How often do you feel sad, frustrated, or annoyed about things? What stretch at the longest have you gone fretting over it?
Your answers may range from one day to a few days, a week to a month, or for some of you, it might be endless. At least seeingly, some part of your mind asserts it to be endless.
Well, so how do you, first of all, judge whether it is depression or sadness? Let us Check the basic boxes to be certain on this aspect:
Do You Suffer From Grief or Is It Depression?
We shall begin with an amusing example:
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I am low right now. I feel the need to cry, shout, and finally lay down exhausted till I die. And if someone comes to me for a company, I might sulk and brood for an hour or two, or maybe a couple of days. But again, eventually, I will be suppressed back or destroyed and forgotten by the Smile of happiness and fun, that the world has to offer to everyone. I am easily detected by anyone.
I ain't in any mood for any conversation. I need to stay low, save my limited energy, and wait for the day when I could end this strife called Life. I don't give in so easily. Rather I tend to try and end the Life of the person who hosts me, after which I change my form and enter in some other host's mind. I am hard to understand and still harder to be detected.
Don't both these conditions look quite identical to you? Both begin with a downward slope and end with a dying note.
To understand the depth of these lines, we should begin with symptoms characterized in either of these cases,
- Grief can be observed by some sudden changes in behavioral patterns, hyped up or too downgraded work habits, and Mood swings. It is a response or a temporary state of mind. A Response to some tragic incident or news that occurred recently.
It could be from hours to days long constraint, and could often lead to non-comprehendible behavior until the hormone levels get accustomed to normalcy. Talking to a friend or reading a book, taking a long walk can be some of the remedies to Grief. After which it doesn't seem to re-lapse in further times.
- Depression on the same tracks involves a longer lifecycle. It is an Illness. A Mental Illness.
- When your response turns to a long term Situation, that hinders your focus and makes your outlook towards life permanently dejected, it might be a sign of you entering the Depressed state.
When certain behavior of negative kind, persists for a longer duration. After around more than a fortnight, it takes the form of a deep-rooted condition, that clenches your functional ability, generally known by the term clinical depression.
A depressed person differs from a normal grieving person by-
1. Lack of interest in activities resulting in efficiency reduction.
Being mentally distant and constantly disturbed by the smallest of things in the surroundings.
2. Unrealistic fears, overloading him/her self with work, feeling responsible for any mishap that happens around.
Getting suicidal thoughts, possibilities, and idle time thoughts tend to draw you towards making that possibility a reality.
3. A pessimistic attitude towards opportunities.
No door looks open wide enough for you to get through. Lots of offers await but, the risk involved seems too high, for the opportunity to be grabbed.
Based upon these Arguments, your brain must have already figured out your tale of woe, and its relation to Grief and depression.
How Does Depression affect day-to-day lives?
Phase 1 - The Brooding
With the advent of the hectic lifestyle, the silent mental facet of human well-being often goes unnoticed.
The piling work files, pending dues, project goals have, all in all, turned your personal life nil. With no energy left to introspect your life's priorities, your mind suffers. The up-gradation of technology brought to make more time for a living has actually snatched away your freedom of basic thinking ability for ownself and mind development.
As some tragic or surprising incident occurs in your life, responding in a sad manner or a sudden shocked manner is obvious. However, this response when gets aggravated, by long time sustenance, it starts making you lose interest in daily chores and develops blocks in your mind for any creative process.
When your days become seemingly long and sleep turns the ultimate escape or writing, being busy is what you adapt to, for the days that look greyish. That is when your 1st Phase is said to have amassed and reached to its peak.
The Causes of unsound mental health may vary from person to person, triggered by loss, shock, responsibilities, guilt, failure, and many more relevant factors.
Phase 2 - The Triggers Appear
When you cannot fully feel yourself doing your work, it stays incomplete even though you provide your physical presence. Because Your Psyche decides your chances at success based upon its space at that moment.
When your mind stays stuck to a particular trauma, it makes you lose your focus. Not just your personal but professional life too starts suffering from your unfocused work.
Restlessness, insomnia or hypersomnia, unwanted suicidal thoughts, feels of being left alone are some advanced 2nd phase symptoms.
But do all these stay throughout the time period of your mental Illness?
NO.
They stay dormant until some small trigger emotion or thought appears.
- The trigger to your depressed personality might be some associated fear, or for some people, it may be a failure, some disagreement at work, or even a News Headline. Anything minor could account for your
- To some of you, the trigger may be pulled while scrolling through a post of your friends enjoying without you (the feeling of loneliness discussed in the next section), whereas to some it may concern your surrounding environment, the family issues, or/and the whispers of known voices.
