Why depression is nothing like being sad — How to understand your depressive loved one’s struggle

Hi, I am Sibylle, a writer who struggles with depression since childhood.

I wrote another letter to my friend James. He is always eager to understand how depression feels like to me, so he can understand it better.

Dear James,

I know you are always curious about how depression feels like. There is a question, that I get asked now and then and although you personally never ask me, I want to tell you about my feelings and thoughts about it. The question is: “What is the difference between depression and sadness?”

To be completely honest that question always baffles me. As a long term sufferer of depression, I never think about it as being sad — not even the slightest. But when I go back memory lane, I find incidents, where I might have thought, that I was sad — that was before I knew, what I actually suffer from. A time, where I didn’t know, that I have an illness, and went through horrible self-doubts. A time, where I didn’t know, what was going on in me and couldn’t communicate my struggle. You know, that my struggle started, when I was only seven years old. So I was a kid back then and when I remember correctly, I used that term to describe my problem: “I am so sad, but I have no reason for it.”