Depression reveals the hidden

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Though depression is considered dangerous and causes harm and can break a person.

In my personal experience i have found that depressive points in my life were life turning
and once they got over they revealed many different shades of people to me and it made me more cautious
and taught me social cues which i seldom could learn the easy way.

Just 2 years back i was hurt badly after a relationship broke down. I spiralled into depression for around 1-2 years
and during that phase i went for counselling. I realised during the sessions that my mother was narcisstic
and my father abusive...

Though they were like that i had continued to be in touch with them earlier but after the depressive session
and counselling i cut off with them and brought in only positive people into my life.

Overall i felt that deep down in depression i could find myself and sort out my life......

That is a very positive outcome, in my opinion. Depression, in my experience, has always served to make me look inward and see where the stagnation is occurring. I like to envision Depression as a fallow field, waiting for us to plant something different this time. It is a pause on life's journey, allowing us a chance to make a change instead of going on in the way we have been going.

The following may be of some interest (especially the first episode).


BBC World Service: Discovery ( http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p002w557 )

Depression: Part 1
"Geoff Watts meets researchers looking for clues to the origins of depression as a way of finding new solutions to treating it.
In the first of two programmes Geoff talks to the father of evolutionary medicine, Randolph Nesse and asks why hasn't natural selection made us less vulnerable to psychological diseases?
Could it be that depression is in some way useful to our lives?"
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00my2sc#synopsis

Depression: Part 2
"Geoff Watts meets researchers trying to find a new way to fight depression by studying those who never get it.
In the second of two programmes Geoff meets scientists at the University of Manchester, studying the brains of people who have undergone traumatic life events without becoming seriously depressed and comparing them to the brains of those people who do.
The hope is that new psychological therapies or even preventative medications might be developed to treat the one in five people who will at some point in their lives, become clinically depressed."
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00n2znl#synopsis

Podcast versions:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/discovery
Part 1 [19 minutes]: http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/wor ... -2000a.mp3
Part 2 [18 minutes]: http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/wor ... -2000a.mp3
(The podcast versions may disappear in a few weeks time.)

Whenever I'm depressed I sit and think on what could be causing it. Because a lot of times I don't know what's causing it, I take a good long hard look at my life and I see if there is something I need to change. It usually works out well but sometimes your brain just loves to mess with you. Life is tough.

I hope this does not offend anyone, but it kind of seems like you guys are talking about the sort of depression everyone experiances, rather than clinical depression. Having clinical depression means most of the time you feel that way, not you typically have a normal mood and get down here and there.


sorry if I mis-understood, but its more or less important not to confuse natural depressed feelings with clinical depression...but maybe no one was claiming to have clinical depression.

Good point Sweetleaf. I've been diagnosed with Double Depression, which is mild to moderate chronic depression punctuated by occasional bouts of clinical depression. My normal disthymia is not fun, clinical depression is a lot worse. When I am in clinical depression, something like putting on my socks can seem like a major project.

I was pretty sure I specifically had Clinical Depression, however I am not entirely sure anymore. I mean I always feel like I am depressed...but some times are worse than others. Like for a couple months I'll be so severely depressed I become suicidal and can't get thoughts of suicide out of my mind and acted on it once in the past. Then I'll be more mildly depressed, and able to function for a couple months.

It is not always exact but it does kind of fluctuate.......sometimes its like a dark cloud over everything, not great but more or less tolerable then sometimes its like an avalanche of doom. But there is also the anxiety and PTSD so they can kind of overlap as well and it can be hard to tell if not impossible which symptoms belong to what.

Yes! All clinical depression ever revealed to me was that daytime TV was better than doing things and sweatpants ARE for weddings. I'm riding out an episode right now.[/quote]




I have never seen Clinical Depression so eloquently explained. Bravo! (I hope you don't mind if I steal it.)

There is a difference between clinical depression and finding joy or meaning in sadness.

Severe clinical depression is bleak, meaningless, paranoid, angry, hurtful, destructive. Severe clinical depression has no positives.

Situational sadness yes, clinical depression on the other hand requires medication. Not to get this into a med debate, but I just think some people who are severely depressed might take this post the wrong way and actually take offense.

I agree that de-pression (pression in french means pressure, the prefix de: 1. away from, off: debar, derail 2. down: degrade, decline 3. wholly, entirely: defunct 4. reverse the action of; undo: defrost, decode...) is a necessary time away from any pressure. It is like letting yourself sink to the bottom of a pool after struggling to swimm. What needs to be kept in mind though is that this bottom is the necessary support that enables you to kick back to the surface.