Depression is a mental illness that is mentioned quite often today and we can say with utmost certainty that people have started sort of “abusing” this term, if I can say it like that. To be more precise, people have started diagnosing themselves with this mental illness and using the term to loosely to explain any type of sadness that they might be feeling at a certain point in time. This is a bit unfair to all of those individuals who are really suffering from depression and who know what it actually feels like. If you’re not sure whether you are one of those people, click this to get a better idea about it.
In an effort to raise awareness on the actual seriousness of this mental disorder and thus help them understand what individuals with depression really feel, I have decided to talk about it today. When you get a better understanding of this illness, you will most certainly stop using the term so loosely and in a wrong way, because you’ll gain much more respect for the people with this condition. So, it is time for you to understand people with depression and figure out what it really feels like.
What Is Depression?
Depression is a mood disorder that leads people towards losing interest in life and constantly feeling sad and unwilling to participate in any kinds of activities that they might have loved before. If you are feeling sad because something bad happened to you or to someone you love recently, there is a good chance that you are simply going through a mourning period and that you aren’t actually depressed. Or, you could be experiencing a depressive mood which can also be normal.
There are time-frames that professionals adhere to in order to diagnose this particular disorder. In other words, a person needs to have been in a depressive mood for a particular period of time so that he or she can be diagnosed with this disorder. If you’ve never experienced these feelings, then you certainly cannot understand precisely what it all feels like. So, whatever it is that you are picturing, I am pretty sure that real depression is much more intense than that. This, however, does not mean that you cannot put any effort into understanding people suffering from it.
Here is a nice read on what it feels like: https://www.verywellmind.com/what-depression-feels-like-5088793
What Does It Feel Like?
As mentioned above, you might not be able to picture all of those feelings if you’ve never experienced them, but you can still try and understand people who are diagnosed with this disorder. It is a rather serious condition that needs to be treated by the right professionals, and a proper support group in the depressed person’s life will certainly have a positive impact. In short, you should provide these people with support instead of trying to diminish what they are feeling and instead of claiming that it is not that serious and that they should just snap out of it.
The thing is, nobody can just “snap out of it”, because that’s not the way things work. There is a chemical misbalance in the brain of depressed individuals that needs to be treated in order for those individuals to get better. And, of course, psychotherapy has proved to be a rather helpful tool. Before you start thinking of treatment options, though, it is important for you to actually understand what this condition feels like, so let’s talk about that for a while.
A person suffering from this disorder will be unable to find any joy or pleasure in life. They will stop engaging in activities that have been able to make them happy previously because they feel that there is no point to those activities anymore. Everything will start seeming so pointless and these people will feel hopeless, thinking that nothing is ever going to change and that they will be stuck in this pointlessness forever.
In addition to that, these people will lack energy do complete even the most trivial of tasks. They might also find food unappetizing or they might start eating more than before because food will provide them with temporary comfort. Their self-esteem will be rather low and they might also have sleeping issues, meaning that they might have troubles falling asleep or staying awake, depending on the person and his or her previous habits. So, in order to understand someone with depression, you need to take into account their previous behaviors and personalities, as well as the changes that have ensued.
If you notice that some people in your circle of friends and acquaintances are exhibiting symptoms of depression, it is important for you to provide them with the necessary support. This, of course, doesn’t mean that you should constantly push them towards becoming more active if they don’t feel like it. It simply means that you should be there for them and that you should recommend professionals to talk to.
