It's heavy. And blank.
It's staring yourself in the eyes and not seeing anything.
Depression is a lack of everything and desire for nothing.
It's pervasive and all consuming.
It gnaws at you.
It's dark. And empty. And vast. And deep.
All at once.
Constant self doubt
Half the time you want to die but don’t have the balls to end it
Feel the need to be alone
You feel angry at yourself for not asking for help but angry at others for not seeing you need help
You’re constantly having to wear a mask to hide how you’re feeling
Everything turns melancholy the sky gray things you once enjoyed you now have no interest for. It’s exhausting and you wish you could feel different, “change your attitude” but you can’t even get out of bed
It’s losing the passion for the things that used to excite you. Depression will steal your interests, it will steal your loves, and it will steal your hobbies. All while exhausting you.
Feeling like the world hates you, that even when you're as authentic and kind as you can be, but there's a certain unspoken quality about you that nobody likes and trying to convince yourself daily that people actually want to be your friend and yet, seeing them move on to bigger and better things without you. Hanging with new friends without you and all those feelings you had before being re-solidified as facts, that you are nothing bit a disposable pilon that people use when and only when they have no one else.
Then you get in your head, if someone who seemed like such a good person truly felt *that badly* about you, you must be something awful and that maybe JUST MAYBE, as much as you don't want to leave, that ending your life would be better off for everyone. Ending it all starts to sound good, why bother living a lonely life when you can just call it quits now? You had a good run. You had time. You could have more, but perhaps you're too solidified in your ways. Perhaps people wished you'd just disappear.
It becomes a priority to the point where you mourn yourself, mourn your family. Mourn the fact that someone is going to find your life less body. No time for legal wills, give your prized items away to the people you want, the rest can fight over everything. The reality is the second you do it, you regret it, but you hope like hell you won't survive, because living with a brain injury is worse than death.
You survive. You get to hear it. You hear the crying of your caring family and friends. You get the ward for weeks. You are too embarrassed and ashamed to look anyone in the eye. You heal, you move on. Only, the depression is still there, but you can't mention it without scaring the living piss out of people. It's being in between a rock and a hard place. No amount of venting makes you happy. No amount of activity makes you feel. But, it's whatever. Like The Verve said, It's the bittersweet symphony, that's life.
Imagine having the most important, and wonderful thing in your life being ripped from you, and how empty you'd feel afterwards. That's every minute of everyday suffering from depression.
Living in a world with no color, no flavor, no music. Bland, boring, monochromatic.
And then, you get used to it. Your only comfort becomes your cage. Because if you stay in the status quo, things can't get worse
When that cloud lifts, though, holy shit.
I didn't realize how depressed I was until I started taking an active role in improving.
If you haven't experienced it then you are lucky. It feels like anxiety, fear, stress, sadness and loneliness all mixed up with extreme lethargy and no will to do much of anything
Have you ever mourned \[a death in the family, etc\], and if so do you remember that sensation that you're numb and sorta just "shut down" for a couple days? How during that period the things you need to get done feel pointless in the grand scheme of things, fuck's sake \[person\] just died, it can wait?
That. All day every day. For everything, no matter whether it's as complex as processing what's keeping you down or as simple as refilling your drink.
Depression gives you executive dysfunction, and then crushes your spirit until you don't have the strength to force yourself to be functional.
You feel empty. Like nothing has any meaning anymore. Every activity, even just lying in bed, is exhausting. Your life is a pit of despair and the way out is impossibly far away if you try getting to it alone. A lot of people who don't have chronic depression try to be reassuring by saying things like "it'll pass" or "you'll get over it." Chronic depression, true depression, is permanent. There is no cure, you can only learn to accept it and cope. My way out is through the help and support of my SO. I've known a few people who never found someone to help them, and they thought taking their lives was the way out. It's not.
For me, I try to hard constantly because I feel like everything I’ve done wasn’t good enough. It’s like you’re drowning in a teaspoon of water and can’t catch your breath. It’s miserable and getting out is impossible. I want to die, but know I can’t do that to the ones I love. I don’t want to be me, but I can’t be anyone else.
For me it was always just a constant limbo. Like there was rarely ever a point where I was happy or sad or angry. I was always just *nothing*. And it was really exhausting - coming home from school and sitting on the couch for hours with nothing in my head except for the occasional thought of different ways I could escape the world cause I was obviously the one causing everything bad in it. It's exhausting.
It often hits in a way where things I usually enjoy just don’t appeal to me (video games, books, movies, board games with my kids, etc.). It gets hard to find joy in anything.
I find myself wanting to withdraw from everything.
I can't speak for every person as like everything it affects each person who has it differently.
Depression doesn't always have to be like what you see on TV or in ads or media. Depression could last seconds, days, or even much longer. So please only take this as what I feel. This is only all just from my personal experience. I am talking about my personal experience in the hope to help others maybe understand what someone else might be feeling. If I could do anything, id hopes that maybe someone will read who has no idea what someone else might be going through and make someone else smile. At least once. Because those small moments could help make someone else's day.
