Depressed and Sad are two very powerful, similar, misappropriated words. Portal words. Sacred words. And if we look more closely at them, we can claim what's true for ourselves and set about transforming depression and sadness into their contrasting states.
Sadness hurts but it signals that you are very, very much alive.
Depression may be the cousin of sadness, sometimes the defended response to unyielding sadness, but it makes you feel anything but alive. It dulls, weighs, and messes with your memory of your true essential nature—which is that of joy...
When you're sad, you're feeling. Sometimes, more than you want to. You wish you could be despondent, but the sadness is sharp and it bleeds your attention from you.
Depression ... dulls one's feelings. Where sadness makes you feel raw and skinless, depression is like wearing a snow suit and mittens and wondering why you can't feel the caress of life. Sadness strips you. Sadness is so fucking cleansing. Depression is muddy and muffling and numbing.
"When you're depressed, nothing matters. When you're sad, everything does." —Gloria Steinem
This just rang so true for me, and I wanted to share.
I had a period of years in my life when I was miserable, sad, but I don't think I've ever been depressed.
ReplyDeleteIt rings true with me as well.
ReplyDeleteOh yes.
ReplyDeleteVery moving and clear. We had a weekend guest just now, a seriously depressed young man - professionally very successful but only barely functioning socially with various medications. We have known him for quite some time and realise now that this will stay with him always. The quote you shared here is so terribly fitting.
ReplyDeleteA close family member of mine has helped me understand this difference. It's an important one.
ReplyDeleteThank you for this. I am deeply sad but not depressed.
ReplyDeleteThis is a very accurate explanation of the two. Depression makes you feel like you're already dead inside.
ReplyDeleteThis is such a good description of the difference. I've often thought I was depressed, but maybe I'm really sad with a tinge of depression at the worst of times.
ReplyDeleteThis rings true for me as well. Sending you hugs...
ReplyDeleteYes. Everything matters now.
ReplyDeleteHaving suffered from sadness that spiraled down into unrelenting depression complicated by eating disorders from age 21 to age 35, I appreciate the distinction. A few years after my chronic depression lifted, someone commented that I was one of the saddest-looking women he had ever seen. At the time I was deeply disturbed and offended by his comment but in the context of your post, he was observing and acknowledging that I was fully alive, which I was then and am today.
My clinical depression was most severe at the dawn of the era of anti-depressant medication, and the medications available at that time did not help me at all. There are different kinds of clinical depression. Although I never drank much alcohol, my particular kind of clinical depression lifted when I completely stopped ingesting alcohol and sugar (except for the sugar that naturally occurs in whole foods -- I eat substantially amounts of garnet yams!). There is considerable debate about the concept of using alcohol and sugar in moderation. I can only share my experience that even in moderation, alcohol and sugar were integral to my years of clinical depression.
My life has sweetness without sugar or alcohol, and I am free of depression, with a restored ability to fully feel sadness.
Is that a red oleander at the top of your post? Oleander is a memorable part of my childhood during the three years we lived in the San Joaquin Valley of California.