What does depression feel like?

One of the more widely recognised feelings of depression is resignation; 'Why bother?', 'What's the point in anything?' and 'We'll all be dust one day anyway' are examples of comments from depressed people. This is partly related to the other feelings, namely time compression and going through the motions.

An obvious one this, although the level of unhappiness is more profound than non-depressed people can imagine. Every thing is gloom, doom and misery, and it's pretty much impossible to take any pleasure from anything.

These two emotions are common in depressed people, because of the effects of the chemical imbalance in the brain. Feelings of anxiety and panic attacks can occur quite frequently, particularly in stressful situations where the physical senses are overwhelmed. Paranoia is the irrational feeling that someone is taking an unnatural interest in your life. You assume that when people are talking together, they are talking about you. At its extremes, you may believe that everyone you know is secretly plotting against you, or listening outside your door. Everything that happens is aimed at you, from a car back-firing to the whistling of the postman.

This is one of the most common complaints from depressed people. Although they are doing all the things that they used to do before, nothing gives them any pleasure. They feel like robots going through life without any real interaction, or actors rehearsing a play. They experience little or no positive emotion whatever they do, and some liken the experience to living in a dream.

This is another very common feeling for depressed people. Detachment or depersonalisation is the feeling that you are watching your own life take place, as if you are sitting behind your own eyes and watching your actions as though they were those of someone else. It's a deeply unpleasant experience that has been likened to being trapped in a bell-jar, hence the name of this site, The Glass Belljar* (The Bell Jar is a book about the experiences of a depressed person). At its worst, the sufferer feels as though he or she is trapped inside their own head, unable to reach out and connect with real life. At least one person has described it as "the soul becoming disconnected from the body".

* According to the OED, it should be hyphenated, but 'belljar' is faster to type and easier to remember.

One of the more strange effects of depression is that the sufferer's perception of time can be distorted. Events that happened years ago can seem as though they happened yesterday, while the far distant future is, apparently, just around the corner. Experiences long-since forgotten can be recalled in incredible detail. In some cases, the sufferer can pick a time of their life, go to it, and see it as vividly as though it was the present day. Although this sounds like an interesting experience, it is in fact very confusing, because the sufferer's perception of 'what am I?' blurs with 'what was I?' and 'what will I be?'. And an identity crisis is the last thing a depressed person needs.

Depressed people see nothing but gloom and misery in their future, and because of the effects of time compression, they believe that they can see to their own death, and even beyond to the end of all mankind. This leads back to the feelings of resignation.

'It's all my fault', is an outburst that you'll often hear from a depressed person, usually accompanied by tears. However irrational it may seem to someone in good mental health, anything from a friend's misfortune to population starvation on the other side of the world can be directly attributable to the depressed person. The weight of the world's woes is truly on their shoulders.

One of the scariest feelings of all is the impression of magnitude. This is a hard one to explain, but it's the sensation that every single thing you do has a profound effect on the world around you and your own life, to the extent that you start to analyse every action before doing it. Even the smallest task becomes an immense challenge because of the profound effect that the sufferer feels the result of that task will have. By comparison, the day-to-day life that the sufferer experienced before the depression can seem shallow and irrelevant. This can be a barrier to escaping from depression; the sufferer feels that the depression is far more profound and important than their non-depressed life, and they can feel guilty about getting on with things and enjoying themselves again. The term 'uplift anxiety' has been used to describe such feelings in anti-depressant users.

These feelings are all directly attributable to depression. It's important to understand that they can be counteracted by nothing more tangible than thought. See our THERAPY page to find out more about fighting negative feelings.