If you suffer from or have ever suffered from depression, you know first-hand just how difficult it can make daily living.
Depression is a mental illness, but it impacts nearly every aspect of your life—physically, mentally, and emotionally.
Symptoms of depression include:
- Fatigue and tiredness
- Apathy
- Loss of interest in activities, hobbies, or socializing
- Change in appetite—eating too much or too little
- Feelings of sadness, despair, or hopelessness
- Irritability
- Mood swings
- Withdrawal from friends, family, and other loved ones
If depression symptoms are persistent or long-term, it can be classified as major depression. And when it is intense enough, everyday tasks and activities can easily be influenced or impacted by severe depression—often in ways that you might not even realize.
Consider some examples.
Your Appetite Is Fluctuating
Severe depression can affect your diet. Sometimes, it can cause you to overeat or indulge in more unhealthy “comfort” foods. On the other hand, it can have the opposite effect and make your appetite deplete. It’s possible that you just don’t feel hungry, or you just don’t feel like eating. Either way, living with major depression can greatly disrupt your traditional diet or routine.
Regardless of whether you eat too much or not enough, you may find that the times you do eat become erratic or unplanned. This change in diet often leads to fluctuating weight too. It’s incredibly common to gain or lose weight while going through a depressive episode.
You Have No Motivation for Work
Motivation is what gets you through the day. You feel motivated to do our work, play with our kids, cook food, play sports, etc. But major depression can greatly disrupt your drive for work or pleasurable activities.
You may experience a complete lack of interest even in work you once found interesting. Or you may experience trouble concentrating, thus making work a difficult task to do. And so, you may find that it takes you longer to get your work done when you’re depressed.
You Don’t Want to Socialize
Sometimes, you may just don’t have any desire to socialize. This is okay if you’ve had a long day or just feel like being alone, there’s nothing wrong with that. However, if this becomes chronic, it may be a result of your depression.
It’s especially symptomatic of major depression if you were once very extroverted or enjoyed social gatherings. Unfortunately, depression can rob you of your desire to socialize and make you feel more inclined to go home and be alone.
You No Longer Care About Your Hobbies
As noted above, a tell-tale sign of depression is a loss of interest in activities that you once enjoyed. This can affect your desire to engage in hobbies, too. Living with mild depression may make you indulge in your hobbies less, but major depression may make you completely stop doing them altogether.
Throughout the day, you may feel a moment of inspiration that prompts you to turn to your hobby again. However, once it comes down to it, you just don’t have the motivation to do so anymore.
You No Longer Feel Like Yourself – But You Can Again
Severe depression has a way of becoming all-encompassing and robbing you of motivation or happiness. The biggest way that major depression affects your daily life is by making you feel like you’re not yourself anymore. Your depression may be so severe that you don’t even remember what it was like to not feel sad or hopeless.
But it doesn’t have to be that way; there is help available. Even the most severe depression can absolutely be treated.
Therapy can help you get through your depression and start feeling happy and hopeful about life once again. Don’t continue suffering! Reach out to a therapist to reclaim your life from depression.
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If you would like to find out how my approach to treating major depression can help you with improving daily living, please contact me.