What is major depressive disorder?
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Have you ever been devastated? Just utterly heartbroken to the point where you feel numb and empty and it feels physically difficult to move? It feels basically impossible to get out of bed, and when you find the strength to force yourself to do even that much, you have trouble doing anything else, like showering or brushing your teeth or getting dressed. You don’t want to be around anyone. Your favorite comedy fails to cheer you up or make you laugh. You feel like you’re falling apart and breaking.
Most people only feel this way once or twice in their lives when they experience a devastating loss. Someone suffering from Major Depressive Disorder feels some or all of these things most of the time for no explainable reason. There’s no huge loss that they’re going through. Their life might seem pretty nice (comfortable income, standard of living, family, etc), but they feel empty and numb or can’t find joy in things that used to make them happy. They might feel like they’re falling apart or find it physically hard to move or impossible to get out of bed or take care of their personal hygiene in the same way that someone who’s experiencing extreme loss might go through.
Everyone experiences these things in normal amounts and at appropriate times, in response to normal stressors. What makes this a disorder is that depressed people experience this all or most of the time in response to seemingly insignificant stressors.
Another thing a depressed person might experience is negative self talk, where, in addition to the above, they feel that no one likes them or that they are a huge burden to everyone around them. As someone whose suffered from MDD for years, I often find myself starting to think suicidal thoughts because someone I care about snapped at me. Through years of therapy and medicine, I can quickly stop myself from spiraling into becoming suicidal, but before, my thought process would be something like (very simplified) “I care about this person and they snapped at me. They must hate me so much. I’m such a burden to them and I make their life so difficult. I love them so much and I hate that I make their life worse. It would be better for them if I didn’t exist. If I really loved them, I wouldn’t be in their life and things would be easier for them. I love them so much and they hate me because I make life worse for them. I’m being selfish by being alive. I need to kill myself because I love them and want to make their life easier and I just make things worse for everyone around me.”
Depression is horrible and it’s taken a huge amount of therapy and a lot of trial and error with medication to find a combination that works for me. Everyone’s depression is different, but a lot of mine is feeling like how I described.
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