# Can you describe what depression feels like to you?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-you-describe-what-depression-feels-like-to-you/361191
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion
**Created:** [June 18, 2006, 7:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-you-describe-what-depression-feels-like-to-you/361191 "2006-06-18T19:41:45Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 2
### Author:  [@panache45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/panache45)
#### Post date: [June 19, 2006, 4:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-you-describe-what-depression-feels-like-to-you/361191/21 "2006-06-19T04:59:47Z")
If I hadn’t been depressed before reading this thread, I would be now.
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### Author:  [@Othersider](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Othersider)
#### Post date: [June 19, 2006, 5:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-you-describe-what-depression-feels-like-to-you/361191/22 "2006-06-19T05:12:08Z")
> [@panache45](#):
>
> If I hadn’t been depressed before reading this thread, I would be now.
I concur. Even just _talking_ about depression can make you depressed. :smack:
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### Author:  [@rippingtons\_fan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rippingtons_fan)
#### Post date: [June 19, 2006, 5:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-you-describe-what-depression-feels-like-to-you/361191/23 "2006-06-19T05:14:57Z")
> [@Khadaji](#):
>
> While discussing my chronic depression with my doctor, he asked me to describe what it feels like. I had a hard time. It is not the same as being sad. The closest I came to describing it was saying that it feels like a weight on my brain - but not really. It makes me feel tired - but not really.
>
> If you suffer how would you describe it?
>
> (BTW, he caught me equally off-gaurd with a similar question about my restless leg syndrome - for which I will be starting a different thread in the near future.)
For me, I felt like it was the end of the world, the end of everything. I had to quit my job because I couldn’t work for very long without crying.
I felt so isolated, and I felt like I had a cold, wet blanket wrapped around me.
And at first, for quite a long time it seemed like NOTHING would help to bring me out of it. I felt like I’d be this way forever.
When I started self-harm it was time for hospitalisation. I had several years of one-on-one and group therapy and many changes of medications, but I finally started to come out of it (at least I feel much better now than I used to.)
I’m still careful to take my medication on time, because that helps the chemical imbalance that is said to be one of the physical causes of depression.
And the strangest damned thing to me was that I went to bed one evening feeling just like myself, like I’d always been, not bad at all, and then the NEXT MORNING, everything was changed!
I hope you feel better soon!
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### Author:  [@InternetLegend](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/InternetLegend)
#### Post date: [June 19, 2006, 5:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-you-describe-what-depression-feels-like-to-you/361191/24 "2006-06-19T05:17:24Z")
I felt the exhaustion (in no small part because severe insomnia was part of the problem) and a sense that everything I did or thought was completely pointless. I also felt that I couldn’t succeed at any task, even if I had just completed something that day. I felt utterly incompetent and incapable of doing the things that needed to be done, whether it was something as simple as cleaning the kitchen or a more difficult task, even if I’d been perfectly able to do it in the past.
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### Author:  [@Scissorjack](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scissorjack)
#### Post date: [June 19, 2006, 5:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-you-describe-what-depression-feels-like-to-you/361191/25 "2006-06-19T05:25:18Z")
My depression always felt like I was trapped inside a thick, suffocating, dirtily translucent yellowish membrane: I could dimly _see_ the outside world, but these dirty heavy airless folds were encasing me and trapping me - too thick to cut through, too weighty to struggle against, and no-one could even hear me inside. After a while even the effort of pushing against this shroud became too much - so much easier just to lie down and close my eyes, not see the dim figures that were vaguely moving outside. But the less you move, the thicker and heavier the membrane grows, until it slowly crushes the air and the life from you. Just to sleep, to cease to exist, to die, so this crushing numbing suffocating shroud would evaporate, all its choking folds would blow away, and I’d be free…
I’m better now, mostly.
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### Author:  [@Siege](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siege)
#### Post date: [June 19, 2006, 9:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-you-describe-what-depression-feels-like-to-you/361191/26 "2006-06-19T09:44:10Z")
At its worst, depression is like having my soul ripped from my body millimeter by agonizing millimeter. It’s mental agony. The other thing, for me, is it perverts and twists my soul. I’m usually strong willed and stubborn. Depression strips me of my will. There have been times when I’ve been lying in bed with the phone six inches from my hand and the phone number of someone I know can help me running through my mind and been unable to move my hand the six inches needed to dial the phone. I take pride in being logical, but depression perverts logic to where I use it to justify why I don’t deserve to live. I’m also incapable of hope. Intellectually, I may know what to do to get through it and I’ve been pretty good about doing it, but it’s going through the motions because down deep I don’t believe things will get better or can get better. I’ve been told, a few times, that all suicides go to hell. I could argue that that isn’t entirely inaccurate. The only thing is, suicides go through hell _before_ they die.
