First-Person: It’s Tough to Reach Out to Friends When You’re Depressed
When you’re depressed…
Sometimes it’s hard to understand why a depressed friend just can’t “snap out of it.” It can leave the “helper friend” feeling pretty helpless—and sometimes, frustrated and angry.
On May 26th an anonymous poster on this blog tried to explain what it feels like when someone is depressed. I thought her post was extremely powerful, honest, very well written, and important to re-post here to improve understanding of this condition. It’s important to remember that not everyone experiences depression in the same way.
Best, Irene
I wanted to describe, to those who don’t understand, what a deep depression is like. I call it the “black hole”. One day,
you just start to feel the ground crumbling beneath you a little bit. Then it opens up slowly and you start to slip into the hole. It is all very gradual and, sometimes, you don’t even notice it.
As time goes on, you start to slip further and further into this slippery black hole and it gets darker and narrower the further you fall. Pretty soon, you are looking up at a pinpoint of light that is the world and where life seems to be happening around you.
All the while, you are being isolated and squeezed by the ever-narrowing hole and you can’t move, you can’t climb out, you can’t breath, you feel sick. You are just stuck there, watching life go on without you but you are unable to reach or call out for help. You are stuck in this blackness with no way out.
If someone offers you a lifeline, by the time it reaches you it is only a few tattered threads that you can’t get a grip on. People talking to you are like voices from the top – far away and faint – and the messages get garbled and lost, no matter how positive. Sometime, the upbeat positivity is like sandpaper grating on you skin because you can’t change where you are.
There were literally days when I couldn’t get out of bed (with major sleep disturbances that I didn’t realize I also had.) People who have not struggled with this have a very difficult time understanding how awful it really is. They believe, if you just think the right way or behave the “right” way, you will get better. But I could be a singing/tap dancing fool and it still wouldn’t get me out of the black hole.
When you start to get better and look back, it is unbelievable how far you fell. You forget about it until something else happens – i.e. your medications stop working and you need to find new ones. You start slipping ever so gradually you don’t notice it until you have slid quite a distance back down that hole. So you start again and try to live a normal life,
knowing the hole can open up underneath you at any time.
I have, fortunately, been on a great medication for several years. Even severe life issues haven’t caused me to slip into the hole again. I can get a little depressed for a few days due to circumstances but, in general, my mood is normal, even when severely stressed. It is definitely a gift to be better but so many people don’t understand what it’s like and I feel I must
protect them because I know what the struggle is like.
Some prior posts on The Friendship Blog on depression (including resources, if you or someone you know is depressed):
- Psych 101: When A Close Friend is Depressed
- Can a Facebook Tragedy Offer A Friendship Lesson
- Depression, Loneliness and Friendship
- Housebound, Lonely and Craving Contact
Category: Dealing with friends with health and/or emotional problems
I feel this depression I don’t know how I’m expected to just deal with it. I laugh joke and pretend like its okay, but it isn’t. I want help but i can’t see a good outcome. My parents don’t know but in the end it just feels like they’re contributing I’ve tried talking to them already. At my school everyone acts like they’re up high and on top of the world. i hate my school for it. My personal coping mechanisms, youtube, gaming, and social media,places I’ve been trying to reach out on have been taken away from me. I try to talk to “friends” but they just talk me down as with my parents. My depression feels just built up and finally noticed when it was finally too late to go back. The one friend I had who understood, I have lost contact with physically. It just feels like an endless maze. you find a map but then you lose it in this maze of a forest you try to survive, but what you had got torn apart by a storm. I am a scientist at heart. i understand psychology and other subjects. I have gotten to a point where when I’m alone I think about my future. If i do something, a job, for the rest of my life, why would I? I’m the person who’d people suspect the least of having depression. I’ve been through this painless, empty feeling since 3rd grade and no one understands….
Here’s a doozy for you:
My husband fell severely ill beginning in 2010. By 2012 he was on dialysis full time (4 days/week, done at home with me and our daughter as his dialysis techs/support people).
For the following 4 years our lives were down the toilet: Constant medical appointments, living in a “hospital” at home, NO breaks, and no money to pay for one if we had the chance. There IS no “vacation” from dialysis, unless you want to die.