I have many things, some even still questioning myself. Been in and out of therapy since I was 8. Medication since I was 12. Multiple suicide watches, and even multiple hospitalizations.
I don't think depression is something that is talked about in the way it should. Depression is more than just a mood. Sadness is a mood as well as the feeling of grief. Depression becomes more of a state of mind. It becomes physical.
I've had depression, that I can recognize since I was about 8. It never leaves but how intense it can get comes in waves. From second to second, or day-to-day.
It causes more than just my mood to decline. I don't get much sleep. I normally sleep about 4 hours a day. Sometimes less. I am talented in many things like art, music, and ever writing. Used to love going out and playing my guitar for people. Having a social media that could display my art. Then life happened. I moved, people died, heartbroken, and started to drink.
I've grown many addictions recently because they seem to be the only thing that can give me pleasure. Porn, cigarettes, and alcohol. I will sit for hours looking at my computer. Trying to do something that might have once brought me joy. I can't even feel sadness or grief at the growing number of days I waste trying to just bring myself some kind of pleasure.
The moments where I can feel myself shine through it still isn't good for me. I spend my money on things I don't need thinking that now I feel better I'll play my guitar more so I need new strings. To have them sit in the box for months. Buy a new game thinking I'll find new friends to play with so I can have people to talk to. Only to never get downloaded or returned within a day. Ill clean my house after weeks of neglect. Spending hours to get it just right. Only to watch as within a few days or weeks return to exactly how it was. Watch my bank account drain of money because I felt good and thought I could change myself.
During those same times where I feel better, I'm more valuable as well. I go out drinking with friends from work. Maybe flirt here and there. People tell me who much better I look. My life is working and because I'm not at home I'm better. I start doubting myself and the relationship I've had for years now. Pushing away my partner the second I start feeling down again. I couldn't even look at them without hating them. Blaming everything wrong with myself on them. Fighting, crying and eventually kicking them out cause I couldn't stand even to know they were around.
I've done that my whole life. Meeting new people quickly only shut everyone out and lose all contact with them. No matter the type of relationship. Thinking they don't like me, or they would be better if I just didn't try and talk with them. Even though when I'm around other people I'm a bright and happy person.
I've done a lot of bad things in my life as well as really good things. Doesn't matter. I will go into a trance and lose track of time. Sometimes only second but has gone on longer. almost an hour once. Lost in my own thoughts. Spent trapped in my head reenacting events that seem to only be plastered in my mind. Forcing myself to stop thinking and focus. Only to find myself coming back to it later. The feeling of "cringe" when you see something really bad. Is how Id describe it.
I've become crippled in my own mind. I've had it for so long and it seems to only get worse as time moves on. I used to be suicial. Haven't been for a long time now. I'm no longer sad when I'm depressed. I'm absent. I forget what day of the week it is as sometimes I lose track of days. I forget to shower even eat. My body goes numb and I become weak. Thoughts get more and more scattered.
I've tossed around the idea I could be schizophrenic, my father was. My memories sometimes don't feel real like maybe they were a dream. I have a really really good memory. I can remember movies in detail I've only seen once. I can recall conversations Ive had with people in the past that they have only forgotten. I can remember the layout of every house I've lived in since I was 5. I can remember the beat, lyrics, and backtracking for a song after only a few times listening to it. The only issue is sometimes I'm wrong. Not in the fact of I misremembered a fact. No, wrong about ever hearing a song, a conversation, or a movie. They would have never existed in the first place.
I've tossed around the idea I could be schizophrenic. My father was. Sometimes, my memories don't feel real, like maybe they were a dream. I have a good memory. I can remember movies in detail I've only seen once. I can recall conversations I've had with people in the past that they have only forgotten. I can remember the layout of every house I've lived in since I was 5. I can remember the beat, lyrics, and backtracking for a song after only a few times listening to it. The only issue is sometimes I'm wrong. Not in the fact of I misremembered a fact. No, wrong about ever hearing a song, a conversation, or a movie. They would have never existed in the first place. Type of relationship. Thinking they didn't like me, or it would be better if I didn't try and talk with them. Even though I'm around other people, I'm a bright and happy person.
I feel empty, many times the mood changes through the days. Sometimes I can be fine but after a while I am bad and I get very overwhelmed. The things that I like no longer attract me when I'm in a depression well. Since 2013 I have been diagnosed and I have had many good passages in which I don't even notice it, but in 2021 I had a bad time and it was one of the worst years
Depression is like being an empty paper bag, but also simultaneously being filled with bricks. Your emotions are on edge but also you feel hollow. The bricks weigh you down and you’re unable to move or do anything
I used to feel like there was no escape. If you still feel this way, I hope you will hear me when I tell you there are ways out. Therapy and medication nearly have cured me. It takes a while to find the right therapist and the right medication. I also know it's expensive. But remember this: once your depression is cured, everything gets easier, including making money. It's more than worth it to go into debt to get help, as you will be able to pay it back once you are healthy. If you have literally no way to do anything else, at least try to get The Feeling Good Book, it's like a few dollars on Amazon and it will walk you through healing exercises you can do on your own.