Whatsoever your trigger may be, the hooded face of depression, that is yet to be understood fully takes control of your body and spreads its reach to the soul.
Clenching its claws deep within, depression feels like those wee hours before the day, when darkness seems to overpower the light. When your body watches the dark gather all its might and its promise to return back the next night.
So what you may do is, stay prepared for that fight!
Let us now have a peek, at how Depression can also be the beginning of some other psychic conditions that are the branches of the Dark, unseen mystery.
1. Loneliness
To best explain this condition, take an example of, what the lockdown had turned you to in those broken moments of yours. When you lay shattered and crawled through those days, counting each unit of time, before you could actually meet and hug tight your therapist friend crying out all of your sufferings.
That very feeling, that you permitted entry to and let it take its place in your mind. When asked, later on, this dark personality was not ready to depart, and that's where depression now got its first partner to trigger for your bad times, Loneliness.
This feeling of being secluded could also be revealed in the form of a thought. The thought of being insignificant to the world. Of being meaningless to the People around you.
This leads you to believe in a world, where you are absent and no one around gets affected.
2. Anxiety/Panic Attacks
How aggravated do you get in your dark times? Do you go in your room or some corner and sit overthinking each moment passing by? Do all things seem to be banging right on your door? And does your head feel like being burst or hammered continuously?
These questions would make you ponder over, how are you actually coping up with these serious conditions that have been put down to words here.
Getting angry or over-sentimental, tears sneaking in even at some joyous moments, Overthinking a situation are all results of an uncontrollable outburst. Fearing some social interaction or avoiding crowded places, feeling someone constantly judging you is how anxiety makes you feel.
The outburst of things that trouble you,
The outburst of things that frustrate you,
Of mindsets that force you to turn impatient,
Of loading yourself with burdens, that you dragged all this while in your chests.
When your nervousness builds up, and the world seems nothing but a crowded place filled with empty hearts, that carry no sympathy, your anxious hormones build up pressure.
This condition or disorder that we call anxiety are actually hormones, that relieve themselves by messing up your brain's logical part and turning your nerves into tensed strings.
Often, those who have been on into extremes of the attacks would relate to the experience of stomach-churning or the feel like the whole body feels burning. When even daytime feels like dark nights and your appetite decreases.
Also in some cases, it may even be seen in the form of unusually large appetites and hunger drives.
Usually seen to relapse by trigger points, that are common to that of depression, the anxiety attacks, or the evolved version panic attacks, have symptoms of depression at the beginning that further lead to these attacks.
3. Overthinking, disappointment and suicidal thoughts
Failed, had a heartbreak, or been let off by a friend. How many of you have experienced this? Each one of you. Someday.
Did you get over it soon?
Was it hard?
What was that thing that stayed till the last?
Was it the outcome, the result that kept troubling you till the very end?
Yes?
Think again. They were your THOUGHTS, weren't they? Thoughts that stood firm till the very end. That made you kneel down and fear,
Fear the possibility of its repetition
Fear the possibility that you have become useless
Fear of trying again.
Fear of the want to cry again.
Yes, overthinking is a subconscious thing that attributes itself with any tragic incident. When its subconsciously done, it goes away unnoticed and easily. Also, this is a short term condition that slips off in a week at a maximum.
But.
- If, it attributes itself to consciously occurring thoughts, to a process where you purposely drift off or can't stop urself from drifting off in that direction.
- Then, this might be you, drifting towards an illness. A mental illness. Also, this habit of thinking a lot, in a conscious state of mind, takes a long time to get refigured.
P. S. - Long term Overthinking maybe Constructive too, but only when it has arisen, not out of some tragic event.
With overthinking, overanalyzing any kind of situation, disappointments are bound to occur. These give rise to bigger problems of insecurities, the ability to trust someone gets lost, and some other such possible conditions.
All of this, when collectively compiles and gets outbursted in the brain, an imbalanced release of hormones is seen, which further causes more thoughts.
The Suicidal THOUGHTS.
This is how the often neglected, Depression could turn fatal.
So keep looking out for your close ones, after all, you wouldn't want yourself to feel guilty of not being there for your dear one.
Or would you be able to carry that in your head?
Probably No.
Leaving you all to ponder well over this concluding statement,
Suffering from a mental illness doesn't mean that you are weak, it means that you are trying to move.
Too vague explanation right?
Yes, it means you are trying to move. Something is holding you back but you are putting efforts in trying to overcome that force and still trying to move. The illness generated is just fatigue due to those efforts in trying to move.
In the successive articles, we shall be back with another discussion about the logistics that may be used to climb up the ladder, from the dark hole. Depression.
Do leave your questions, facts, or incidents in the comment section, that you think might be worth discussing with us.