**Khadaji** , good luck. As I’ve found out the hard way, describing depression to someone who doesn’t suffer from it can be difficult, but getting treatment for it’s worth it.
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### Author:  [@Ice\_Wolf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ice_Wolf)
#### Post date: [June 19, 2006, 10:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-you-describe-what-depression-feels-like-to-you/361191/27 "2006-06-19T10:08:39Z")
For me, it’s a feeling of not really being in contact with my environment. Almost like a film strip out of sync with the sound. When I push things too far and run low on energy, a dark cloud comes down, wraps around my brain, and I just have to stop what I’m doing and head for bed. I may have just woken up from a night’s sleep, had a coffee – then realise I can’t think, so back I go. I have to plan what I do, including social events, because I know some things will drain me dry.
I’ve walked down busy city streets, feeling as if I was walking in a bubble of glass, unable to feel any emotion except numbness (if that counts as an emotion). Soon as I start feeling like that again, I stop, and make all efforts possible to relax, and settle my thoughts down again.
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### Author:  [@Khadaji](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Khadaji)
#### Post date: [June 19, 2006, 11:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-you-describe-what-depression-feels-like-to-you/361191/28 "2006-06-19T11:49:40Z")
Thanks for the well-wishes. Forgive me, I didn’t mean to be misleading. I am not \*currently \*suffering depression. 🙂 I have suffered from it most of my life and just recently realised that I think I have been depressed for a full two years.
Luckily for me 5-HTP has really helped. I won’t evangilize - because I don’t want to violate the no-giving-medical-advice rule. But I recommend you read about it. (And discuss it with your doc before trying it.) Anyway, what a change in my life! 🙂 I haven’t felt this good literally in years. It doesn’t make me happy - it just took away the depression.
Anyway, my doc and I also see each other socially. He and his girlfriend were out with me and others for dinner. Our discussion came from his curiosity more than anything. He wanted to know what it \*feels \*like. His interest was seperate from how to treat me. He was just genuinely interested. But how do you describe it to someone who never had it?
I have to echo the way one person put it - everything seems pointless. I just didn’t care to do things. I would force myself, but I didn’t care if things got done.
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### Author:  [@Bippy\_the\_Beardless](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bippy_the_Beardless)
#### Post date: [June 19, 2006, 5:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-you-describe-what-depression-feels-like-to-you/361191/29 "2006-06-19T17:26:43Z")
For me, it is the steady feeling that nothing is worth doing, that to do anything requires a battle against myself. Things I can do for others are easy, but doing things for myself always seems pointless.
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### Author:  [@Scissorjack](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scissorjack)
#### Post date: [June 19, 2006, 8:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-you-describe-what-depression-feels-like-to-you/361191/30 "2006-06-19T20:54:52Z")
> [@Khadaji](#):
>
> Our discussion came from his curiosity more than anything. He wanted to know what it \*feels \*like. His interest was seperate from how to treat me. He was just genuinely interested. But how do you describe it to someone who never had it?
Print out this thread and get him to read it: it contains the best descriptions of what depression _feels_ like that I’ve read anywhere, and curiosity aside, as a doctor it’ll perhaps give him some perspective on what his patients are going through. It’s frustrating as hell trying to articulate to people - and that includes intelligent, sensible, educated and sympathetic friends and family - about what I’m suffering from, and why I can’t just cheer up and snap out of it, that it’s all in my head.
I can no more “pull myself together” than I can reknit a broken arm by willing it. If I could make this better through a simple act of will, don’t you think I would have? I _know_, it’s all in my head, that’s the terrible thing - part of my own brain was wired to be my worst enemy. Another part _knows_ that, even in the deepest bouts of misery, and that’s probably saved my life knowing that I’m not bad or lazy or weak, I’m ill - but knowing and feeling can be two different things.