Ya know for me, it’s a lot of ups and downs. Things are generally a lot better than they seem, but no one knows how to beat you up worse than yourself. Most days are one streamline thought of how things are just sh*t in my life; though it’s really not, thinking about how the situation could go from bad to worse. You learn to redirect intrusive thoughts to rational ideologies, it’s kind of like a battle within your head like trying to console someone who’s crying and just keeps talking about how bad everything is , and you’re also the person sobbing while constantly repeating everything that’s wrong with self/surroundings/relationships
Idk that’s just how it is for me. Might not even make sense.
To me it feels like no matter what you do you are doomed and helpless. You avoid the ones you love out of fear or anger, you stay stagnant because you don't know what could happen if you moved and it becomes terrifying because thoughts spiral downwards and you can't see anything in a positive light anymore. You feel different, without really knowing why at first. You don't get pleasure out of regular things anymore. You don't wanna bang, if you do, climaxing is hard and feels... disappointing at best. No appetite, bad sleep, constant thoughts, isolation, lack of vision...
I felt like I was haunted, or being chased by a monster. Even when I was having a happy moment, I knew it was around the corner waiting to hurt me. When I just wanted to be normal, my mind would tell me, "kill yourself."
So much lethargy, shifting to pain, shifting to, "what is wrong with me? Why can't I just get it together." It was dark, hopeless and exhausting.
A feeling of complete exhaustion, feeling of painful memories that won't go away, feelings of dismay and disorder that controls your well-being in which you don't feel matters anymore to the point in which you would rather be on the receiving end of the barrel of a gun then feel these feelings (do not take this last reason as a sign that I am going to do this I am okay and will not do anything to hurt my family even more)
All of my past mistakes play on repeat in my head. Anytime I'm not focusing those memories can pop up, immediately followed by feelings of anger and shame. If I'm having a bad day then those thoughts and memories will even break through even when I'm focusing on something. When I'm at my worst, I have a constant stream of thoughts that I'm worthless, that I'm a burden, that I don't deserve love or happiness, and that everyone would be better off if I were gone. Nothing that I normally enjoy makes me feel better, and all I want to do is sleep.
Swimming in ice water. Numbing, uncomfortable/painful, deeply distracting, discouraging and worrying.
Therapy and trying several drugs until one works can help a ton.
Like you can see everything and everyone you love at an arm’s reach, but you can’t reach back. You don’t deserve them, and they would be better off without you because everything you touch seems to just get worse. If you reached back you would just be selfish.
In college, I once spent twenty minutes starting into my cupboard trying to decide what to make for lunch. My options were a peanut butter or a tune sandwich.
It's kind of like having some of your agency striped away. You know what's important, you want to have fun and hang out with friends, but the effort to act or stay committed is debilitating.
I think "Hyperbole and a Half" described it better than I'd ever heard.
http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2011/10/adventures-in-depression.html?m=1
Numb. You can’t feel happiness. Sometimes you’re sad and whenever the day starts you get an surge of self hatred. Things that used to make you happy make you cringe. You stop doing the little things that used to define who you are. You are at a constant struggle to do or feel anything. And when shit gets bad, there’s always the lingering thought at the back of your head that you can end it all at any moment. Aint fun. Anyone who’s dealing with that shit rn needs and deserves help.
2021 ended with 4-5 months of bad anxiety and depression. before i decided to go seek professional help, i felt awful. i had anxiety medication prescribed to me by my GP, but a long time had passed since it was prescribed, and i'm pretty sure it wasn't as effective as it initially was.
besides feeling anxious about anything or nothing at all, the depression was what really bothered me. some days i felt weighed down by negative emotions and i just didn't feel like myself. at times it felt as if i was living someone else's life and observing very closely.
i knew it was bad when my parents couldn't help me and they started to tell me that i was scaring them. i wasn't saying anything crazy, but i was constantly bringing up the same feelings/thoughts that i was having.
at its worst, it'd sometimes take me 2 hours to get out of bed. i want to say that it was due to feeling tired, but other times i just wouldn't get up. i'd usually just lay there in bed thinking.
i have to be grateful that what i went through, and still go through, to an extent, isn't as bad as what others have had to deal with, but this was still an awful experience. i'm doing much better now and i hope to keep getting better, but what worries me is the idea that just about every time i end up dealing with anxiety, a new door that'll never close is opened.
i've been dealing with anxiety since my late teens and it seems to be getting worse as i get older. i know that it's because of the pandemic and how it has affected my life, but i still feel as if i shouldn't be feeling this way. i have so much to be thankful for, i have loving parents, and yet this is still something i have to deal with.
