What does depression feel like?

It’s like drowning, except everyone around you is breathing. You feel utterly helpless, leaden, dull, unable to move. You are trapped—an unwilling witness to those living what appear to be happy lives. Anger at everyone’s obliviousness to your condition invades your lungs, heart, and spirit. It's feeling like you'll never be happy. It sometimes leads to other mental health issues as well such as anxiety for an example. It's like an addiction, it feels like you're stuck somewhere dark and believing that you'll never see the light. It's something I wish I never experienced to write enough about it.

It can be unique from one person to another, but there are obvious symptoms of depression like lack of energy, anxiety, lack of motivation, hopelessness, weight loss or gain, feeling guilty and unworthy...The list goes on. There are different types of depressions too so it is important to talk with your doctor about it and try to find out what type of depression you're dealing with. Because then the therapy will be more effective and you will not use meds for nothing. The stigma is that people won't get us, which is sort of true because it's not easy to describe depression to others.

Depression for some can feel like a profound sense of loneliness. It is not necessary that in every aspect of your life you feel like a failure and worthless. The Mental Health Foundation UK has shared two personal stories of depression with Gabi (e.g. You can feel disconnected in your interpersonal relationships although your career is going well and feel you have to push and really motivate yourself to wake up in the morning) and Iona ( She has talked about being Autistic and the difficulty in navigating friendships in which she speaks about bullying and still feeling alone although you can have a large quantity of friends). There are sites with personal stories of people and sharing what depression can feel like. This might make you feel less alone in your experience. It can be very likely but not always the case that suicidal thoughts/ self-harm tendencies can come with having depression so it’s extremely important to be curious about whether or not you identify with this. If so it’s especially important to refer to our crisis resources (7cups.com/crisis). You can look for your local or national helplines, if you need.