How would you describe depression?

Lonely. Nothing in the world is more lonely than depression, despite the often conscious knowledge that depression itself is a widespread mental illness that many people suffer from. Tiring. As a manic depressive, I could go from feeling incredibly full of life and laughter to apathetic and empty in no time at all, over the smallest trigger. To do so was exhausting beyond belief, and then to try and find the energy to somehow work through the low episode to get back to any kind of normalcy was even more tiring still. Manipulative. Depression makes my brain lie to myself, and tries to convince me of a perceived worthlessness while actively hiding all my worth. It blinded me to my own behaviour towards friends and family I cared about, and then it told me that it was my fault my relationships kept falling apart at the seams and that I simply wasn't trying hard enough. Frustrating. When diagnosed with manic depression, it didn't make my battle any easier to fight even though it had a name. Truthfully, all the diagnosis did was put a name to a face, if you will. The road to recovery is painful and long and one of the most frustrating things I have ever had to do in my life. Reconciling my behaviour, trying to find healthy coping mechanisms, combing through my life to identify where depression made itself at home and where I could take the fight to the illness. I had to have many failures before I even tasted a small amount of success. Painful. Even as somebody who is in a state of recovery, and no longer needs medication to help with my illness, depression was and is painful. Looking back on what I did is painful, because with the new clarity of vision my slowly recovering status brings me, I see how self-destructive I truly was and beyond that, how destructive that behaviour was in turn to people I loved. I sit in a ghost town of shattered friendships and bitter memories, and it will take a long time to breathe the life back into that town and restore it to even a small shadow of its former self. But ultimately, I will get there, and I will get there with the help of the relationships that survived the raging fire. Because despite the way depression lies to you, you're never as alone as you feel. And no matter how tired you get, eventually you will weather the storms and come out the other side with all the energy you felt you missed out on. So I guess I would also describe my depression, at least, as a learning experience. Because there is no better way to make your depression your own, than to turn it into a positive experience you can grow from.

I think it's when not many things or people can cheer you up. You feel like your life is so difficult to live through and you forget to envision a silver lining. You forget the things you do have and the people that do love you. I think it's mostly when you forget - that things will get better after a while.

Like a dark cloud that follows you. It swallows up everything you think is good and hangs over you like a stalking monster draining you every day making you feel heavy in the shoulders and empty inside.

Like your drowning and eveyone else is able to breath and you just have to watch everyone carry on with your normal life while you struggle.

When you have your favorite food everyday and then one day your favorite food is not on the menu anymore.

Depression, atleast to me is feeling empty. Feeling like everything is meaningless. Being constantly sad.. And most importantly, feeling helpless.

Depression to me is someone who wants to give up on things. Its someone who rather be isolated from everyone because of how down they feel. Its a struggle they are dealing with that got them to that place and dont know how to get out of it.

Feeling low, feeling sad, wanting to sleep all of the time. Not interested in anything, just want to be by yourself.

Something that eats you away from the inside, a little black monster in your head that tells you that you're worthless and you can't handle it anymore

Depression is this soul-sucking thing that makes your life terrible. No one should ever have to go through it, but millions of people do everyday. It's a very serious thing that more people need to take seriously. In my own opinion, it feels like being empty and dead on the inside and just waiting for the outside to be the same way.

A pit of nothingness, you feel helpless and worthless and you want to disappear. Depression feels like trying for centuries to succeed, but never doing it.

I would describe depression as a feeling that holds on for dear life and pulls you deeper and deeper eventually taking you to rock bottom, sometimes and tricking your brain to make you think that you need to harm yourself to feel better. Sometimes also making it feel like comitting suicide is the only answer and it is not. That is why us Listeners are here, we can help.

Depression is like a shadow. It is the darkness in the light. It may not always be prominent, but it is there. Sometimes it isn't noticeable, but some days it's just too heavy to ignore. Depression is not a scale from 1 to 10. It is individual to every person who suffers from it. To some people, it is set off by catalysts, and to others it just exists without any rhyme or reason. Depression is wanting to go on a walk on a nice day but not having the mental energy to do so. Depression hurts... but you are never alone in it, no matter how much it feels that way.

My description of depression is a feeling of sadness and sorrow for a long period of time that the person doesn't cheer up.

A lonely isolated place, but I also don't want to be with people? A place that seems to take the energy out of every cell in my body, even getting out of bed and getting dressed is an effort. A tiredness that sleep doesn't cure. A place that makes me feel different to everyone around me, like I exist on one side of a thick glass window and everyone else on the other side. I don't belong anywhere. Feeling I'm hiding a sinful secret, so I pretend to be "ok" " just tired" etc. Feeling like no one would actually get how it affects me anyhow, and that would be worse than keeping it to myself. Exhausted. It can stabalise and then it's suddenly there, makes you feel like a failure.