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### Author:  [@Bippy\_the\_Beardless](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bippy_the_Beardless)
#### Post date: [June 19, 2006, 9:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-you-describe-what-depression-feels-like-to-you/361191/31 "2006-06-19T21:04:58Z")
> [@Case Sensitive](#):
>
> but knowing and feeling can be two different things.
That is quite a key point, it is easy to know that if I get outside, turn up to an event, go to a park, I will enjoy it and feel better for it. I know this full well and with complete clarity, but knowing this does very little to help me actually do such things.
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### Author:  [@Guinastasia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guinastasia)
#### Post date: [June 19, 2006, 9:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-you-describe-what-depression-feels-like-to-you/361191/32 "2006-06-19T21:07:53Z")
Is this your primary care physician, or your psychologist/psychiatrist? Especially if it’s the latter, interacting socially is a big no-no.
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### Author:  [@iampunha](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iampunha)
#### Post date: [June 20, 2006, 11:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-you-describe-what-depression-feels-like-to-you/361191/33 "2006-06-20T11:41:01Z")
The most difficult parts of it, for me:
1. There’s just no point to doing anything. Stuff takes effort, and where’s the guarantee that any of it will do anything better? It’s also in the future, and the present is the looming thing, because it’s just so pointless to do anything, because nothing is going to make anything better.
2. There’s just no point to doing anything. Sure, various things might inject some fun into life, but what do you do when the fun ends and you’re back where you were, only you have less energy (like it’s worth anything anyway), fewer resources (like they’re any good anyway), whatever. You’re back where you started, and you’ve tried to change that, and fuckit, it didn’t work, so why bother? Or it did work, but so what? You’re back where you started … and?
I’ve found that having been in a depressive state for more’n a little amount of time led to a certain … comfort. I knew where I was when I was depressed, and when I wasn’t depressed, it was alien territory. I preferred the lack of joy, in a way, because at least it was a feeling I could work with.
Then add the well-meaning but fundamentally clueless people who just do not get that “Just go out and do something” is about as useful as “Go to Tibet and buy a pint of ice cream.” Yeah, I could probably go out and do something, but why bucking fother? What’s the point, beyond going somewhere and doing something? Going out and doing social crap may be what _you_ enjoy, dear ignorant person, but my idea of a fun time is not paying to be in a social setting where I am almost entirely surrounded by strangers interfering with my ability to not have to deal with anyone other than me.
Then add the well-meaning but fundamentally off “You’re not depressed, you just don’t know how to have fun,” which usually translates to more of the activities the person in question finds fun, so of course you must as well, and goodbye to that person’s (relatively) pleasant company and suggestions if you do anything but bite your tongue and refrain from saying “I don’t want to go there. I don’t like that. I never have. I’ve told you this before.”
Then add the people who don’t think depression and depressive episodes/states exist, who think … well, whatever they happen to think. Meeting one, and having to explain to a hostile audience that, in fact, you don’t do this for attention or because you don’t want to work–that you don’t do it so much as it exists in your life without your say–but because it is how you are … fun stuff, to be sure.
Then add the people … honestly, it wouldn’t be quite so bad if not for the well-meaning but entirely off people who all need to take a class in how not to respond to some things. Yes, they mean well, but so do people who say “You know, you’d be very attractive if you lost weight/cut your hair/wore makeup/changed something I find undesirable in you.” The well-meant nature of comments does nothing, often, to help cushion the blow.
(Bitter? Me? Course not.)
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### Author:  [@iampunha](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iampunha)
#### Post date: [June 20, 2006, 11:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-you-describe-what-depression-feels-like-to-you/361191/34 "2006-06-20T11:45:17Z")
> [@panache45](#):
>
> If I hadn’t been depressed before reading this thread, I would be now.
I read enough replies to see that there was nothing (in the first few) horribly off from my experiences, then hit End, scrolled up far enough to reply, and did so.
Sometimes the wordsmiths here do too good a job, and it doesn’t take much.
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### Author:  [@NineToTheSky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NineToTheSky)
#### Post date: [June 20, 2006, 12:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-you-describe-what-depression-feels-like-to-you/361191/35 "2006-06-20T12:44:02Z")
As many others have said, it’s the inability to do - or to want to do - anything. There’s no point: what’s it going to achieve?
