What does depression feel like?

It feels like you’re trying to tread water and you try to keep your head above the water but every time you realize you can breath you start drowning again. You can’t breath but you hear the muffled voices of life above you, and you’re unable to do anything. Once you are above water something pulls you right back down. You wonder what is trying to drown you, and start to blame yourself for not knowing how to swim. The worse it gets, the colder the water and then you’re numb and too tired and hopeless. Until you resurface again. And get dragged down again. And again.

Depression feels like that moment when you’re underwater and the world is silent, and you feel at peace. But then you come to the realization that you cant breathe, and you begin to struggle for air, and as you make your way to the top, you realize you’re all alone, even with people around you. depression feels like when you lay awake at night, its 3 maybe 4 am and it’s completely dark in your room. no noise, just a blissful silence & you enjoy it, until all your thoughts come rushing in and the blissful silence becomes loud with thoughts.

It can feel like lots of different things. I suffered with depression throughout my teen years. It sometimes felt as if I was numb, that I didn't care about anything anymore. I didn't want to get out of bed because I didn't want to face the day. The thought of going outside, made me feel even worse. I felt like I just wanted to hide from everyone. I didn't have motivation do do anything, even putting normal clothes on, so I would stay in my pyjamas all day. I would stay awake till the early hours, sometimes 6am and then sleep all day and not wake up until the afternoon, sometimes 2/3pm. I'd often just feel this sense of sickness in my stomach and just generally feel so low. You feel like no body understands you, and sometimes, you can't see when it will get better. Then comes the self criticism and feeling like a failure because you've stayed in bed all day, due to depression. You feel like people will think that you're lazy, but in fact it's due to depression. Depression wants you to stay in bed all day. You know that you have a lot of things to do, but you don't do them because you feel like you're unable to, and then you stress about not doing them, which leads to feeling stressed out.

Depression has many types of feelings and symptoms. They are not always the same in every case. There are many types of depression, we can't define all. I have been depressed for very long time, therefore in my experience it's much I have felt. I can't say all as I can't express my feelings always. Buy I can say, it always (mostly) feels sad, hopeless, overwhelmed and not having interest or motivation in activities. We have anger sometimes too or guilt. We want to let it out so much, and shout so loud, but it is not possible. We feel that life is useless and world is hateful. We hate everything, even ourselves. We may also some time hurt ourselves. We want everything thing which is bad to end for ever and have peace and be happy. We want people to understand us as we can't speak our feelings much. There might be other symptoms involved too. I hope this helped 💙

It’s like drowning, except everyone around you is breathing. You feel utterly helpless, leaden, dull, unable to move. You are trapped—an unwilling witness to those living what appear to be happy lives. Anger at everyone’s obliviousness to your condition invades your lungs, heart, and spirit. It's feeling like you'll never be happy. It sometimes leads to other mental health issues as well such as anxiety for an example. It's like an addiction, it feels like you're stuck somewhere dark and believing that you'll never see the light. It's something I wish I never experienced to write enough about it.

It can be unique from one person to another, but there are obvious symptoms of depression like lack of energy, anxiety, lack of motivation, hopelessness, weight loss or gain, feeling guilty and unworthy...The list goes on. There are different types of depressions too so it is important to talk with your doctor about it and try to find out what type of depression you're dealing with. Because then the therapy will be more effective and you will not use meds for nothing. The stigma is that people won't get us, which is sort of true because it's not easy to describe depression to others.

Depression for some can feel like a profound sense of loneliness. It is not necessary that in every aspect of your life you feel like a failure and worthless. The Mental Health Foundation UK has shared two personal stories of depression with Gabi (e.g. You can feel disconnected in your interpersonal relationships although your career is going well and feel you have to push and really motivate yourself to wake up in the morning) and Iona ( She has talked about being Autistic and the difficulty in navigating friendships in which she speaks about bullying and still feeling alone although you can have a large quantity of friends). There are sites with personal stories of people and sharing what depression can feel like. This might make you feel less alone in your experience. It can be very likely but not always the case that suicidal thoughts/ self-harm tendencies can come with having depression so it’s extremely important to be curious about whether or not you identify with this. If so it’s especially important to refer to our crisis resources (7cups.com/crisis). You can look for your local or national helplines, if you need.

Gosh, it's pretty hard. Some days, you just don't want to get out bed, because you don't feel like doing anything, or because you're scared you'll get a panic attack. It wears you down, and each day you're paranoid about every single things, and your mind kind of struggles because it cares on the anxiety part, but because of the depression you sometimes feel to tired to care anymore about anything.

It's hard. It honestly sucks, and the worse they get, the harder they are to get over with. Please talk to someone if you have either of these.

It can be isolating, frustrating, lonely, can make you feel ashamed, disappointed, it really depends on the individual experience but most have reported these shared feelings