The darkness: what depression actually looks like

Not like sadness. Sadness is at least a feeling.

Depression is often the absence of one: numbness, detachment, and a heaviness that turns ordinary tasks into cliff faces.

The part people describe as loneliest, is the gap between the outside and the inside, because everyone around you is responding to the weather they can see not the storm brewing internally.

Depression also lies. It tells you things are permanent, that this is who you’re, and that nothing on the other side is worth the effort. But whilst this may be untrue, depression can also be pretty convincing.

Before you read on: this post describes the experience of deep depression in the aftermath of betrayal and abuse, including some very dark territory. It’s written from the other side, and it ends in hope, but the middle is honest. If you’re struggling right now, please don’t read this alone.

Lifeline is available 24/7 on 13 11 14, and the Suicide Call Back Service on 1300 659 467. This post can wait. Your safety is the priority.

Some years ago, in the middle of the hardest period of my life, I wrote a poem.

I wasn’t a counsellor then. I was a guy whose marriage had ended, whose body was breaking down, whose sense of who he was had collapsed, and who was carrying the weight of betrayal by people closest to him on top of all of it.

I didn’t have clinical language for what I was experiencing. So I wrote it the only way I could.

The poem is called The Darkness. It opens like this:

The Darkness, all consuming, I’ve completely lost my way.
This encounter feels familiar, yet the Light feels far away.
Reflections turn transparent, not trusting what I see.
I don’t know what I’m doing here. I don’t even know me.

I’m sharing it here, on my professional site, for one reason. In my counselling work, people regularly tell me they can’t describe what’s happening to them. The words won’t come.

When I show them that someone else has already found the words, something loosens.

“It’s not just me. Someone has been here and come back.”

So this is me offering you the words.

Clinical descriptions of depression list symptoms: Low mood. Loss of interest. Fatigue. Accurate, and also completely inadequate.

What it feels like is closer to this:

The Numbness paralyses, leaving me feeling detached,
The weight upon my shoulders is a force that’s hard to match.
The sun is shining outside, but a storm rages within,
The shadows still surround me, and my hope is wearing thin.

The gap between the outside and the inside. The sun shining while the storm rages. That gap is, for many people, the loneliest part of the whole experience, because everyone around you is responding to what they they can see, not what you’re feeling.

The poem has a turning point, and it arrived on the page before it fully arrived in my life:

The overthinking starts to slow, the end, less out of sight,
The Darkness starts to tremble when I realise, I’m the Light.

It’s worth pointing out that a line of poetry can sound like the recovery took simply a moment of insight. It didn’t. It took a long time.

It took people checking in on me. It took professional support, and journaling, and physical rehabilitation, and the slow rebuilding of a life one unglamorous decision at a time.

But the turn itself, the thing that made all of that effort possible, really was that realisation. Nobody was coming to switch the light on. The light was something I was going to have to generate, with help, from inside the dark. Realising that felt less like inspiration and more like responsibility; and responsibility, it turned out, was something I could work with.

I’m not going to tell you it gets better as though that’s information you can use. When I was in it, those words bounced off (if they even hit at all).

What I’ll tell you is what I now know from both sides of this experience, having lived it and having spent years sitting with people inside it.

The gap between how you appear and how you feel isn’t confirmation that nobody would understand. It’s proof that nobody has been given the chance yet. One honest conversation, with a mate, a GP, a counsellor, a crisis line at 3am, is how the weight starts to move. Not disappear; move. That’s enough to get the ball rolling.

And the voice telling you that reaching out is weak, or pointless, or too late? That voice is a symptom. It’s the Darkness protecting itself. You’re allowed to ignore it long enough to make one phone call.

If you’re in crisis, call Lifeline on 13 11 14 or the Suicide Call Back Service on 1300 659 467. If it’s an emergency, call 000.

• Borrow the words if you don’t have your own. Not being able to describe it’s one of the main reasons people present late, or not at all. Reading a description written from inside it and recognising yourself isn’t a small thing.

• Tell one person the true version. Not the weather report they can already see. The gap between the two is where the isolation lives.

• Don’t make the decision while you’re in it. Depression argues persuasively and it argues in bad faith. Nothing permanent should be decided on its evidence.

• Get a GP in the room. This is one where doing it entirely alone is the harder road and frequently the longer one. There’s nothing weak about a single appointment.

• Keep the record. When you come out the other side, the archive is what proves it was a period rather than a personality.

This week: tell one person one true sentence about how you’re travelling. If that isn’t available, write it down and take it to a GP.

For many people it’s not sadness. It’s numbness, detachment and a heaviness that makes ordinary tasks feel enormous. The clinical list of symptoms is accurate and completely inadequate to the experience.

Because the language for it was never taught to most of us, and because the experience is partly an absence, which is harder to put words to than a feeling. This is one of the main reasons people present late.

The gap between how you look and how you feel. You’ve been telling everyone you’re “fine” or “good” for so long, that they believe it; and trying to convince yourself you’re ok isn’t working anymore.

No. Sadness is a feeling and it moves. Depression is frequently the absence of feeling, it doesn’t move on its own, and it makes a persuasive case that it never will.

It did for me, and it does for a great many people, and it’s worth being honest that it took a long time and a lot of unglamorous work. People checking in. Professional support. One decision at a time. Not simply a moment of insight and a rhyme.

Tell one person, and get a GP appointment. If you’re not safe, call Lifeline on 13 11 14 or the Suicide Call Back Service on 1300 659 467, or 000 in an emergency. Don’t make any permanent decisions on the evidence that depression is currently presenting to you. It’s not entirely accurate.

For the longer work, the slow rebuild on the other side of a crisis, that’s what counselling is for, and it’s work I know from the inside.

I offer a free introductory call. No cost, no pressure, no obligation. Click the banner above or get in touch on 0422967392.

• What anxiety actually feels like
• I wore it like a badge
• The power of the written word
• Clarity: when the work starts working
• How do you ask for help when you’ve never had to?