Have you ever felt a strange and indescribable flow of emotions that only leads to sadness? If yes, this can be a faded picture of what anxiety and depression feel like.
What anxiety and depression feel like is an extremely difficult question to answer because the people who are suffering are often emotionless and are unable to describe it using emotional signatures.
When depressed people describe their thoughts, they use the terms like hopelessness, no light at the end of the tunnel, a meaningless life. For the unaffected, this is hard to understand.
What anxiety and depression feel like is difficult to explain
A few ways to describe anxiety and depression as a feeling are that the body and heart become deaf, emotions no longer exist and the mind only seeks grayness.
Some people do not survive because they kill themselves. Depression is one of the most significant diseases worldwide – and is still underestimated.
Depression, in a sense, means the absence of any action, but some small habits and routines can be interpreted as the first signs of the disease.
In the early stages of depression, people stop following the routine and ignore all social norms. There have been examples from patients describing the changes in habits during the early stages like ignoring phone calls, avoiding plans and appointments, not leaving home, not paying bills and avoid talking to anyone.
This is one of the best ways to describe what anxiety and depression feel like.
A slightly more severe side of it is sleeping too much and stopping with every hobby people like otherwise. They just go home and lie on the sofa until someone gives them something to eat, then lie there until they can drag themselves to bed.
This is not only harmful to the patients but also for the family members of the patient. The family members often go into a constant state of worry and again the whole environment becomes negative.
This is what anxiety and depression feel like to friends and family members of the patient.
In total, about 10% of the global population, currently suffers from depression requiring treatment.
It could be more. Often, older people do not recognize the disease, they continue to live with this disease. People who are being treated for depression are usually younger. Women are twice as likely to be affected as men.
Depression is more than sadness. It is the feeling of absolute futility and the conviction that this condition will never improve. Feelings that make life worth living are numbed. Therefore, depressed people are hardly interested in anything.
Hobbies, work, sometimes even family and friends seem completely meaningless. Some patients are also nervous, anxious and tense.
Symptoms to physical pain
Physical pain is also a symptom in certain cases of anxiety and depression. Complaints in which the doctor finds no physical cause. Up to 70 percent of patients with depression go to the family doctor only because of physical symptoms.
That is why it is important to talk to the doctor about feelings and to suspect and recognize depression in your search for help. It is easy to miss this symptom at first. Those affected can still function properly but with great effort.
But people with severe depression eventually stop caring for themselves, stop eating and drinking. Once the depression is severe or suicidal thoughts are imposed, only inpatient treatment can help.
For mild forms of depression, psychotherapy and possibly medication are the drugs of choice.
Medications act on messenger substances
Cognitive-behavioral therapy or interpersonal psychotherapy in combination with antidepressants has proved its worth. The drugs treat the physical side of depression.
They act on messenger substances in the brain, which are responsible for external factors as well as for depression because a medicine cannot possibly know what anxiety and depression feel like.
Antidepressants are not addictive. The therapy treats the psycho social side of the disease. It helps to resolve conflicts, to improve communication with others, to cope with stress.
The patient learns to deal with the depression, to recognize the onset of new depressive episodes and to counteract accordingly
If there is no acute danger to the patient, treatment is possible on an outpatient basis.
It has been observed that depressed people are good at staying in their system of work, relationships, and hobbies. Sleep deprivation can also help because sleep often has a depressant effect.
Family and friends are involved
While those affected, often suffer and seek help, family and friends suffer for a different reason. People often do not know how to treat the patient, they do not understand what anxiety and depression feel like.
Family and friends of the patients are advised to find more information on the Internet or in self-help groups, members can exchange their burden and helplessness of the soul.
Self-help groups are also available for those affected. Many people are afraid of the stigma of mental illness. It is all the more important to get to know people who know and understand the problem.
Sharing with other stakeholders can also help to reduce the fear of talking to relatives, friends or the boss and suggest solutions.
Certain things that can help patients who suffer from anxiety and depression.
- Thinking about the best things in your life and if you don’t have any, think about how to obtain them. Making personal goals also helps.
- Talking to friends and family.
- Meeting new people.
- A Vacation. It does not have to be an expensive vacation or a holiday. Just find a place you want to go to and get involved in some adventure.
- Learning a new trade or language to spend time and earn more money.
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