What I Wish My Friends Knew About My Depression
No, I’m not just sad.
Depression feels like being stuck at the bottom of a hole with no light in sight. There’s no ounce of hope. There is just the void that lingers deep inside me. Depression is like seeing the reflection in the mirror and no longer being able to recognize the person looking back at me. The reflection was a reminder of what I let myself become and the person I no longer wanted to be.
When I have depressive episodes that last months, it makes me feel like I’m battling with my mind, those episodes could happen for no specific reason. Depression is so much deeper than sadness. Sadness is an emotion that comes in go in response to bad life experiences. Depression is a mental health disorder, an abnormal mental and emotional state.
In my most recent depressive episode, everything became harder to do. Texting friends was hard. Showering was hard. Getting out of bed was hard. It was the most difficult to ask for help. I didn’t know how to tell my friends that I was struggling with depression. I created a list of some things I wish I had said to them. I hope this can help others that are struggling with depression or have a loved one struggling with it.
I’m aware this isn’t my usual self.
Depression has made me act in ways that aren’t true to the kind of person I am. That is how much power depression has on the mind. It made me question if my depressive self was my true self, and if my usual happy self wasn’t me at all. My perception of myself became damaged by my illness. I began losing interest in all my hobbies and passions. What brought me so much joy once, couldn’t lift me off my bed anymore.
When I first started slipping, I wasn’t fully aware of what was wrong. I only knew that I didn’t feel like myself. It began with small symptoms. I’d be a lot quieter in conversations with my friends. I also felt less excited about meeting up and seeing them. I’d cancel plans more often. In the beginning, I didn’t understand the way I was feeling, and I wished my friends had pointed out to me that I was acting differently, but they never did.
Depression usually gets diagnosed if there are two weeks or more of someone having a depressed mood or loss of interest in daily activities, according to the National Institute of Mental Health.
It’s hard to fake like I’m fine.
Pretending to be okay put a lot more strain on me because I knew I was lying to myself. I had begun losing meaningfulness in my life. I started caring less about everyone else around me. It was hard to pretend to want to gossip about my dating life when it wasn’t indeed on my mind at all.
Tears would be rolling down my face as I drove on the highway after spending time with my friends. I was frustrated at the lack of my ability to connect. Depression wasn’t just affecting me mentally and emotionally but physically as well. I always felt like I had a heavy feeling on my chest. It was something that I couldn’t fake or ignore anymore.
Unlike with sadness, depression is persistent. Depression affects every aspect of someone’s life who is struggling with it. Many people report feeling a chronic emptiness inside them. The psychical effects of depression can impact concentration, cause headaches, and other forms of pain, according to Jennifer Barry in Medical News Today.
I don’t have the energy to hang out.
Depression has challenged my will power countless of times. Depression makes small tasks seem hard to complete. A simple text felt exhausting even to contemplate sending. It felt like a mental block that I couldn’t get through. So hanging out with friends became nonexistent.
It wasn’t that I didn’t want to see them. It was that I didn’t have the energy to shower, put myself together, see their faces, and have to pretend like I was feeling fine. So for weeks, I’d let phone calls go to voicemail and leave text messages unopened.
Not every single person will have the same experiences or all of these ten common symptoms of depression. The more of these symptoms someone has, for a more extended period, the more likely it is you or someone you know may be struggling with depression.
Being positive won’t make it go away.
When I did open up about struggling with my depression, I was disappointed by some of the comments I heard. My friends said stuff like, “you just have to get out of your head,” “just think positively,” “don’t have negative thoughts,” “everything will turn out fine.” It was not what I was hoping to hear when my illness made me feel so hopeless.
Not only did those comments hurt, but they also made me very angry. I felt so misunderstood. It also felt like my mental illness was being belittled or perceived as something I could snap out of whenever I pleased. It didn’t matter if I wanted to get better; my depression wouldn’t allow me to. My friends didn’t know that by saying those things to me, they were practicing toxic positivity.
Toxic positivity is the belief that one should only focus on positive emotions and to suppress difficult emotions. It encourages a person to remain silent about their pain, which can negatively impact a person’s mental health. According to Dr. Konstantin Lukin in Psychology Today, toxic positivity can lead someone to be in a cycle, where negative emotions become more significant because they aren’t processed.
I’m sorry I’m pushing you away.
Depression has made me miss many life opportunities and ruin some of my relationships with friends. The things I enjoyed in my life and my friends became unpleasurable. I felt fatigued all the time to even feel like talking to anyone. I felt a strong sense of detachment from my friends. Almost as though I was setting a defensive mechanism against the fear of losing them.
I know I wasn’t acting like my usual self, and I felt guilty for that. I felt guilty that I couldn’t be normal by participating in group hangouts and having conversations like I once was able to. My intent was never to hurt anyone with my absence purposely.
Although it made me seem like I was pulling away from my friends, deep down, I wanted their company. I felt like because of the state I was in; they wouldn’t love me anymore since my whole persona had changed. In this PSYCOM article, Dr. Gail Saltz, MD, psychiatrist, states that this feeling of feeling unlovable and lack of energy to engage in conversations most likely is the chemical depression speaking.
I want your help; I just don’t know how to ask.
Depression felt like a fight I had to fight alone. Although I am aware that a lot of people struggle with depression, affecting over eighteen million adults in the U.S, in any given year, it still felt like a very lonely time because no one knew precisely the negative thoughts I was having. Depression made me feel so numb and empty. I’d cry in frustration that I couldn’t get better almost every night for months.
When I was struggling with my depressive episode, I wanted and needed love and support from my friends, but I kept rejecting it with my actions. To my surprise, when my symptoms became more apparent, my friends told me that they noticed me not acting like my usual self since the very beginning, but they figured I’d say something to them if I were having a hard time.
I wish I had said something sooner to them. I also didn’t want to be a burden to my friends by asking for the help I needed. I understand now that my depression was causing me to think that way. Real friends will want to be supportive during hardships. How to help a depressed friend is vital to understand and can be done in many ways. What I needed was for someone to listen to me.
My journey with my mental health was mentally and emotionally painful. It took months of therapy to bring myself back to a better headspace. The truth is it made me feel weak to think I even needed help. The stigma that depression only happens to weakminded people is false. Depression is not something we can have control of if we just try hard enough. Most of society wouldn’t tell a person with a broken leg to just get up and walk. So people shouldn’t tell people with mental illnesses to get over it. Just because we can’t physically see it, it doesn’t mean it isn’t a real illness.
Starting the conversation about depression is challenging, both for the person who is suffering from it and for the person seeing a loved one struggling. It is also vital to approach the conversation correctly, Seize The Awkward offers conversation starters and ways to be supportive. Having support from friends or family can make a positive impact on the person with depression.
I don’t blame my friends for not asking me if something was wrong from the beginning, nor did I ever hold them responsible for my mental health. But it taught me that although society is more aware of mental illnesses, the way of approaching someone with a mental illness is something not everyone knows how to do. A person struggling with a mental illness is not their illness. It is a temporary state of being that doesn’t have to last forever with the right help. Patience and understanding are crucial in aiding someone through their mental health journey.
