really I don't want to be this way, but I'm trapped and unable to break free of the sadness that weighs so heavily, that keeps me from laughing, that makes me unable to engage. So I often retreat to be alone, and maybe that's more like a black hole, but since I feel the worst when I'm around other people -- and partially visible to them -- I haven't really thought of my own experience as a black hole. I'm not doubting any body else's experience and I'm not criticizing the way anybody describes their own lived experience, of course. Just saying that I'd described my own experience a little bit differently.

Senseless. Wordless. Pointless.

I feel so much like Logan 20000. I just don't feel that there's any way to describe this pain to anyone who hasn't lived it themselves. They simply can't comprehend it.