Depression – What is it?

Depression. It’s something that we hear about more and more these days. Maybe it’s something you have had a lot of experience walking through. Maybe it’s something you have watched someone else go through. But what is it? Or how is it defined? This might be a bit technical but at least it’s a place to start.

Depression (Merriam-Webster) – a mood disorder marked especially by sadness, inactivity, difficulty in thinking and concentration, a significant increase or decrease in appetite and time spent sleeping, feelings of dejection and hopelessness, and sometimes suicidal tendencies.

Yikes, right? Depression is something serious, and something we need to take seriously.

I have battled through different stages of depression for the past 7 years. While depression can be defined, it isn’t something that looks the same for everyone. Many people don’t even know they are depressed. I definitely didn’t know I was getting deeper and deeper in to depression myself until it was pretty extreme.

I actually became much like a zombie. Just walking through life on auto-pilot. I just did what I needed to do because I needed to do it. The decline was so slow that I didn’t even see it happening. I didn’t even experience emotions for quite a while. I didn’t love doing anything and I didn’t hate doing anything. I didn’t get excited about anything I didn’t get anxious about anything. I was quite numb for quite a while and I was so numb I didn’t even know I was numb.

That sounds just a bit unbelievable I know.

Just like the definition up above, I did have difficulty in thinking and concentrating and experienced much hopelessness.

I experienced what I would call functional depression. It was more of a natural survival way to get through my depression. I would live life on auto-pilot and appear to be pretty normal for most people in my life. At work, very few people know what I was going through or that anything was wrong. I did work hard to maintain that at work since I felt that was what I needed to do to be safe. Over the years I have become quite good at just adapting and hiding what is really going on with me.

In some situations that might be ok or helpful, but in general it might not be the best. Living life that way ends up with some consequences. Consequences that impact many things. Things like relationships, personal safety, emotional health, etc. I became so good at having functional depression and closing myself off from people it impacted a lot of relationships I had. I didn’t really know what was going on since just adapting and plowing through personal struggles was what I did to get through my previous battles with cancer. I didn’t really understand the impact it had on relationships and I know that those I was in relationship with, had no idea either.

I am sure there were times when something happened that seemed strange and one of my friends or family members tried to understand what had happened or might have even been hurt by something. I have spent the past couple years working through those things and understanding what happened in my relationships and also trying to know how to communicate and communicate what happened with those in my life.

So this hasn’t been an in depth explanation of what depression is, but more of a personal perspective of depression has been for me. Maybe you can relate or maybe this has helped you understand a little bit more regarding some relationships in your life.