When did you realize that you were depressed (If and when you were)

10 years ago when I realized I came home from work every night, took a Xanax and drank 3 glasses of wine. Got a divorce. lol

I have never seen a professional, but I only realised something was wrong when I started to come out of it. It was ‘normal’ to me for so long that being happy and self-confident was a revelation.

I did go to a year of therapy following my divorce, it was a great experience although the depression had lifted as it was situational and not chronic in my case.

I strongly reccomend getting some help for your struggles, better sooner rather than later.

If you are really ready to grow, be happy, and let go of others problems and focus on yourself it will happen.

Good luck, and remember, this too shall pass and become but a distant memory.

I agree with @Coloma; getting help is a good idea. After studying depression fairly superficially at university, it really came home to me how lucky I was to have been able to pull myself out of it. Don’t reinvent the wheel, and get it wrong a thousand times in the process, see someone who already knows the tricks and how to get you into more positive thought patterns.

I have been depressed almost all of my life but I only realised the other day that depression was what I was experiencing as young as 7 years old. I’ve been on and off anti-depressants since I was 16 ..I am now thirty. Without a doubt the counselling that I have been having for three years now has been the most help and I do feel that I am nearing the end of my counselling but will need to keep practising awareness and acknowledgement of my emotions for the rest of my life. The biggest thing I have learnt is to honour yourself and seek out people that understand you to be your support network.

Seek help! I was depressed with a horrible marriage, once I got help, I regained my strength and was able to do something about it. Life now is fabulous, when I do hit a bump in the road, I have the skills to deal with it. Best of Luck.

I have brief, periodic days of just being blue. Symptoms include binge eating and impulse buying, the desire not to be around people, maliase, and an overall feeling of just not being physically well. Sometimes I have no idea what sets off these bouts, but more often than not they have to do with something that happened at work or something just not working out the way I wanted. Over the years I’ve learned to roll with these downs, and they usually don’t last long.

One day I was sad about everything, I was crying at the radio, I just wanted it to end. I called my friend and told him that I just wanted to drive my car into a tree. He calmly said to me “dude, you’ve been on extasy for a week, go home and get some sleep. When I woke up I was fine.

I had panic attacks first, then depression. So I didn’t care when I entered it because the panic attacks overshadowed all. My psychiatrist was able to make me aware of the depression.

I get depressed at certains times, because I happen to be bipolar. The reason can be substantial or it can be nothing at all. But I know I’m depressed when I stop taking care of my small physical needs like brushing my teeth.

Those old tapes of negative self-image start playing, and I stand in front of the mirror, words of self-loathing pouring out. Then I know I’m depressed.

The trick is getting out of it. I start by forcing myself to sing something, even if it’s just la la la. Then I force myself to say at least one nice thiing about myself, even if I don’t believe it. Sometimes, I have to force myself to eat, and I always have to force myself to brush my teeth.

Would someone who hasn’t experienced it be able to recognize it when they were depressed? If you had been through it it seems it would be easier to recognize.

I figured out I was depressed when I was about nine years old and realized that other people weren’t.

It was progressive. I was in denial until it got chronic. I’d suggest help at the earliest possible sign to prevent that sinking further into depression.
Counselling helped me to turn things around for myself.

One day when I just burst into tears at work for no reason that I could think of. I started going to therapy and got onto medication after that, and came to the understanding that I’d been chronically depressed for the whole of my life. The medication helped, the therapy didn’t.

Music helps me when I’m depressed.

@hawaii_jake I was thinking If I didn’t get going to my AC/DC I would be concerned enough to consider it might be depression.

When I think about it, I’m pretty sure that I’ve been depressed for more of my life than not. I usually know right away.. it’s a very familiar feeling.

I recently learned that studies are being done to show that hippocampal atrophy is both caused by and contributes to depression. So the longer you leave it untreated the more likely you are to have repeat episodes.

Perhaps something had been going on a long time underneath my conscious awareness. But one day, I started feeling this heaviness, as the cliche goes, in my heart. I felt like there was a weight on my chest. My heart had trouble beating, it seemed.

It happened to be the night of a Carol sing on my block—a few days before Christmas. I usually go and play my trumpet to help folks along. I started dreading this. I didn’t see how, feeling as I felt, I could play something so happy. I felt worse because I knew people were expecting me to be there, but I really didn’t want to go.