It`s very difficult to describe depression to someone who has never been there, because it`s not sadness. You feel exhausted, devastated, lonely, crushed, trapped. . .all at once.

heavy, painful, dark, lonely, stuck in a whole, crying, fear, sadness, pressure, lack of motivation,

Everyone experiences depression differently, but in general answers, it feels horrible. For me, I didn't want to get out of bed. I slept a lot, I didn't eat much. It's just a really sucky feeling and I hate it.

It's the feeling of hopeless about anything. Giving up on love and saying yourself that you suck at everything. You see everything bad, more then it is. Depression can take you away. It takes you away from reality and good times. You become the other - harder to live - person.

Like a dementor. It feels like you can never be happy again. Enough said.

I'll repeat what I once read.. It feels like walking surrounded by mud so you move slowly and it's hard to do it. Depression makes hard to do even small shores. Also, remember that you still can be happy although it may be harder. Think of yourself as a treasure buried... It's still a treasure despite all the dirt and dust. You just have to keep looking for the treasure. I am glad you decided to reach out, to talk about how are you feeling. That's a big step. We are here for you. I encourage you to contact a listener and tell him or her also if something happened and tell him or her more about it.

Depression is like being stuck in a hole that's hundreds of feet underground; it's so dark, people will throw you a rope and you won't see it. When you do make the first step and grab that rope, you have to climb up the rope to get out, carrying with you the weight of yourself. That's the hardest part, but also the part that makes it all worth it. If you want my logical explanation, it's decreased mood levels, thinking one is worthless, a nuisance, and in some cases "better off dead". It includes disrupted sleep or oversleeping, low energy levels, a lack of pleasure in things once enjoyed, and in more cases than one would think, suicidal thoughts.

depression is like living with a leach attached to you, sucking you life and happiness away each and every day

Depression is a mental illness, that makes one feel extreme sadness and other negative emotions. But if you're asking how it feels? Depression is...a dark cloud or a shadow that follows you around wherever you go whispering doubts and fears to you, it feels like drowning and being set on fire all at once, it feels like too much but also feels like emptiness, a black hole in you heart that swallows all your hopes. It feels like you're alone in this world, the last one standing, and you're lost, you're walking down an empty road looking for a home you're not sure exists. Depression can be described in many ways, it feels different from one person to the next but at the end of the day it is what it is, a mental illness. An illness that needs to be helped, understood and stopped, no one should ever have to feel the way you do when you are depressed.

Depression is like standing by an open window, with all of the rain and hail blowing directly into your face, but not knowing how or being able to close the window. The window is stuck and you don't know how to fix it to make it better. Everything from the storm keeps hitting you and piling up at your feet, but you just can't figure out how to get yourself out of the situation. It feels hopeless and like there's no reason for you to try to close the window anymore because it just won't do anything to help.

Depression..not the romanticized version..It is the darkest kind of dark, the kind that intoxicates your brain and turns your best friends to enemies, your family to people you simply push away so they don’t have to hurt just because you do. It is the raw feeling of emptiness, the kind that gnaws at your very insides and leaves you nothing more than a walking skeleton, incapacitated and incapable of feeling anything but sorrow and sadness for nobody but yourself. Depression is the deepest hole you could ever think of, the only one you could ever think of because you dug it yourself. It is being not only unable, but unwilling to pull yourself up, having the darkness swallow you whole. Depression is not rain. It is being unable to see the sun, even after the rain has passed.sadness is not the same as depression sadness is a temporary feeling depression lives on inside of you like a mental cancer that feeds on your happiness. depression is not a trend, it’s not fun or cool to have. It kills your mind and all motivation until it’s all you think you have. then it eats at you so that you feel like you’re nothing in just barely a being in not alive not dead but somewhere in the middle.depression is feeling numb and empty inside.It’s drowning in your thoughts.it’s not being able to cry but dying inside.it’s always there.even when the sun comes out it still follows you like your shadow.it’s when you feel like running away but you’re stuck.nothing matters anymore.life..death..heartbreak..happiness..none of these has any meaning at all..you feel there’s no meaning in life or death or in anything.it’s a struggle.only you can win your depression but you don’t know how or even if that is possible.but you gotta keep going.suicide is not the solution.speak out!there are others feeling the same thing..you might not find the solution but neither are you going to find it if you die..it’s a battle with yourself and you have to win.SPEAK OUT!

I would describe depression with a quote from Fool's Garden's 'Lemon Tree': "I'm sitting here I miss the power I'd like to go out taking a shower But there's a heavy cloud inside my head I feel so tired Put myself into bed While nothing ever happens"

A clever and hard-to-get-out-of trap caused by a loss of sense of purpose or meaning in life. A place where you feel numb and stuck, and where your brain tries to override you with negative thoughts and feelings.

Depression is like drowning in a dark, murky, polluted river, but everyone around you is fine and living a utopian life.

Having a flat battery