Mental Health: Depression or Grief?

Identifying The Difference Helped My Recovery

“People think depression is sadness. People think depression is crying. People think depression is dressing in black. But people are wrong. Depression is the constant feeling of being numb. Being numb to emotions, being numb to life. You wake up in the morning just to go back to bed again.” Anonymous

Depression has been described by some as the absence of feeling, or an inability to feel

whereas;

in grief, people describe being overwhelmed and brought to their knees by the strength of their feelings and outpouring of sadness.

First Episode of Major Depression

For me, when I had my first episode of major depression 19 years ago I experienced it as a very physical visceral experience. I also had been diagnosed with Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (C-PTSD) which affected how I personally experienced my depression.

• My body felt heavy. Like concrete.
• I felt like I was swimming underwater with weights attached to each limb, and that every stroke was a massive effort.
• It felt hard to breathe at times.
• I was tired all the time. Bone tired. To my marrow. No matter how much sleep I had.
• My brain felt like it did not work. I couldn’t remember simple things.
• I had little motivation.
• Colors faded. Everything seemed grey and dark.
• Even my taste buds stopped working.
• Sometimes I had a physical pain in my heart that felt unbearable.

As it continued on like this, over a period of days, then weeks, then months, life became unbearable. I did not feel like living if every day was to be experienced in such a state. Nothing I did seemed to help me out of it.

“When you’re lost in those woods, it sometimes takes you a while to realize that you are lost. For the longest time, you can convince yourself that you’ve just wandered off the path, that you’ll find your way back to the trailhead any moment now. Then night falls again and again, and you still have no idea where you are, and it’s time to admit that you have bewildered yourself so far off the path that you don’t even know from which direction the sun rises anymore.” ― Elizabeth Gilbert

It took me going to see a doctor, some medication, a great therapist, and lots of time and hard work talking and exploring what things had happened over my life, that gradually led me to a breakthrough of emotion and understanding. As I started to feel again things slowly started to improve.

Grief

And then about a year ago, after some massive changes had been made in my life I started to experience bouts of crying that would hit me out of the blue. At first, I just was gentle on myself and believed it would pass quite quickly but after days turned into weeks I became really concerned, and fearful.

I was so scared as nothing I was doing felt like it was alleviating or stopping it. I was terrified I would slip back into the dark place I had been in many years before.

I couldn’t work out why this kept happening. I had seen my doctor twice. I was on medication. Nothing seemed to be alleviating the bouts of crying and tears. I would never know when or where they would strike. I could be fine for days, or it may happen two or three times in one day.

I had been walking each day, making sure I drank plenty of water, ate healthily, wrote in my journal each day and listened to online guided meditations.

But no matter what I did, out of the blue, I would be struck with bouts of crying. It would hit me in the solar plexus and I would be incapacitated for as long as it took to pass through me.

It physically felt like what I imagine a thunderstorm would feel like if it went through the human body.

With a real thunderstorm you sense a buildup, suddenly the wind picks up and starts blowing, within a few minutes the rain starts, it increases in intensity, lightning and thunder start occurring, and usually, within 20 minutes the whole thing builds to a crescendo, but then is over as suddenly as it started.

I was consumed with thoughts and memories of my mother, the loss of her, and the mother I wish she had been able to have been for me. She was still alive but she treated me as if I were dead to her after I had left the religion of my childhood. It had happened 19 years earlier but it felt like it had only happened yesterday.

Difference Between Depression and Grief

I took myself off to see a therapist.

She listened to me and then she talked to me about the differences between depression and grief. She said to me “Deborah, it sounds to me from everything you have told me, that you are grieving for your mother. You are not suffering from depression again. You are finally grieving her loss”.

Within the hour, I felt a load lift off my shoulders. I physically felt a lightning in my body.

• I was NOT depressed.
• All my efforts at healing and self-recovery were NOT in vain. They all were helpful, healing and positive things in my life that I could keep on doing.
• There was not something deeply defective in me ( I had been afraid of this) that meant I was having these tidal waves of emotion and crying.

It was grief.

Knowing I was experiencing grief, released me from blaming myself, which I hadn’t realized until that moment that I had been doing.

I thought that there must have been something lacking in me, or something defective, as to why I couldn’t stop the tears when they came over me.

I was telling myself that other people could get over things so why couldn’t I? Why was I ruminating and upset over a loss that had occurred so many years ago? What was wrong with me?

My Experience With Grief

I knew grief had her own time and place and would strike when she wanted. She had her own agenda with me. She would leave in her own time.

I was FULL of emotion and feeling. Not absent from it.

Grief had a name. An identity.

Grief happened to me because of identifiable factors. It was something I could quantify and define.

Depression for me had been dark and unknowing for so long. An unseen force an enemy. Finding my way back to feeling and emotion had taken me literally years. I was fearful of depression’s return.

Grief I could welcome. I could relax into her.

I knew within a short time of intense crying, she would wash over me, leaving me a bit lighter, but washed out. Like a storm did when it passed over the landscape.

“Rain makes me feel less alone. All rain is, is a cloud- falling apart, and pouring its shattered pieces down on top of you. It makes me feel good to know I’m not the only thing that falls apart. It makes me feel better to know other things in nature can shatter.” ― Lone Alaskan Gypsy

The thing with grief is I knew I had to relax into her. If I tightened up and fought against the tidal waves of emotion when they struck me I would just cause myself more suffering.

I needed to literally let grief shake my body, drop to my knees and rock, and howl like a wounded animal, and allow myself to feel what was passing through my body.

Grief also left me feeling empty, but not heavy like depression had.

Grief only left me heavy, if I fought against her and didn’t allow her space to move.

For myself, I don’t personally feel that there needs to be a treatment for normal grief.

I feel grief needs to be ALLOWED. It has to be felt. Experienced.

Allowed to give vent to full expression.

Allowed to pass through.

For people unable, for whatever reason to allow grief to pass through them, and who may get stuck in grief, or have their grief also turn into depression, then yes, obviously — seek help.

But pure, raw, unadulterated grief. She is too strong to be treated. She is a power that will literally sweep you off your feet, and toss you to the ground. She will feel like a tornado. She will rearrange your insides.

If you want a support person to hold space for you whilst you are going through grief then that can be invaluable.

But grief can’t be treated away. She would just surface later. Even years later if not allowed to visit when she chooses.

In many ways, grief is the price we pay for having loved someone so deeply. The feelings of being swept up in love can be similar I believe to the feelings of being swept along by grief. She has a life of her own.

Grief is the price we pay for having loved.

Finding New Meaning After Loss

Being able to move forward with life along with grief, find new meaning and build a life without our loved one (or whatever it is we are grieving for) becomes our new challenge.

For myself, I had lots of good things going on in my life. Lots to look forward to.

The fear for me had been that something had been broken inside of me that I could not fix, that would lead me back down the pathway to severe depression and I would not be able to return from it.

Realizing that was not going to happen was a huge relief for me.

A light bulb moment. A turning point.

Release of Fear

My fear instantly lifted, and I was able to understand that for the first time I was fully grieving the loss of my mother which I had not been able to do when the loss had occurred years earlier.

The grief even appears to have significantly eased. Suddenly just making conscious room and space for her seems to have allowed her to step back from me.

But, if she returns again in the future, I will recognize her this time.

This Too Will Pass

I pray you support and comfort in your journey experiencing depression or grief and although I cannot be there to share space with you, when you feel like you cannot survive feeling like you do, know and remember that others have been in this place before you, and will do after you and that this too will pass.

You will be a changed person when you come through the other side, but out of your brokenness, I hope you find inner strength,resilience, and new meaning for living.