I find people very frightening - both en masse and individually. I don’t know how to deal with them, and I think that either they think I’m a prat, or I think they are. I veer from being completely intolerant, to not caring about anything. (I’ve had depression for about five years. Before then, I was very sociable and outgoing).
I wonder if boards like this attract more than their fair share of depressives. It’s certainly my main method of interaction with people, but, as my low post count shows, I find it very difficult to force myself to post. I haven’t the energy, what’s the point, everyone will regard my comments as pointless etc etc.
I hang on for my family and in the tiny, tiny pinprick of hope that something - anything - will happen.
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### Author:  [@Grey\_area](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grey_area)
#### Post date: [June 20, 2006, 1:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-you-describe-what-depression-feels-like-to-you/361191/36 "2006-06-20T13:00:33Z")
I’m surprised so many of these responses have rang very true for me as well. I didn’t realize how similar the symptoms of depression were.
One element that I experience that hasn’t been mentioned yet is the sense of shame. Shame for being weak, and a disappointment. For not being able to appreciate the opportunities I do have or take advantage of them. For wallowing in self-pity and failing when there are clearly others in worse situations that make it through.
But now I’m mostly ok.
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### Author:  [@Scissorjack](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scissorjack)
#### Post date: [June 20, 2006, 8:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-you-describe-what-depression-feels-like-to-you/361191/37 "2006-06-20T20:11:19Z")
> [@r4nd0mNumb3rs](#):
>
> One element that I experience that hasn’t been mentioned yet is the sense of shame. Shame for being weak, and a disappointment.
Yeah, the guilt is a biggie: _why_ can’t I do anything but lie on the sofa? _Other_ people can, other people in the world are having kids and working tough jobs, others are starving to death and having limbs blown off, and here am I, physically healthy and comparatively well off, and yet I can barely muster the will and the strength to wash the dishes. Christ, I’m a total failure as a human being. I don’t _deserve_ to live.
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### Author:  [@Merneith](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Merneith)
#### Post date: [June 20, 2006, 11:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-you-describe-what-depression-feels-like-to-you/361191/38 "2006-06-20T23:12:52Z")
It felt like the gravity was turned up (good image) and I was being forced to chew tinfoil. I had the exhaustion but there was also this sort of tinge of pain colored everything I experienced. Not excruciating pain or emergency pain - just constant, dull and reptetitive. Just dull enough that I couldn’t bear to panic or fix it.
Good luck, Khadaji (and others). Therapy is hard and scary but it’s a positive step. Even if this therapist doesn’t have all the answers, _you’re_ making an effort and that’s the key, I think.
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### Author:  [@TLDRIDKJKLOLFTW](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TLDRIDKJKLOLFTW)
#### Post date: [June 20, 2006, 11:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-you-describe-what-depression-feels-like-to-you/361191/39 "2006-06-20T23:44:04Z")
The lead apron is perfect - it’s just that very physical feeling of heaviness and blackness. I kind of feel it at the center of my chest, too.
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### Author:  [@volvelle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/volvelle)
#### Post date: [June 21, 2006, 1:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-you-describe-what-depression-feels-like-to-you/361191/40 "2006-06-21T01:52:29Z")
> [@iampunha](#):
>
> I’ve found that having been in a depressive state for more’n a little amount of time led to a certain … comfort. I knew where I was when I was depressed, and when I wasn’t depressed, it was alien territory. I preferred the lack of joy, in a way, because at least it was a feeling I could work with.
You know, I never want to admit this to anyone, but I’ve felt the same way. Even reading through the descriptions on here produced a strange feeling of “home” that, in some ways, I really miss.
Maybe it’s because a lot of my formative teen years (when I consider myself to have become a full person) were overshadowed by depression, but, since I’ve gotten treatment I don’t really feel like “me” anymore. It’s hard to explain, but I feel like I’ve lost something. I had that overwhelming sense of pointlessness, too, but at the same time, it felt incredibly freeing. Somehow, because it didn’t really matter if I succeeded or failed, I could do or try anything. I felt hyper-focused, and the detachment just made it easier to analyze and dissect and understand. The things I _did_ feel had an such an intensity that it’s actually the post-treatment world that seems like black & white. I don’t know. Maybe that’s a normal sensation for a teenager, and losing it is just part of growing up, but, even with all of the attendant misery and skirting the edge of suicide, if I had the opportunity to go back and relive that period of my life, I would.
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