Major Mood Disorders welcomes Marlice Herron as she describes her story

I’m clinically diagnosed with depression, it’s not a nice diagnosis. Many people wonder what it feels like to be depressed, even worse, to be severely depressed. The story isn’t really that simple, it’s kind of a historical beginning. Many years ago, I practically failed my medical exam–without a chance to pass, the world seemed to spiral intoa  dangerous decent. As you can imagine, my severe depression coupled with my extremely stresseful academic career, the combination is dangerous, in fact, I almost was close to committing suicide. Let me explain my battle with depression, maybe it’ll help you clarify your understanding.

What Depression Feels Like

Everyday for the past ten years, getting up from bed has been the greatest struggle. The feeling of paralysis, of anesthesia running through my veins is a predominant feeling. The struggle is amplified by the lack of muscular movement, or feeling. The effort required to pull yourself out of an anesthesiatic state is impossible–imagine if someone passsed anesthesia through your blood, you won’t even be able to feel your muscles. I feel this every morning, a sort of paralysis that I can’t really control, it’s just the same feeling every, every day.

According to my therapist, something isn’t right. I don’t think like things are going well, I think that something is going wrong. Throughout my life there is a present imbalance, something that isn’t right is always the paramount feeling. After my exams, I feel like I could just rip my mind out of my brain, because something not going exactly the way it should consumes my mind. The situation is made worse when I feel like I am going slow motion, the mind racing but my body and my environment moving in slow motion with me doesn’t really help the situation.

Severe Depression Symptoms

Even after passing my exams, or even getting excellent grades, it never pleases me. The sight of my daughter pleases me greatly, but there is the element of displeasure everywhere. I’m expected to find pleasure in so many things that normal individuals without severe depression do, but that’s not the case with me. I am mostly without pleasure in my life, or that is, I don’t really feel the pleasure in life. I used to even find pleasure being with my husband, but I don’t even know if I love him anymore. We’ve been together for 20 years, can you believe that and this has been my predominant feeling.

Throughout my academic career, I had some friends, but none of them really understood me. It’s as if they couldn’t even imagine that someone of my accomplishment could be so depressed. Even as fellow doctors, they wouldn’t be able to see that a psychological condition is a condition at all–if it’s not presented on your body, then it can’t really be a problem. During my studies, psychological conditions weren’t even considered as a disease, but we know today that my severe depression is a disease.

Dealing with People with Depression

These days, most things seem hopeless, life seems hopeless and smiling so fakely is hopeless. Hoplessness is a predominant feeling for me, for us with severe depression. Most of you normal people wont’ understand it, but it’s true, it’s the feeling, it’s present right there, it’s the feeling I feel all throughout my damn day. It also seems like I forget most things, or that I have a difficult time remembering stuff. It’s mostly due to the amount of time I spend thinking and self-reflecting at this depressed state. Even worse, when I mess something up, I actively think of all the failures in my life, as though it were coming in a rush, it’s hard to explain but people with severe depression know what I mean.

For me, the world is troubling, the skies are gray all the time, the only happiness is the one I find within my daughter’s eyes. That’s the reason I live, or that I haven’t killed myself because of this disease. If you have a friend with severe depression, know what they are feeling and don’t be like my friends and just tell them to get over it. It’s not that simple.