His other illnesses were heart failure, systemic infections and skin infections/sores. The dialysis stuff itself involved being constantly stabbed by BIG needles, being confined to a chair for 6+ hours at a stretch (NO breaks, not even for the bathroom – he had to be waited on constantly), medications that battled against each other, dietary restrictions for heart and kidney are opposite of one another, so no matter what we did/ate, he (we) got “spoken to” by staff about how he had to “do a better job”.
During this time my depression got so bad almost everything fell on my daughter. I managed to keep paying the bills every month, and FORTUNATELY my husband’s work provided his disability benefits, but since he was no longer actually working, his life insurance went away in a puff of smoke.
I was unable to manage anything requiring real organizational skills: Taxes haven’t been paid in 4 (5?) years, my basic bills got paid, but given that neither my daughter nor I were able to work outside the home during this time, the medical bills grew into a mountain of unbelievable proportions. I paid what I could onto our credit line (equity on our house), but the limit on that is looming.
Now here we are, 9 months after my poor darling finally died and is out of his misery. NO income. NO insurance. NO Social Security (until I’m 65 – 10 years down the road). NO medical care (I’m now on Medicaid – which no doctor wants to accept). NO help.
We (my 23 year old daughter and I) had a bunch of “friends and family” swarm around us for about a month after my hubby died, but then “POOF!” they all disappeared as if by magic, never to be seen or heard from again.
So, I’m a widow with no income, a house that’s paid for (thank God), but no funds for maintenance, repairs or anything of that sort. No job, Deep Depression and after 5+ years of being home caring for my sick hubby, no job prospects either. NO ONE wants to hire a 55 year old woman who hasn’t worked outside the home in over 5 years.
I have 5 years of back taxes unfiled, an no records to do it with. I’ve NO idea where the papers are. The mail got lost in the shuffle.
My own health issues have been mounting. With the loss of our medical insurance, I also lost my medications for high blood pressure and depression, so I’ve spiraled downwards for the past 9 months. I’m in the bottom of that black hole.
Today I was trying to do some cleaning in the living room, went to pick up the dog’s towel that was in a heap in there and found it full of POOP. I completely LOST IT. Sobbing so hard I couldn’t talk.
I called my friend Amy, and she’s coming to help tomorrow. She’s going to help me get my house to stop stinking like dog and cat pee (stressed animals make messes in the house).
Beyond that, I don’t know how to manage. I can’t magically produce a job I can manage. Hell, I can barely get out of fucking BED every day, how the hell am I going to hold down a fucking JOB???????
I have no immediate plans to off myself, but see no way forward. Even if I GET my taxes organized and filed somehow, I have no money to pay any fines or penalties that will be involved. I’m barely functioning.
I see NO light up there. Not even a pinpoint.
@Mary G
I know it probably means very little from a stranger. Especially one who has not been through depression. But I have lost 2 friends to it. I want to say thank you for having the strength to reach out…to describe your situation and to keep pushing through. If it makes any difference to you at all. Know at least one person has heard you. Please keep in touch with your friends and family.
What’s scary to me is how some people, even “professionals,” try to treat all depression as if it’s the same. And how so many people seem to think it’s a mere “change your attitude!” solution that will work. There is a huge industry, the “positivity industry” that minimizes depression and all of its variations and complexities.
I have firsthand knowledge of the subject, and let me tell you, depression can be miserable in so many ways. There’s the black hole depression in this article. There’s the lowest self-esteem imaginable depression where you’re afraid of getting even the slightest thing wrong (kinda like social anxiety). There’s a depression in which you can function but you feel numb and take no pleasure in anything at all. There’s grieving. There’s heartbreak. There’s extreme mood swings. There’s a the constant simmering anxiety depression when you have a tearful response to most of what life throws at you. There’s the depression which is a deep conviction that nothing will ever get any better. A depressed person can feel any or all of these things. It’s a serious condition and most people don’t understand it. Even experts on the topic have limits to what they know about depression and how to treat it.
Here are some points to remember…
1) depression can have many causes
2) depression manifests differently in people
3) depression is a chemical imbalance in the brain no matter what the cause or manifestation
4) depression is treatable
Irene, you said this: “It’s important to remember that not everyone experiences depression in the same way.”
Exactly. Also: Not every case of depression is the one that the May 26th poster talked about. As the comments to that posting discuss, there is “situational” depression, which is different. I hope everyone learns from this May 26 posting and refrains from trying to apply a “one size fits all” solution to depression.