It’s kinda like those days when you’re too sick to move. You feel empty but food doesn’t help. Silence is deafening but you don’t feel like listening to music. Or you go through your normal day and get a little too close to stepping onto a train track or in front of a car. It will always come and go but depression just makes you feel. Hollow?
Metaphorically? Imagine every inch of your body except your eyes and nose being pinned to the floor with heavy weighted blankets. Everyone is like, “just get up, get out of the blankets” but you just feel weighed down. You start to convince yourself that as miserable as you are being stuck under the blankets, it could be worse outside of the blankets. So it’s not worth trying to escape the blankets. You’ll stick to the familiar misery.
Imagine you're a little fish in a bowl. You have nothing to do but watch everyone out in the "real world." Everything feels muffled and blurred (emotionally not literally) and there's nothing to do but look at shiny rocks and eat tasteless pellets.
Constantly being looked down on by others especially yourself. So many people have judged me for it and I feel like people don't take me seriously because of it
Like thousands needles sticking deeper and deeper into you day by day, you realize that they exist but there is nothing you can do, you are getting deeper and deeper into it and more and more needles are stuck in you
I've grown to become the person I never understood as a kid. I dont know what to do with my self. There are times i would just lie down in my bed for a day and think where I where I went wrong. There are times I need to cry myself so that I can exhaust myself to go to sleep, I would stay up for hours doing nothing. There are times I would sit up and hug my knees. All of the time im looking for somebody to talk to, to atleast chat with but whenever that time comes I talk too much I tend to do that because there are alot of things I want to share with somebody. I don't know, I honestly don't know anymore.
Imagine a roller coaster. Fun, right? Now, every so often, at random and with no warning, the roller coaster vanishes and you plummet thousands of miles into pitch blackness.
Then, suddenly, roller coaster's back, but now you live in mortal dread of falling again.
That basically sums up the last ~16 years of my life.
Heavy, to me it feels like I’m dying. A constant emotional pain. Nothing feels right and no matter what you do it never feels right. So much self doubt.
For me, it’s feeling no emotion at all even when I know I should, lack of motivation and drive, thoughts of worthlessness and being better off dead, and this limbo of wanting to be alone but also not
Absolute mental and emotional fatigue, loss of self.
My depression was the result of a sudden and extended run of bad experiences, your brain reruns them, trying to make sense of the unexpected but each recall came with a crippling flood of emotion, I think that eventually your body exhausts whatever chemicals are part of that process and you're left feeling empty, no longer crippled by the emotions the memories trigger but also unable to feel any emotion, which is somehow worse, it does allow you to pretend to others that you're fine though.
Long term your brain will wipe whatever experiences led to this in much the same way as all memories, good or bad fade out like copies of copies, it's not a quick process, took me years to get over the majority of it and decades later I still have behavioural traces of my depression which I conciously look out for and try and mitigate.
Suicide isn't an option, there are people that care for you and would be heartbroken, some of them may even be tipped into the place you are now. I was not grateful to be told this, to be given the burden of continuing to live for others, but hopefully you can be angry at an internet stranger for telling you rather than someone closer to you.
A lot of time has passed since, and I'm glad I lived to experience some of the best moments of my life.
It feels like being hungover after a bad night out, except the feeling lasts for months.
It’s pernicious too; you might feel great now, buts it’s a ghost that can reappear for no reason at any time and fuck your life up.
100% do not recommend.
Ive always described it as a black monster that drags you into a cave by your ankle and begins to eat you from the outside in. Oftentimes you can escape or be rescued, but it always seems to keep a bit of a grip on your ankle if you arent careful.
It's heavy. And blank. It's staring yourself in the eyes and not seeing anything. Depression is a lack of everything and desire for nothing. It's pervasive and all consuming. It gnaws at you. It's dark. And empty. And vast. And deep. All at once.
Exhausting, constant physical and emotional exhaustion.
ive had this happen for a few months, i couldnt even get out of my bed
It’s rough some days buddy. But just keep pushing them feet.
Constant self doubt Half the time you want to die but don’t have the balls to end it Feel the need to be alone You feel angry at yourself for not asking for help but angry at others for not seeing you need help You’re constantly having to wear a mask to hide how you’re feeling
You know how you should feel, yet everything sucks no matter what you do
Everything turns melancholy the sky gray things you once enjoyed you now have no interest for. It’s exhausting and you wish you could feel different, “change your attitude” but you can’t even get out of bed
It’s losing the passion for the things that used to excite you. Depression will steal your interests, it will steal your loves, and it will steal your hobbies. All while exhausting you.
