Many People Are Depressed Unknowingly – Are You?

It may seem hard to believe this, but there are  countless people who are depressed unknowingly. They have no idea at all of the burden that the negative emotions that are constantly rotating in the mind create.

People can be depressed without knowing the problem

However, this is a very real problem that many paramedics and psychologists face when treating depressive symptoms.

Muscle pain, irritability, anger, self-loathing, mood swings, and contempt for everything around you are symptoms that manifest in a depressed person.

A person may realize that something is wrong. Life can feel “wrong” and even weird,  and everything seems to go in the opposite direction to what one expects.

Nonetheless, he moves forward, and this happens because the person creates defense mechanisms that cause them to adapt to feelings of depression rather than encounter them.

Thus, a person  silences his feelings, drowns out his worries, and masks the stress with anxiety, and this anxiety then manifests itself through many psychosomatic symptoms.

It may come as a surprise, but it is actually a fact:  there is invisible depression, and so there is also silent suffering for the thousands of people who are struggling with this problem without realizing it themselves.

In the following, we describe the main symptoms that occur in this complex situation. What is it about depression that a person doesn’t know about ?

A depressed person gradually begins to feel helpless and uncomfortable

Often, depression has no specific and objective starting point, such as loss, intense resignation, or sudden unemployment.

The most difficult thing to understand is that those most depressed people are the ones who, at first glance, have “almost everything that should make a person happy” : family, home, work, and so on.

Psychologists often say that feelings of depression grow like weeds in a beautiful garden. Then comes the day when they cover everything underneath with their thick layer, thorns and ugliness.

This is a subtle combination where  dissatisfaction, emotional level of drowsiness, and the feeling of losing control in one’s own life  mingle.

People with this type of depression find that they do little to nothing they would enjoy. This is because of the responsibilities that keep them busy every day that passes by.

With almost no understanding of the matter, they have  normalized these negative emotions to  such an extent that they almost expect them, and thus they begin to accept them.

This is the real problem.

Most symptoms are not related to depression

Patients see a doctor because they feel tired.

Your doctor will do a blood test, as is usually the case. After seeing the results, he recommends simply improving your diet, resting and starting to eat vitamins.

After a few months, however, the person returns to the doctor’s office as his back hurts horribly. Your doctor will then advise you to undergo physiotherapy.

However, the person returns again as he suffers from insomnia and nervousness. In this case, your doctor will prescribe benzodiazepines.

Finally, in an attempt to stop using psychotropic drugs, and to prevent the development of addiction, the  doctor sends the patient to a psychiatrist who makes a definitive diagnosis of the problem: depression.

On average, it takes about a year or two to reach a final and correct diagnosis. During this period, the patient does not really know what is going on in him.

This is a very complex issue that needs more attention.

Denying the situation

The word “depression” is not one to be feared. However, it sheds a sense of rejection – both for the person experiencing it and for society.

We live in a world where it is still thought that “depressed people are sad, and it’s just a matter of a weak attitude and the inability to deal with problems properly”.

If you think so, you are making a mistake. Depression in any form is a disease that needs to be treated in a multidisciplinary way. This treatment can be a combination of medication, psychotherapy and social support.

However, when a person is diagnosed, he feels that the world suddenly stops spinning and everything changes. He does not want to take care of his own inner demons, his losses, and his broken heart. He delays cleaning up and organizing his mind full of hidden emotions.

Instead, he continues to pretend that there is nothing for him to stay functional.

Fighting depression is not easy for anyone, and eventually comes the moment when it is impossible to keep moving forward.

How can you conclude that you are depressed?

Psychologists have at their disposal some key issues that guide them in making a possible diagnosis of depression.

These are the main characters:

• insomnia
• apathy
• constant mood swings
• feeling defenseless and feeling that  despite everything you do, nothing is going well
• the feeling that you have no control over anything

These are without a doubt the most recurring symptoms of depression. They are then supplemented with other more serious symptoms that are not usually overlooked by the person themselves, such as self-harm or suicidal thoughts.

So let’s learn to recognize the symptoms of depression as soon as possible and ask for help.

Have you actually struggled with these signs of depression, or do you know someone who suffers from them? Contact your loved ones, some of them may be depressed without knowing about the problem.