No tags yet.
Depression misconceptions
One of the hardest things about depression is that it is really difficult for people who have not experienced it to empathise. They just cannot understand that sometimes you may not even know why you are feeling down. Why can't you just pull yourself together and snap out of it!
I read something the other day which described the numbness of depression and it really resonated with me. Yes there is a feeling of numbness, detachment, nothingness and emptiness. Whereas other days there is an overwhelming amount of emotion and the crying never stops. You can feel the tears welling up and as much as you try and hold them in it is like the clouds brewing a rain storm. Then the calm after the storm. You feel exhausted after the anguish has been physically drained out of you into a big puddle of tears (and probably snot!) on the floor.
I feel like the image on the left is pretty accurate. If you could divide yourself into a pie chart how much would you give each section? I think this does change for me each week, but I definitely feel like the 'nothing' section is fairly big right now. I don't know how much of this is due to medication but it does keep the crying at bay at the moment!
Despite some misunderstanding of what depression feels like, I am glad that it is alot more accepted and recognised than it was years ago. In fact 1 in 4 people will experience a mental health problem at some point in their lives and depression affects 1 in 12 of the whole population.
We can try to be strong and hold it together for as long as we can, but if we do not have the right support in place or use strategies to ease the burden we are carrying it will only be a matter of time before we collapse. That is not because we are weak, it is because our burden just got too heavy to carry and we need to rest a while.
Refs
https://www.mentalhealth.org.uk/a-to-z/s/stigma-and-discrimination