I saw a post online the other day where a person described their experience of depression as the world losing color, turning to black and white. While I have experienced that before I found my experience with depression the majority of the time to be different. For me it’s like suddenly realizing you are trapped in a cage that is always growing smaller and smaller…to make it worse there are horrible things outside of the cage jabbing you with sharp sticks…until you lose who you are and you become a seething mass of pain, hatred, anger and despair. You just want, you NEED it all to end.
Interestingly enough the earliest episodes of depression I had weren’t at that level, it was more like an intense heaviness, an emptiness. Then the episodes became more piercing, painful, terrible as time passed. Each one I have seems to escalate in severity. Depression truly is terrifying. Minding that this could be triggering, what is depression like for you?
Yeah it feels like being trapped. Mine comes with negative and intrusive thoughts, like inside voices telling me how bad, useless, filthy, worthless I am, which gets intensified if I really did something wrong or made a mistake. I lose my confidence, sleep, appetite, I feel weak and terrified of the future. I get the feeling that I’m the worst person in the world and also this idea that God hates me and will punish me sooner or later.
If that state goes on long enough I’d reach for drugs or self destructive behaviour…wellbutrin helped a lot so I don’t get such a dark episodes like before. I can even get really happy nowadays.
I think feeling trapped is appropriate. When depressed, I feel completely disinterested in and disconnected from anything in my life and yet trapped here. It’s a heavy and hopeless feeling. All I want is to have everyone leave me alone, everything end and to leave this existence, but I know that’s not in my control, so trapped is a good description.
For me the depressions have gotten progressively worse with age, and after every “manic episode” I have the crash is 10x harder. I can’t get out of bed, may get up and take a few steps and turn right back around jump under the covers and hibernate. I feel completely empty, only nagging pain and hurt in my heart. Unable to make eye contact with people, lose interest in discussions. Frequently run out of words when talking, lack the breath to finish my sentences.
My posture slumps and my body aches, I can’t think clearly and my memory and concentration go out the window. I lose interest in sex. I want to lash out at people, I come off sideways, my emotions are like a cork on a bottle and my first thoughts are to fly off the handle over little things. I get hyper sensitive and everything is about me, almost paranoid. Like people are slighting me and their words hurt more than they normally would. I get suicidal ideation. It hurts more to breath than it does to stay alive. I imagine that my cellphone is a gun, if it only were and would I have the courage to pull the trigger. I lay in bed and think about dying non stop wishing that I wouldn’t suffer or leave a trail of suffering behind if I actually did cease to exist.
My depressions are generally almost mellow - just an innate understanding that I’m no good, that everything that happens is my fault, that I am not destined to succeed, that no one wants me to succeed, that I am stupid and awkward and a burden on everyone around me, and it’s only through extreme patience and kindness that anyone puts up with me, but everyone’s patience and kindness has limits. I can be very paranoid at this time, but not an angry paranoid - a resigned one. Everyone is talking about how much they hate me and want to fire me/leave me/get rid of me, because why wouldn’t they? They’ve already tolerated enough.
It’s like I live in mud, breathe mud, move through mud, everything is mud, and there’s no point getting worked up about any of it because that’s just how it is, nothing to be done for it.
But my depressions also feature some extreme episodes, generally of two sorts. One I call the whirlwind, where I feel like I’m being assaulted on all sides with how horrific I am, like I’m in a sandstorm and all it is is voices screaming at me and telling me how useless I am, how much better it would be for everyone if I killed myself. I am absolutely unreachable during the whirlwinds, nothing anyone says or does can get through to me through the voices.
The other is frankly delusional, when I come to believe that I have done terrible things that I objectively have not done, that I am responsible for things I objectively am not responsible for, and that I must do impossible things in order to prove my contrition. Even when it can be clearly demonstrated to me that what I believe is incorrect, it doesn’t matter. I still believe it.
The whirlwinds last for hours or days. The delusions last for months or years. The depression right now is lifting, for the first time in well over a decade.