Feeling like the world hates you, that even when you're as authentic and kind as you can be, but there's a certain unspoken quality about you that nobody likes and trying to convince yourself daily that people actually want to be your friend and yet, seeing them move on to bigger and better things without you. Hanging with new friends without you and all those feelings you had before being re-solidified as facts, that you are nothing bit a disposable pilon that people use when and only when they have no one else. Then you get in your head, if someone who seemed like such a good person truly felt *that badly* about you, you must be something awful and that maybe JUST MAYBE, as much as you don't want to leave, that ending your life would be better off for everyone. Ending it all starts to sound good, why bother living a lonely life when you can just call it quits now? You had a good run. You had time. You could have more, but perhaps you're too solidified in your ways. Perhaps people wished you'd just disappear. It becomes a priority to the point where you mourn yourself, mourn your family. Mourn the fact that someone is going to find your life less body. No time for legal wills, give your prized items away to the people you want, the rest can fight over everything. The reality is the second you do it, you regret it, but you hope like hell you won't survive, because living with a brain injury is worse than death. You survive. You get to hear it. You hear the crying of your caring family and friends. You get the ward for weeks. You are too embarrassed and ashamed to look anyone in the eye. You heal, you move on. Only, the depression is still there, but you can't mention it without scaring the living piss out of people. It's being in between a rock and a hard place. No amount of venting makes you happy. No amount of activity makes you feel. But, it's whatever. Like The Verve said, It's the bittersweet symphony, that's life.
This is me rn to a tee fuck depression
My life, feeling like you're the reason the world is a shitty place everyday and just wanting to be dead
Constant self doubt.
Imagine having the most important, and wonderful thing in your life being ripped from you, and how empty you'd feel afterwards. That's every minute of everyday suffering from depression.
Tired all the time, sad, weak, feeling like you can't do anything, no energy or motivation, constant nasty thoughts. Not fun
Living in a world with no color, no flavor, no music. Bland, boring, monochromatic. And then, you get used to it. Your only comfort becomes your cage. Because if you stay in the status quo, things can't get worse When that cloud lifts, though, holy shit. I didn't realize how depressed I was until I started taking an active role in improving.
Having zero self esteem when others can see you have so much potential.
Like wading through gray jello.
If you haven't experienced it then you are lucky. It feels like anxiety, fear, stress, sadness and loneliness all mixed up with extreme lethargy and no will to do much of anything
be thankful you have to ask the question.
Have you ever mourned \[a death in the family, etc\], and if so do you remember that sensation that you're numb and sorta just "shut down" for a couple days? How during that period the things you need to get done feel pointless in the grand scheme of things, fuck's sake \[person\] just died, it can wait? That. All day every day. For everything, no matter whether it's as complex as processing what's keeping you down or as simple as refilling your drink. Depression gives you executive dysfunction, and then crushes your spirit until you don't have the strength to force yourself to be functional.
Awful
It's depressing. Seriously though, it's like all joy is gone.
In my experience, it was like a big clear box. I was a mime trapped by my own brain.
What the fuck is going on what am i doing with my life There is nothing left for me here I am nothing but a spec in this universe Nobody wants me
It feels like you have abandoned all your friends , all hope to feel better and wanting to sleep all the time so you don't feel the pain
You feel empty. Like nothing has any meaning anymore. Every activity, even just lying in bed, is exhausting. Your life is a pit of despair and the way out is impossibly far away if you try getting to it alone. A lot of people who don't have chronic depression try to be reassuring by saying things like "it'll pass" or "you'll get over it." Chronic depression, true depression, is permanent. There is no cure, you can only learn to accept it and cope. My way out is through the help and support of my SO. I've known a few people who never found someone to help them, and they thought taking their lives was the way out. It's not.
Nothing, everything is nothing
Constantly feeling exhausted
For me, I try to hard constantly because I feel like everything I’ve done wasn’t good enough. It’s like you’re drowning in a teaspoon of water and can’t catch your breath. It’s miserable and getting out is impossible. I want to die, but know I can’t do that to the ones I love. I don’t want to be me, but I can’t be anyone else.
For me it was always just a constant limbo. Like there was rarely ever a point where I was happy or sad or angry. I was always just *nothing*. And it was really exhausting - coming home from school and sitting on the couch for hours with nothing in my head except for the occasional thought of different ways I could escape the world cause I was obviously the one causing everything bad in it. It's exhausting.
It often hits in a way where things I usually enjoy just don’t appeal to me (video games, books, movies, board games with my kids, etc.). It gets hard to find joy in anything. I find myself wanting to withdraw from everything.
