Depression Gets You to Believe You Will Never Feel Joy Again

January 10, 2013 • Contributed by Cynthia W. Lubow, MS, MFT

While non anybody's feel is the aforementioned, when people have a major depressive episode, generally the world looks, feels, and is understood completely differently than before and after the episode. During a major depressive episode, the world can literally seem like a dark place. What was beautiful may look ugly, flat, or fifty-fifty sinister. The depressed person may believe loved ones, even their own children, are meliorate off without them. Nothing seems comforting, pleasurable, or worth living for. At that place's no apparent hope for things ever feeling better, and history is rewritten and experienced equally confirmation that everything has always been miserable, and always will be.

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When this reality shift happens, it's hard to remember or believe what seemed normal earlier the episode. What the person believes during the episode seems admittedly real, and anything that conflicts with information technology is equally unbelievable as a memory or message telling him or her that the heaven is purple. For example, if the person is unable to feel love for a spouse, and someone reminds the person that he or she used to feel that love, the person may firmly believe he or she had been pretending to himself/herself and others—though at the time he or she actually felt information technology. The person tin't retrieve feeling the love, and can't experience it during the episode, and thus concludes he or she never felt it. The aforementioned process happens with happiness and pleasure. Attempts to tell the person that he or she used to be happy, and volition feel happy once again, tin can cause the person to feel more misunderstood and isolated because he or she is convinced information technology's non true.

What was challenging feels overwhelming; what was sorry feels unbearable; what felt joyful feels pleasureless.

Even if nothing was wrong earlier the episode, everything seems wrong when it descends. Suddenly, no one seems loving or lovable. Everything is irritating. Piece of work is boring and unbearable. Any action takes many times more effort, equally if every motion requires displacing quicksand to make it. What was challenging feels overwhelming; what was deplorable feels unbearable; what felt blithesome feels pleasureless—or, at best, a fleeting drop of pleasance in an ocean of hurting.

Major depression feels similar intense pain that tin't be identified in any detail part of the body. The virtually (normally) pleasant and comforting touch can experience painful to the betoken of tears. People seem far away—on the other side of a glass bubble. No one seems to understand or care, and people seem insincere. Depression is utterly isolating.

In that location is terrible shame about the actions depression dictates, such as not accomplishing anything or snapping at people. Everything seems meaningless, including previous accomplishments and what had given life meaning. Anything that had given the person a sense of value or cocky-esteem vanishes. These assets or accomplishments no longer matter, no longer seem 18-carat, or are overshadowed past negative self-images. Anything that ever caused the person to experience shame, guilt, or regret grows to take up most of his or her psychic space. That and existence in this state causes the person to feel irredeemably unlovable, and sure everyone has abandoned or will abandon him or her.

It's difficult to depict all of this in a way that someone who's never experienced information technology can make sense of information technology. I can't emphasize enough that when this happens, what I am describing is absolutely the depressed person's reality. When people try to get the person to look on the bright side, be grateful, modify his or her thoughts, or meditate, or they minimize or effort to disprove the person's reality, they are very unlikely to succeed. Instead, they and the depressed person are likely to feel frustrated and alienated from one some other. I practice believe cognitive therapy has an important place, merely more often than not non in the throes of a major depressive episode.

Support for People with Depression

So what does a person whose reality has shifted in this way need? Please keep in mind that I am talking well-nigh a major depressive episode—astringent depression that has lasted more than two weeks. I would take a dissimilar approach for someone with milder depression, or ane that is a response to a terrible loss.

For some people in a major depression, psychotropic medication works and is the but matter that works. The same could exist said for electroshock handling, though it's not for anybody. Many people volition emerge from major depression in fourth dimension, though episodes seem to make more episodes more likely, and so if medication works to terminate the episode, information technology'south usually prudent to take it. Nutrition, acupuncture, and other body-based treatments as well every bit therapy tin can help without the side effects of medication.

What Loved Ones Can Do

Loved ones can gently hold and show love and commitment to the depressed person, try non to take on the person's reality, but also not debate with him or her virtually it. They can also gently remind the person that depression causes his or her perspective on everything to change, and he or she is unable to call up outside of depression manner at the moment. It is a time for the person to avert making decisions, or avert doing anything significant that requires a nondepressed perspective. If this is a repeated experience for this person, information technology tin be helpful to discuss all of this between episodes so he or she is more prepared when defenseless in the quicksand.

As someone who loves a person with low, it can exist emotionally difficult or stressful at times to support that person. It can be benign to focus on your own needs and self-care, and to reach out for assist if you need it such as seeking the support of a counselor or therapist.

© Copyright 2013 GoodTherapy.org. All rights reserved. Permission to publish granted by Cynthia W. Lubow, MS, MFT

The preceding article was solely written past the writer named above. Any views and opinions expressed are not necessarily shared by GoodTherapy.org. Questions or concerns about the preceding article can be directed to the writer or posted every bit a comment below.

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Source: https://www.goodtherapy.org/blog/inside-head-depressed-person-0110134

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