Coping with Depression

[toad4466]

Recently i was asked by someone to describe to them how it feels to suffer from depression, and to be perfectly honest i think thats a very very hard thing to do.

 

I thought i would try and put it in words here before answering my friends question, so that others can read this, and share their thoughts and feelings with me, maybe you suffer or have suffered, or maybe you have a friend or loved one who suffers

 

Before we go on, i am on medication and recieving councelling So thank you all for your concern

 

So here is my attempt to explain things -

 

I dont know what its like to feel normal, every day i wake up, and i find it hard to get my brain to wake, all i want to do is lie in bed and sleep.

When you do wake up, you dont feel right, a strange feeling a bit like poisoning is inside of you, it saps your strength and your will. You take your pills, at a different time every day, sometimes you forget whever you have taken them or not.

You feel gloom, like a pain in your heart, you feel scared and you cant snap out of it. Its like you are grieving for the part of you thats died.

 

Things in your home get you down, the housework suffers as things build up, until you cant take it any more and have to do something. You forget to eat, or dont want too.

 

You turn on the TV, 100's of channels and nothing you want to watch, then you turn on your pc, game after game after game sits on the shelf, none of them are fun to play.

 

So you go back to bed, so tired, or you haev a shower and your head drifts away, sometimes you wish that you are the water, slowly going down the plug. Sometimes you want to be gone, after all, you have no friends, nobody cares

 

Every day is the same, like living in a limbo, and the only way out is to beat the problems, or they beat you

 

Small tiny things can make you worse, a bill through the letterbox, a bit of bad news about some awful disaster round the world, but almost nothing can make you better.

 

Thats how depression feels to me, and i hope you dont feel down reading this, as atm im not feeling as bad as this, just remember how it feels

 

Do you think i summed it up? Have u had a different experience?

 

Toad

[Sim54]

For me, my depression was best summed up as feeling like I am wrapped up in clingfilm (shrink wrap). I can see the world, but I can't interact with it properly.

 

But, after a year of analysis, i have pretty much beaten my depression. I have come to realise that depression is not an illness, and it isn't caused by low brain chemicals.

Our neurotransmitters will become depleted by depression, that is a symptom, not the cause.

 

Depression is a defence mechanism we learn when we are young, to shut out the world, when we can't cope, and if we don't have a strong sense of self, of our abilities and high self esteem, then we will sink into depression often. We must slowly learn to have a loving relationship with ourselves, and to process our wounded child in side us, to heal ourselves and climb out of the pit of depression.

 

It can be done, i am living proof of it, and I have never taken medication.

We must learn to face our demons, our fears and our pain, and to allow the depression to sink over us, so we can work through it, and come out the other side.

 

peace.

[DoxCin]

Hi Toad,

The feelings I have are very similar to what you describe.

Perhaps the worst part in my opinion is the physical choking like pain throughout my chest up my throat.

Second on the list for me is utter loneliness that I have felt even when someone was right there with me.

Third would have to be both of those things smashed together and being the leading cause of me crying myself to sleep and waking up crying.

I do have good days here and there, but overall it's often a countdown in my head of the hours in each day until it's over and the next one begins where it's likely I do it all over again until I don't have to do it anymore.