Explaining Depression: What You Need to Know
How do you describe depression to someone who has never experienced it? It is the loss of joy in things once loved, feeling stuck with no way out, the inability to focus, and changes in sleep patterns. Depression can cause physical pain throughout the body, too. However, regardless of the symptoms, treatment and healing are available.
It can be tough explaining depression to someone since it impacts each person differently. Not only can the symptoms and signs vary, but for some they may be evident whereas others may carry the heavy emotions and feelings on the inside.
If you or someone you love is suffering from depression, this article will describe depression and explore everything you need to know.
Explaining Depression
Clinically speaking, depression, or major depressive disorder (MDD) as it is more formally known, is considered a medical and mental illness that can negatively impact all areas of your life, including your feelings, your thoughts, and your actions.
It can disrupt daily life significantly and it can suck the joy out of things once enjoyed. But since we are explaining depression, it is important to take a closer look at how it makes someone feel — and how you can take notice that you or someone you know may be dealing with the heavy weight of this illness.
Depression Can Make You Feel Stuck
One way to describe depression is feeling like you are in a rut and you cannot get out. You see the world moving forward around you— friends, family, colleagues. Each is living life and you are watching from the sidelines unable to get up and join them.
It doesn’t matter how much you want things to return to normal, the weight of worthlessness, hopelessness, sadness, and guilt can be so heavy that you can’t move. Not to mention that it can trick you into believing that you don’t deserve to be living life with everyone else or that you aren’t good enough.
All this does is make those emotions and feelings even deeper and heavier, further ensuring that you are so far down you can’t get back up. For some, this can lead to suicidal thoughts — or even attempts.
Depression Feels Like Life is Void of Joy
Life with depression can be dark and ugly. The laughter, the joy, and the excitement seem to get sucked away and replaced with emptiness and sadness. One of the main factors in diagnosing depression is losing interest in things once enjoyed.
Whether it is time with friends and family, a hobby, or something else —- we all have things in life that bring happiness and make us jump out of bed even if you were still tired.
When explaining depression, you cannot overlook the missing piece of the puzzle. Joy is gone and those things once loved are no longer a valued part of life.
Depression Makes it Tough to Focus
Depression makes it hard to concentrate and focus the mind due to the intense brain fog. This can impact your ability to work or go to school. It can also impact the ability to make decisions, including small simple things like what to eat for lunch.
Unfortunately, when the smallest tasks become so difficult, it can cause you to withdraw from being in situations that require you to focus or make decisions at all.
Depression Can Cause You To Sleep More – Or Not At All
It can be challenging to get out of bed in the morning when suffering from depression.
For some, it doesn’t matter how many hours you sleep; it never seems enough. Even getting a total 8 hours (or more) of quality sleep can still tire you. Exhaustion and fatigue can keep you in bed sleeping as if you are trying to gather enough sleep to get up and on with your day, but you never can.
For others, sleep is hard to come by. Many describe depression with bouts of insomnia, finding it difficult to fall asleep and stay asleep. Not having a night can make it challenging to get out of bed in the morning. And it can leave you feeling worn down and tired — further exacerbating your symptoms.
Your Body Can Physically Hurt With Depression
When explaining depression, physical pain is joint. Whether it is from the condition itself or due to tension, anxiety, or simply staying in bed all day, pain such as body aches, back pain, joint pain, chest pain, headaches, nausea, gastrointestinal issues, and more can all be present.
Other physical issues that appear with depression are appetite changes, such as eating more or less than you used to. Depending on how long you let it go, this can be visibly seen on the body.
Sleep disturbances, as previously mentioned, can also be considered physical hurt caused by depression and is worth mentioning again.
Not feeling well physically while dealing with depression can drag your mood down even more under the weight of the feelings.
Get Help For Depression at Amend Treatment
The good news is that no matter how your depression makes you feel, there is still hope. Treatment is available.
Take time to work through the depression, gaining coping skills and focusing on empowerment along the way.
At Amend Treatment, we are a luxurious residential treatment facility — not a rehab. Staffed with highly experienced mental health professionals, we can offer our clients access to some of the most effective and empowering psychotherapy as well as various treatment modalities and medications that can all come together to yield the best results for healing from depression.
Conclusion
Don’t go another day without joy in your life. The heavy feelings that you may be carrying around due to depression don’t have to be a permanent fixture in your life.
Amend Treatment can help you lighten your load. After all, it does not matter how hard you find it is to describe depression; treatment is available. Take the step and reach out to our admissions team today.