Depression is not simple – it’s more than being ‘sad’

It’s hard to tell if a person is depressed unless they break down in front of you or manage to tell you themselves. Depression doesn’t leave scars, not always. And it’s hard to say how bad it is if you can’t see the wound.

I’ve been suffering from depression for a long time now, and depression has a way of replacing your confidence with pure anxiety and self-hatred. 

The scariest thing I found about suffering from a mental illness is the effect it has on every aspect of your life; it’s not just what’s inside your head. For me, suffering from depression became debilitating as I couldn’t find happiness in the little things I used to enjoy doing. More often than not, depression would cause me to sit in my room and cry, usually for no reason at all.

I was told a lot that “I had nothing to be depressed about” and that “I’ll get over it” because I have a great group of friends and no enemies to worry about, but the real enemy I had made was with myself.

Depression is something that cannot be healed simply, and I wish I had been told just how easy it can be to fall back into a spiral of severe isolation and anxiety.

It’s so typical to believe that depression is nothing more than being sad. Depression isn’t feeling sad; if it were, it would be so much easier to deal with. Every time I’d let depression affect me, my body would go into shut down as I’d hardly sleep, I’d be sick: I had no energy to fight how I felt. 

I wish I had been told that depression isn’t something to be ashamed of, as telling people I had depression was a task I still struggle to achieve.

Depression isolates you, making you believe your importance matters less than those around you. Depression pushed so many people out of my life to the point where I feared forming friendships, because the pain of losing the people I loved was too much to bear.

If you know someone who’s going through a difficult time, if you have even the slightest doubt, reach out. If you don’t know how to help someone with a mental illness, ask them… even a “You okay?” means a lot.