depression sufferers help

[charlotte_skye]

when your depressed do you honestly feel nothing?

 

do you forget all emotions?

 

please explai how and what this is like to me.

 

my ex broke up with me cos depression, i wanna understand him wihtout havin to pressure him for info on how he feels. he says often it gets to point where he doesnt even knwo what hes feeling........

[arwen]

I can confirm that, sadly. I have had a depression that was the result of an underlying anxiety. In fact, all I could 'feel' was fear. Looking back, I think fear is not a feeling, but it's what stood between me and my feelings. I was too scared to feel. Whether it was a good feeling or not, it felt safer to just not feel it in the first place. When things finally got better, I spent days anticipating on possible future pain, being scared to lose my loved one(s), imagining I was terminally ill, and the happy feeling would be for no reason, and I would have let it slipped away.

 

These are not things that I knew when I was depressed. Being depressed can be described as living under a layer of ice. You are stuck because the ice is to hard for you to break it. You feel nothing because you're benumbed with cold. You just sit there and watch through the ice at people who are in the world outside. The world seems gray and dark and blurry, because that's the way you see things looking through ice.

 

Ilse.

[ArcadianX]

Same for me. I was clearly depressed for a few years, but didn't realize it because I felt nothing rather than feeling sorrow. When someone finally broke through two months ago, I realized that I couldn't continue like that. Unfortunately I'd lost most of my ability to cope with strong emotions in the first place, so it's been a bit of a bumpy ride, but I'd never go back into the dark.

 

When I was depressed, I basically didn't want anything. I just wanted to sit in the dark, alone, and make sure I never exposed myself to hurt, never risked my feelings, never let anyone hurt me. In the end I hurt myself far more than anyone else ever could have. It took a year of my life, one that I'll never get back.

 

Another thing I felt in the darkness was the sense of being trapped. The sense that my life was going nowhere. The sense that it would be years, if ever, before I was going to be able to advance in even the smallest way. The sense that I was out of options. I tend to draw my strength from other people because I'm insecure - but, being in near-total isolation, I had nowhere to draw any strength from. I had no courage left to face anything, and so I didn't even try, but just stuck to the same routine.

 

I got lucky - someone who I had known for years, who I had loved without even realizing it, popped back into my life out of nowhere and gave me something to fight for again. I can't think of anyone else who could have gotten me to come out. Unfortunately that isn't working out as easily as I'd hoped, but at least it got me out of the hole and in human company again. It doesn't apply very well to your situation though.