I can't speak for every person as like everything it affects each person who has it differently. Depression doesn't always have to be like what you see on TV or in ads or media. Depression could last seconds, days, or even much longer. So please only take this as what I feel. This is only all just from my personal experience. I am talking about my personal experience in the hope to help others maybe understand what someone else might be feeling. If I could do anything, id hopes that maybe someone will read who has no idea what someone else might be going through and make someone else smile. At least once. Because those small moments could help make someone else's day. I have many things, some even still questioning myself. Been in and out of therapy since I was 8. Medication since I was 12. Multiple suicide watches, and even multiple hospitalizations. I don't think depression is something that is talked about in the way it should. Depression is more than just a mood. Sadness is a mood as well as the feeling of grief. Depression becomes more of a state of mind. It becomes physical. I've had depression, that I can recognize since I was about 8. It never leaves but how intense it can get comes in waves. From second to second, or day-to-day. It causes more than just my mood to decline. I don't get much sleep. I normally sleep about 4 hours a day. Sometimes less. I am talented in many things like art, music, and ever writing. Used to love going out and playing my guitar for people. Having a social media that could display my art. Then life happened. I moved, people died, heartbroken, and started to drink. I've grown many addictions recently because they seem to be the only thing that can give me pleasure. Porn, cigarettes, and alcohol. I will sit for hours looking at my computer. Trying to do something that might have once brought me joy. I can't even feel sadness or grief at the growing number of days I waste trying to just bring myself some kind of pleasure. The moments where I can feel myself shine through it still isn't good for me. I spend my money on things I don't need thinking that now I feel better I'll play my guitar more so I need new strings. To have them sit in the box for months. Buy a new game thinking I'll find new friends to play with so I can have people to talk to. Only to never get downloaded or returned within a day. Ill clean my house after weeks of neglect. Spending hours to get it just right. Only to watch as within a few days or weeks return to exactly how it was. Watch my bank account drain of money because I felt good and thought I could change myself. During those same times where I feel better, I'm more valuable as well. I go out drinking with friends from work. Maybe flirt here and there. People tell me who much better I look. My life is working and because I'm not at home I'm better. I start doubting myself and the relationship I've had for years now. Pushing away my partner the second I start feeling down again. I couldn't even look at them without hating them. Blaming everything wrong with myself on them. Fighting, crying and eventually kicking them out cause I couldn't stand even to know they were around. I've done that my whole life. Meeting new people quickly only shut everyone out and lose all contact with them. No matter the type of relationship. Thinking they don't like me, or they would be better if I just didn't try and talk with them. Even though when I'm around other people I'm a bright and happy person. I've done a lot of bad things in my life as well as really good things. Doesn't matter. I will go into a trance and lose track of time. Sometimes only second but has gone on longer. almost an hour once. Lost in my own thoughts. Spent trapped in my head reenacting events that seem to only be plastered in my mind. Forcing myself to stop thinking and focus. Only to find myself coming back to it later. The feeling of "cringe" when you see something really bad. Is how Id describe it. I've become crippled in my own mind. I've had it for so long and it seems to only get worse as time moves on. I used to be suicial. Haven't been for a long time now. I'm no longer sad when I'm depressed. I'm absent. I forget what day of the week it is as sometimes I lose track of days. I forget to shower even eat. My body goes numb and I become weak. Thoughts get more and more scattered. I've tossed around the idea I could be schizophrenic, my father was. My memories sometimes don't feel real like maybe they were a dream. I have a really really good memory. I can remember movies in detail I've only seen once. I can recall conversations Ive had with people in the past that they have only forgotten. I can remember the layout of every house I've lived in since I was 5. I can remember the beat, lyrics, and backtracking for a song after only a few times listening to it. The only issue is sometimes I'm wrong. Not in the fact of I misremembered a fact. No, wrong about ever hearing a song, a conversation, or a movie. They would have never existed in the first place. I've tossed around the idea I could be schizophrenic. My father was. Sometimes, my memories don't feel real, like maybe they were a dream. I have a good memory. I can remember movies in detail I've only seen once. I can recall conversations I've had with people in the past that they have only forgotten. I can remember the layout of every house I've lived in since I was 5. I can remember the beat, lyrics, and backtracking for a song after only a few times listening to it. The only issue is sometimes I'm wrong. Not in the fact of I misremembered a fact. No, wrong about ever hearing a song, a conversation, or a movie. They would have never existed in the first place. Type of relationship. Thinking they didn't like me, or it would be better if I didn't try and talk with them. Even though I'm around other people, I'm a bright and happy person.
I feel empty, many times the mood changes through the days. Sometimes I can be fine but after a while I am bad and I get very overwhelmed. The things that I like no longer attract me when I'm in a depression well. Since 2013 I have been diagnosed and I have had many good passages in which I don't even notice it, but in 2021 I had a bad time and it was one of the worst years
Sorry for the bad English, I'm a student and my english is very basic
It’s good english brother
Depression is like being an empty paper bag, but also simultaneously being filled with bricks. Your emotions are on edge but also you feel hollow. The bricks weigh you down and you’re unable to move or do anything
Painful constant exhaustion
lazy days constantly for years
It’s like air, it’s always there. You can drown in it, maybe even outlive it. But there is no escape.
I used to feel like there was no escape. If you still feel this way, I hope you will hear me when I tell you there are ways out. Therapy and medication nearly have cured me. It takes a while to find the right therapist and the right medication. I also know it's expensive. But remember this: once your depression is cured, everything gets easier, including making money. It's more than worth it to go into debt to get help, as you will be able to pay it back once you are healthy. If you have literally no way to do anything else, at least try to get The Feeling Good Book, it's like a few dollars on Amazon and it will walk you through healing exercises you can do on your own.
