Depression seems uncontrollable, bigger than you. It can strike gradually or like water engulfing you from a dam breaking open. To me depression can sometimes be like a boulder on top of me, keeping me in one spot, stopping me from doing what I need to do. The weight eventually gets comfortable and I forget or just stop caring that I should be doing something else.

I went on Facebook and asked people dealing with depression how they would describe what depression felt like to people who have never experienced it, or didn’t know what it was like. Here were some of the answers:

1)      Heavily laden, Bogged down. Like an inescapable weight. Continuous circular self-deprecating/self-defeating thoughts.

2)      Well, to me it’s like having no motivation to do something. Always sad for no reason. All you wanna do is sleep. Staying confused all the time. No matter how hard you try you just can’t fit in with some of your friends and when you do hang out all you do is stare into space and saying the wrong things… There’s that big dark cloud that’s always hovering over raining down on you.

Sometimes you cry for no reason. When you are driving down the road, you get this sudden urge to drive off the bridge or side of the mountain…

3)      Imagine waking up and the first thing you get to feel is that the person you love the most hates you. But you’re an adult, you persevere. Then you go to make your favorite breakfast, let’s say bacon, egg, and cheese biscuits. You go in the fridge to find out you have no eggs. You could have sworn you just had eggs. Oh well, not the end of the world right? So you decide to have just a bacon biscuit, maybe add some jelly to spruce it up a bit. You aren’t going to let this day get the best of you. Just as you reach for the jelly you knock your biscuit on to the floor and the dog scarfs it up quickly. You don’t have time to make another breakfast, you’re going to be late for work! You always leave early because you like to take some time to in that brief moment where traffic ends and the work day begins. But look, traffic is worse today that normal. You are going to cut it close. You finally get to work, you get to your computer with 1 min to spare, instant relief. So you thought, the computer had an update and now it is taking 25 min to boot up. You can’t start the day on time. Everything on your plate is pushed back, now you are in catch up mode at work. The work day distracts you long enough to get to the end of the day. Every song on the radio is one you hate on the drive from traffic so you sit in silence. Your friend’s text you to “come hang” and you want to but you just don’t have it in. What’s the point if more bad things are just going to happen right? You are too exhausted to care at this point. You just want to sleep and start over the next day. So you prepare for that. You burn dinner and have to eat junk food because your apathy just let the pizza cook until you could REALLY smell it because gravity became so intense that you just stopped fighting it for a while. Your about to sit down and watch one of your favorite TV shows and it then you see that there is a state of the union address and Donald trump is going off about something. Things you probably used to care about but he’s ruining the one thing you thought you could count on that day.  You go to bed and you can’t sleep, you are tossing and turning and your mind continues to find new scenarios where you are in fact the most worthless person to ever live. You want to die but not like how Muslims WANT to. You just want the suffering to end. You can’t talk to anyone because they will just tell you to snap out of it. Which only makes you want to snap in to them, but how many friends have you already lost because you just stopped giving a shit? You finally get to sleep. You wake up. It all starts again. Over and Over for a period of time that seems to be determined by powerful forces that want you to be miserable. The good news is you become numb to it after a while, nothing excites you or makes you sad, you just go about life with no real relationships or no real friends because you just can’t feel anymore. You only feel extreme lows and they make you beg for death sometimes. Then you get back to your new normal and continue to exist until the sweet release of death or some drug can snap you out of it.

So, what do you do about it. How do you avoid depression when it starts to take hold of you?

The key that works for me is to keep moving, make that boulder harder to roll onto you. Here are some other tips:

1)      Learn something new. When you are learning something, you are occupying your mind, challenging it with new information which makes it focus more on the task at hand and not allowing the focus to enhance your depression. I carry a deck of cards with me and practice a dexterous move with it or a short card routine that I may normally have trouble. (I really like to learn new things)

2)      Pick a different way home for the scenery. Change up what you are looking at every day, or be more observant in your environment. Look around at the world around you! I stare at my computer screen all day. If I’m going outside after work or even when I leave work, I will make sure that I look at and describe the day and the surrounding area to myself. I am amazed at the beautiful blue of the sky sometimes, even though I’ve seen it a million times, it can be just at that moment a nicer blue.  

3)      Make an effort to get out of the house and do something. Being alone is not really the best situation for someone dealing with depression. It can be unbearable. When I’m feeling overwhelmed, I like to pick a goal for the day while I am out and about, very specific and a little out of my comfort zone, like make 5 old women smile, or take a picture of 10 different people that have on green hats. Something that will make you observe and interact with the world around you.

The key is to occupy your mind with something different, have fun with whatever you are doing and be social. Don’t lose yourself to yourself. You have options other than being in a dark place and unhappy.