Are you depressed all the time, or is that just a figure of speech? If indeed it’s all the time, then you have what’s known as clinical depression and you should seek treatment immediately, if you haven’t done so already.
It’s a fair bet that before your depression, you suffered from anxiety. To start with, anxiety comes in bouts, and there may well be a reason behind it. Stress is a great cause of anxiety.
One very regrettable aspect of this is if your co-workers and those above you know you suffer from the disease, for that’s what it is, a disease.
If it’s discovered that you’re visiting a psychiatrist, then life can be difficult for you. Not always, of course. If you’re working for an enlightened company, they welcome the chance to help you.
Most sensibly, they realize that if they offer help and sympathy to an employee suffering from some form of mental debility, then it’ll encourage those who are in the same boat, but who haven’t yet sought treatment, to come forward and confess their own disabilities.
I make it sound as though there’s something reprehensible about a person who’s inflicted with panic attacks, anxiety or depression. Of course, there isn’t. Indeed, the awful stigma about mental illness generally, is that it’s a weakness in someone’s make-up, that they’re somehow inferior to their fellow man or woman. Nothing could be farther from the truth.
The problem is, though, that anxiety can tighten its grip on you more and more. Anxiety by itself can lead to thoughts of suicide, and if not that, can certainly lead to depression.
Depression is when nothing seems worthwhile anymore. All the pursuits and hobbies that used to give you pleasure, even joy, no longer move you enough to even try them. Your life is a circle of getting up in the morning, often with a great reluctance, shuffling about the house, meals taken with a sort of dread, and you exist in a type of dark fog.
The wish to commit suicide can rear its ugly head again, because you feel quite unable to achieve even the simplest tasks. And you hurt. Everything hurts. Your joints and muscles ache, your head feels full of cotton wool and uselessness seems your only companion.
Those who don’t fully understand the disease recommend exercise. Going for splendid long walks or, horror of horrors, taking up aerobics.
Now, the people who recommend exercise all mean well, but firstly, you find it difficult to move around the house, let alone jump around doing half and hour of aerobics. Secondly, there’s a good chance that you’re terrified of going out of the house in the first place.
Depression has a nasty habit of going hand in hand with anxiety and perhaps panic attacks.
But to return to the original question: “Why do I always feel depressed?” The bad news is that no-one really knows. It’s thought that there’s an imbalance of the neurotransmitters, serotonin and norepinephrine. These little beauties become out of whack and cause a great deal of trouble.
So you see, it’s nothing to do with being weak nor in any way a hypochondriac. It’s an imbalance of chemicals in your body, in just the same way as if you suffered from diabetes, or some other physical ailment.
Now your possible dread of leaving the house, while perfectly understandable, must be overcome in order to visit a psychiatrist. Treatment is more than wise. It’s imperative. It’s no more your fault that you suffer from depression than if you had a broken leg. It most definitely is your fault if you allow the condition to go unchecked.
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