Eventually, I told my wife, and she said I didn’t have to go. So I lay on my couch the whole time, sinking lower and lower, and I started to feel like I couldn’t move. I didn’t know if I was just playing in my mind, imagining I couldn’t move, or not wanting to move, or if I really couldn’t move.

I wondered what was going on. I had no explanation for this. At the time, it didn’t seem to be related to anything. I began to wonder if I was having a premonition. Maybe someone was dying. Later, I went so far as to call my parents to make sure they were still alive.

It turned out that I could move, but I didn’t feel like I could get up off the couch on my own, so when my family came home, I asked them to help me up. Walking around after that felt like walking in molasses. Each step I took was an effort just to lift my leg and put it down again. It was also an effort to remain standing.

Two or three days later, I got an email telling me that a friend and former colleague had just found out he had a fast moving cancer and he had a week to live. He found out, I figured out, at the same time as I had been feeling that ominous sense of wrongness. ‘Aha!’ I thought. I am psychic, after all.

Except I don’t really believe in psychic things. Although I went so far as to put a question on Askville about this—about the chances such a thing was coincidence.

The feeling went away for a week or so, and then it started coming back, more and more. I got scared. My thoughts were very weird. I was starting to think about suicide. I was thinking I didn’t belong in my family; that no one wanted me. No one loved me. I should leave; get a divorce; find a new life.

I don’t know when I first pinned the label “depressed” on my feelings. It was difficult because there didn’t seem to be any particular situational reason for my feelings. Yes, me and my wife were having big problems, but that had been going on for years, and I had never felt this way before.

A little over a month later, I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. I was told that the depression wasn’t my fault, and I shouldn’t blame myself for not pulling myself out of it. I didn’t quite believe anyone about that. It seemed to me that if I really wanted to, I would start to feel better. I must not really want to, because I wasn’t feeling better.

Eventually, I came to see that it was probably the case that that kind of depression can’t be lifted through will alone. I understood (though I couldn’t do it) that I shouldn’t blame myself for my depression.

Another thing—a weird thing, I think—I became quite comfortable with talking about suicide. It was a relief to be able to, because in normal society, people tend to freak out when you talk about it. It makes them very uncomfortable.

I found people who, like me, were thinking about it a lot. We were able to talk about it. Think of methods. We even joked about it. My song would be “Suicide is Funny,” not “Suicide is Painless.”

Writing about this brings some of the feelings back. I feel a bit of the heaviness. I feel sad. I feel like maybe crying. I feel like being held, even though I know it would never make it go away.

Back then, I though maybe if someone loved me enough, the depression would go away. Now I know that really won’t help (although I still want to be loved as much as possible). This feeling…. is this feeling. It sucks. I know if it goes far enough, I’ll be thinking about jumping out my window—except I measured it, and I won’t fit.

I would imagine, over and over, falling out, the quick flight, and the smash on the concrete at the end. I’d have to turn around and hit head first if I wanted to be certain of death. Then I’d wonder, ‘what if I change my mind the moment I let go?’ ‘Could I really do it?’

I didn’t. I don’t think I could.

But shit. When I was thinking that stuff, I knew for god damn certain that I was depressed.

It was hell.

When my co workers started complaining about my irritability.

When my boss pointed out I was becoming tardy and co workers were complaining about having to work with me.

When my friends were on pins and needles in my company.

When things that used to/should make sense and be acceptable weren’t sitting well with me.

When I noticed obsessive circular arguing/reasoning.

Did I get help right away? Nope, I waited around and hoped I’d snap out of my funk and I got deeper in. I had to be threatened with the loss of my job if I didn’t get myself help (I was also addicted to pills) and when I did go see a doctor then I fought off taking anti depressents for several months until I got threatened again.

Taking anti depressants, at least for me was the best thing that ever happened. A few years of those helped even out the peaks and valleys I’d assumed were normal but such a stress to everyone else around me. At first I was angry everyone was so happy with my new even temperedness but soon I felt better in general and things made sense again, felt balanced and I thrived. If ever again I feel I’m going down like that then I’ll try them again.

When I started to have suicidal toughts , I knew there was something very wrong with me,

When i started feeling icky and sad inside, a weird sort of sad that i couldn’t explain, for seemingly no reason at all, and sometimes i would cry too because it felt so icky. I went to the doctor for it and he gave me anti-depressants. Fortunately it didn’t for years and years.