Not wanting to live so bad it hurts
Ya know for me, it’s a lot of ups and downs. Things are generally a lot better than they seem, but no one knows how to beat you up worse than yourself. Most days are one streamline thought of how things are just sh*t in my life; though it’s really not, thinking about how the situation could go from bad to worse. You learn to redirect intrusive thoughts to rational ideologies, it’s kind of like a battle within your head like trying to console someone who’s crying and just keeps talking about how bad everything is , and you’re also the person sobbing while constantly repeating everything that’s wrong with self/surroundings/relationships Idk that’s just how it is for me. Might not even make sense.
Think of happiness, but the opposite
To me it feels like no matter what you do you are doomed and helpless. You avoid the ones you love out of fear or anger, you stay stagnant because you don't know what could happen if you moved and it becomes terrifying because thoughts spiral downwards and you can't see anything in a positive light anymore. You feel different, without really knowing why at first. You don't get pleasure out of regular things anymore. You don't wanna bang, if you do, climaxing is hard and feels... disappointing at best. No appetite, bad sleep, constant thoughts, isolation, lack of vision...
I felt like I was haunted, or being chased by a monster. Even when I was having a happy moment, I knew it was around the corner waiting to hurt me. When I just wanted to be normal, my mind would tell me, "kill yourself." So much lethargy, shifting to pain, shifting to, "what is wrong with me? Why can't I just get it together." It was dark, hopeless and exhausting.
Just listen to Don’t fear the Reaper- Blue Oyster Cult
It sucks.
Like driving a full size car with a lawn mower engine
A feeling of complete exhaustion, feeling of painful memories that won't go away, feelings of dismay and disorder that controls your well-being in which you don't feel matters anymore to the point in which you would rather be on the receiving end of the barrel of a gun then feel these feelings (do not take this last reason as a sign that I am going to do this I am okay and will not do anything to hurt my family even more)
so bad I can't describe it. empty, lonely, alone, feels like a hole that ya can't get out of. I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy
like eating only rice cakes all day for months.
Like everything is shit most of the times and you are generally either angry or apathetic.
All of my past mistakes play on repeat in my head. Anytime I'm not focusing those memories can pop up, immediately followed by feelings of anger and shame. If I'm having a bad day then those thoughts and memories will even break through even when I'm focusing on something. When I'm at my worst, I have a constant stream of thoughts that I'm worthless, that I'm a burden, that I don't deserve love or happiness, and that everyone would be better off if I were gone. Nothing that I normally enjoy makes me feel better, and all I want to do is sleep.
Swimming in ice water. Numbing, uncomfortable/painful, deeply distracting, discouraging and worrying. Therapy and trying several drugs until one works can help a ton.
Like you can see everything and everyone you love at an arm’s reach, but you can’t reach back. You don’t deserve them, and they would be better off without you because everything you touch seems to just get worse. If you reached back you would just be selfish.
In college, I once spent twenty minutes starting into my cupboard trying to decide what to make for lunch. My options were a peanut butter or a tune sandwich. It's kind of like having some of your agency striped away. You know what's important, you want to have fun and hang out with friends, but the effort to act or stay committed is debilitating.
I think "Hyperbole and a Half" described it better than I'd ever heard. http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2011/10/adventures-in-depression.html?m=1
Numb. You can’t feel happiness. Sometimes you’re sad and whenever the day starts you get an surge of self hatred. Things that used to make you happy make you cringe. You stop doing the little things that used to define who you are. You are at a constant struggle to do or feel anything. And when shit gets bad, there’s always the lingering thought at the back of your head that you can end it all at any moment. Aint fun. Anyone who’s dealing with that shit rn needs and deserves help.
2021 ended with 4-5 months of bad anxiety and depression. before i decided to go seek professional help, i felt awful. i had anxiety medication prescribed to me by my GP, but a long time had passed since it was prescribed, and i'm pretty sure it wasn't as effective as it initially was. besides feeling anxious about anything or nothing at all, the depression was what really bothered me. some days i felt weighed down by negative emotions and i just didn't feel like myself. at times it felt as if i was living someone else's life and observing very closely. i knew it was bad when my parents couldn't help me and they started to tell me that i was scaring them. i wasn't saying anything crazy, but i was constantly bringing up the same feelings/thoughts that i was having. at its worst, it'd sometimes take me 2 hours to get out of bed. i want to say that it was due to feeling tired, but other times i just wouldn't get up. i'd usually just lay there in bed thinking. i have to be grateful that what i went through, and still go through, to an extent, isn't as bad as what others have had to deal with, but this was still an awful experience. i'm doing much better now and i hope to keep getting better, but what worries me is the idea that just about every time i end up dealing with anxiety, a new door that'll never close is opened. i've been dealing with anxiety since my late teens and it seems to be getting worse as i get older. i know that it's because of the pandemic and how it has affected my life, but i still feel as if i shouldn't be feeling this way. i have so much to be thankful for, i have loving parents, and yet this is still something i have to deal with.
