[257/366] where is my depression

[cosmolinguist]

So I don't exactly have homework for this therapist but I guess I do this first week becasue she said if I don't do it beforehand we'll do it in the session.

She said to draw like an outline of a person and put on it where my depression is. "Like, does it feel like your arms and legs are heavy, does it feel like a weight on your heart, a weight on your chest?"

I have no fucking idea. This doesn't make sense to me. I know I'm guilty of thinking of my depression in very functional terms, I describe it in terms of what I can (usually "can't") do: am I socializing, am I doing housework, am I cooking and eating, am I going to bed and getting out of bed. But I know even when I'm functional I'm still depressed.

Another thing I'm guilty of is being very people-pleasey, which I know is a problem in therapy. I'm also pretty good at storytelling and metaphor so while I think I could come up with a clever paragraph about how depression is like having weights on my arms and legs or something, I don't know if I really feel like that.

I first realized I was depressed when I was 19 and it was definitely there for a while before that. And it's never really gone away. I've felt like this for more years now than I haven't. Asking me where my depression is in my body feels like asking a fish what water is like: it's everywhere all the time.

Comments

[crystalpyramid]

Oh weird, what a weird question.

I think when i feel collapsy (i suspect this is not actually depression but some kind of anxiety thing) it's in my bones, and i get clumsy and collapsy. Or more literally it's probably in my muscles. But it's not localized in a place, it's everywhere deep inside me.

[cosmolinguist]

Yes, exactly.

[azurelunatic]

The depression as water that you're completely submerged in is an extremely evocative image, and seems drawable...

[otter]

I like this idea

[meepettemu]

Yeah. People can do this. (I cant. It’s part of the reason why I think an alexithymia descriptor works for me: https://www.alexithymia.us/alexithymia-questionnaire-online-test)

There is a whole study about it- probably more than one, but this one I am thinking of: https://www.fastcompany.com/3024327/an-atlas-of-the-human-body-that-maps-where-we-feel-emotions

It means nothing to me. But I know someone who when we were talking about this can have this kind of experience:

“ Like - elated is that bubbly flappy feeling you (😛) get when you’re watching fireworks. It’s inside and small and grows fast. But content is much softer and enveloping and almost comes from outside and above. Cheerful is in my head and I feel it in my feet too; it’s a sort of outward-looking bounce, very in the moment.

Lots of this is totally bound to context and to cliche and metaphor and collective unconscious and to learnt stuff from reading and hearing other people. But I do *actually feel* it.”

That prompted (from both me and zee who are at the other end of the alexithymia scale to her), a lot of ‘what?!’

So. Yeah.

[askygoneonfire]

Heeeee. I was coming in to say this but you have predictably got here first.


Glad you found the responses here useful and I see from your more recent entry you managed to have a really useful first meeting.

There isn't a correct answer

[jesse_the_k]

...and it may be important to began as you mean to go on and say, "this question is meaningless to me."

Re: There isn't a correct answer

[cosmolinguist]

Yeah I think if I don't say that it'll be harder to be truthful with her in future.

Re: There isn't a correct answer

[tarasacon]

^^^This.

[otter]

It is a question that my therapist and I discuss fairly often, because my symptoms are very physical and I know just where they are. But when I was depressed, I just felt like my whole brain and body were like a bag full of sand.

I encourage you to tell the therapist that you're not at a point where exploring that question feels useful or helpful in any way. You could also ask her what she's trying to get at by asking it.

[worlds_of_smoke]

Ugh, I hate that question. I think that it's probably a good idea to tell your therapist that the question doesn't mean anything to you. The fact that it isn't a question that you can answer actually is saying something important.

[innerbrat]

I'm a little suspicious of this question because if I label one physical feeling as my depression (and I can, but...) then surely that's running the risk of getting into the situation where you're like "now why have I been staring into space for three days straight - oh right!" because if you don't have that physical sensation you don't notice you're in a slump.

[cosmolinguist]

Yeah, I've had depression for a long time and it has felt like weights on me and it has felt like I can't move my hands and feet but it has definitely been present when I lacked those feelings as well. It's just been around too long and been too many kinds of things for me to point to my ear or elbow or whatever and say "there it is."

[tarasacon]

There are cultures where depression is more readily represented/presented as somatic and there are people outside of those cultures for whom it presents in very physical ways, so for those people it's a valid question.

For many of my years of depression, especially in my teens and twenties, I would have scribbled over the entire figure with black crayon, or draw it behind bars, in a dark cell, or at the bottom of a well.

But the times I have navigated depression more recently, it's more intellectual than emotional, and except as relates to my physical disabilities, not at all embodied.

I think for those of us who have decades of navigating it, depression becomes a different sort of beast, one that doesn't fit into the (more common?) model of one or two severe episodes in an otherwise happy life.

[cosmolinguist]

Yes exactly. I'm past the "black scribble" kind of depression, and mine is also much more intellectual than emotional. And, since I'm lucky to be free of physical disabilities, mine is not embodied at all.

[lenores_raven]

Asking me where my depression is in my body feels like asking a fish what water is like: it's everywhere all the time.
That describes it perfectly, imo.

That's why I'm always a bit annoyed when people say depression doesn't define my life and who I am. Because it kinda does: it puts a filter on everything and everyone around me, it defines what I can relate to or not, it decides what I can and cannot do today. It blended in with my whole self so much I find it hard to isolate something and say: here is that depression thing and here is me.

[cosmolinguist]

This is such a great and eloquent and helpful response. I'm sorry it's an experience you have too. <3

[silveradept]

It sounds like you have an answer to them, just not the one they're looking for. It sounds a bit like they're asking for what the physical manifestations of the depression are, as if they were expecting something other than "everywhere, all the time."

[lorigami]

That is an interesting thought experiment, is it supposed to align with the theory that different areas of the body hold different emotions/traumas?

[cosmolinguist]

She never explained, but I can only presume so.

[finding_helena]

I'm not sure if it's depression or ADHD or a combo of both, but when I'm not doing well I feel like all my tasks are heavy.

[cosmolinguist]

Yes I thought this too: sometimes it's not me that's heavy, it's the things I have to do.