The Underlying Comfort Within Depression
When going through the stages of depression, it’s clear that sadness or numbness are the only emotions an individual is able to recognize. If you’re living with these emotions every day over a long period of time, they may begin to feel like home. If you are constantly preaching such negative values and attitudes, you become comfortable with them. They go from being a one-time thing to a ritual that you carry out every day.
It’s a bundle of different emotions.
You feel guilt for beginning to feel happy. You feel sadness because you realize you are moving on from that part of your life and along with it, the toxic things that made you that way. You feel fear, you feel it because you still aren’t sure if you are getting better or if it’s all an act. Such an overwhelming number of emotions projected on just one individual in a short span of time can feel exhausting. This results in missing the feeling of sadness.
More so, missing the simplicity it came with.
Your depression allowed you to be self-destructive. Do what you want, hurt who you want, even if that includes yourself. You knew that one day your time would end, with depression that may have meant that you thought it would end quicker, therefore you didn’t think about the consequences of your actions. These feelings and perspectives fueled your self-destructiveness which in turn meant you were enjoying life. Even if it was in its own twisted way. The sadness fueled this irritability and negative perspective you had on life and so, being careless seemed more appealing.
Hate is an easier emotion to embrace than love.
Therefore, trying to feel happy and escape the constant cycle of depression can feel like such hard work and can be so uncomfortable.
Imagine moving into a new place, and you have to rearrange all your new furniture to fit the space. That’s hard because it means you have to take responsibility. You have to go through your furniture and decide whether it ignites happiness within you; if it doesn’t, you have to voluntarily make the decision to get rid of it. Thus, decision-making comes with responsibility.
You don’t want to clutter a new space with things that don’t bring you joy. It will be hard. Certain pieces of furniture have sentimental value and others you may hold close to your heart because of the emotions you felt whilst purchasing them. However, as soon as you recognize that these things are not a good, healthy addition to your life, it will allow you to create more space for new furniture.
I’m sure you understand the metaphor behind this.
Now, what if one day you decide you actually do want to get better? You start waking up early, eating three meals a day, reading, writing, and going to therapy. You push yourself into a lifestyle that you know will support you in getting better. Or so you heard.
What if you do all of that, and things don’t change?
Worse, what if you do all of that and you realize, you don’t know who you truly are. All those years filled with sadness and the overwhelming feeling of nothing just disappeared. You found comfort within your depression, because when everything else abandoned you, it was your sadness that was by your side.
Now, chances of that are small. A lot of people feel better over time, whether that’s out of free will, or just simple frustration from constantly feeling a dark cloud follow them every day. They start to feel the weight lift off their shoulders a bit. They begin to find themselves. They start to feel things change.
Even though we all know someone who battled depression, we still feel better just staying where we are. We as individuals don’t want to get better, because of that miniscule chance. That miniscule chance that you actually won’t get better.
We see examples disproving our point, but we are still scared.
Because above all, maybe it's fear that has the biggest grip on us.