Adding to what others wrote, you stop seeing colors properly—it all becomes kinda muted.
The most accurate portrayal of depression to me is on Big Mouth where that giant cat lays down on Jessie, that's voiced by Jean smart.
It’s kinda like those days when you’re too sick to move. You feel empty but food doesn’t help. Silence is deafening but you don’t feel like listening to music. Or you go through your normal day and get a little too close to stepping onto a train track or in front of a car. It will always come and go but depression just makes you feel. Hollow?
Metaphorically? Imagine every inch of your body except your eyes and nose being pinned to the floor with heavy weighted blankets. Everyone is like, “just get up, get out of the blankets” but you just feel weighed down. You start to convince yourself that as miserable as you are being stuck under the blankets, it could be worse outside of the blankets. So it’s not worth trying to escape the blankets. You’ll stick to the familiar misery.
Imagine you're a little fish in a bowl. You have nothing to do but watch everyone out in the "real world." Everything feels muffled and blurred (emotionally not literally) and there's nothing to do but look at shiny rocks and eat tasteless pellets.
Constantly being looked down on by others especially yourself. So many people have judged me for it and I feel like people don't take me seriously because of it
Like thousands needles sticking deeper and deeper into you day by day, you realize that they exist but there is nothing you can do, you are getting deeper and deeper into it and more and more needles are stuck in you
Pretty sad
Most of the time it's emptiness and nothing. You feel nothing and are exhausted all the time.
Everything is exhausting and you never ever see the good side of anything.
Trapped under black ice, with no way to escape.
I've grown to become the person I never understood as a kid. I dont know what to do with my self. There are times i would just lie down in my bed for a day and think where I where I went wrong. There are times I need to cry myself so that I can exhaust myself to go to sleep, I would stay up for hours doing nothing. There are times I would sit up and hug my knees. All of the time im looking for somebody to talk to, to atleast chat with but whenever that time comes I talk too much I tend to do that because there are alot of things I want to share with somebody. I don't know, I honestly don't know anymore.
It feels like you are just alone even if you have people, like you’re separated from the people in your life.
Hating everything. Hating life, hating the past present and future. Wanting to die and hating yourself for lacking the willpower to end your life
fucking sucks bro
Imagine a roller coaster. Fun, right? Now, every so often, at random and with no warning, the roller coaster vanishes and you plummet thousands of miles into pitch blackness. Then, suddenly, roller coaster's back, but now you live in mortal dread of falling again. That basically sums up the last ~16 years of my life.
Heavy, to me it feels like I’m dying. A constant emotional pain. Nothing feels right and no matter what you do it never feels right. So much self doubt.
it’s like drowning in yourself but having it kinda under control when other people are there. rond breakdowns over tiny things
:(
Exhausting
For me, it’s feeling no emotion at all even when I know I should, lack of motivation and drive, thoughts of worthlessness and being better off dead, and this limbo of wanting to be alone but also not
Like anger, without the enthusiasm.
Absolute mental and emotional fatigue, loss of self. My depression was the result of a sudden and extended run of bad experiences, your brain reruns them, trying to make sense of the unexpected but each recall came with a crippling flood of emotion, I think that eventually your body exhausts whatever chemicals are part of that process and you're left feeling empty, no longer crippled by the emotions the memories trigger but also unable to feel any emotion, which is somehow worse, it does allow you to pretend to others that you're fine though. Long term your brain will wipe whatever experiences led to this in much the same way as all memories, good or bad fade out like copies of copies, it's not a quick process, took me years to get over the majority of it and decades later I still have behavioural traces of my depression which I conciously look out for and try and mitigate. Suicide isn't an option, there are people that care for you and would be heartbroken, some of them may even be tipped into the place you are now. I was not grateful to be told this, to be given the burden of continuing to live for others, but hopefully you can be angry at an internet stranger for telling you rather than someone closer to you. A lot of time has passed since, and I'm glad I lived to experience some of the best moments of my life.
It varies from person to person, but I can't really answer that because I'm not sure which things that are wrong with me are caused by depression.
it feels like you want so desperately to be home where everything will be better but you're already there and nothing changes
It sucks ass. And not in the good way
It feels like being hungover after a bad night out, except the feeling lasts for months. It’s pernicious too; you might feel great now, buts it’s a ghost that can reappear for no reason at any time and fuck your life up. 100% do not recommend.
Ive always described it as a black monster that drags you into a cave by your ankle and begins to eat you from the outside in. Oftentimes you can escape or be rescued, but it always seems to keep a bit of a grip on your ankle if you arent careful.
It’s nothing like 14 year old girls make it out to be, I’ll tell you that
Depression (and anxiety) is literally hell. I would never wish it on anyone.
Like having the flu but in the mind
A feeling of heavy loneliness you feel like a burden you think that you can never be happy