Understanding depression quotes

Quotes About Depression & What it Feels Like to Sufferers

Depression

Thoughts about depression, posted online, explain what depression feels like and a therapist (who also has depression) adds her take. If you are depressed, share this with your loved ones to help them understand.

Jun 28, 2022

Sherry Amatenstein, LCSW

People who have experienced sadness may think they understand depression, but that's not usually the case. While depression is a serious mental illness, it is often misunderstood. These descriptions from people living with depression provide insight into the pain, anguish, and distress of someone trapped in what many consider a living nightmare.

I love this quote. It perfectly describes how absolutely alone and terrifying it is to be imprisoned inside the inescapable bog that comprises serious depression. You feel utterly helpless, leaden, dull, unable to move. You are trapped—an unwilling witness to those living what appear to be happy lives. Anger at everyone’s obliviousness to your condition invades your lungs, heart, and spirit. The waves of pincer-like pain keep pummeling your brain as your body is dragged down, down, down onto the inky, cold depths of the ocean floor, choking you. The question: Stay fetal-like or fight your way to the surface?

This quote is painfully true. According to the World Health Organization, depression can make a person feel his or her mind has taken control of the show, with self-attacking thoughts tumbling after another with volcanic force: _I’m so stupid; Everyone is looking at me and laughing; Nothing good ever happens for me…_To someone beset with this chronic mental battering, the negative thought train, no matter how outlandish, seems entirely credible.

I don’t recognize myself anymore is a common refrain of someone suffering from clinical depression. People will call your name, recognizing someone they think they know. But looking back at you from the mirror is a stranger with a haunted, hopeless expression. You remember once experiencing anticipation and joy but it feels like those emotions occurred in a far-off, never-to-be revisited galaxy. You recall happy memories like scenes from a movie once viewed, not as something personally experienced. I know I used to laugh and joke but now all I want to do is sleep, more than one patient in the throes of depression has told me. Depression sufferers are trapped in a psychological hellish twilight zone.

Someone in the midst of a deep depressive episode feels like he or she is walking around in a shroud—suffering the torment of being physically alive while emotionally lifeless. When you force yourself to eat (likely chided to by worried loved ones), food is tasteless. Rather than lighting your soul, the sun’s rays feel like pellets against your skin. Whether your eyes are open or closed, existentially all you see is full-eclipse blackness. Watching a comedy that’s always made you guffaw, all you can summon is a plastic smile. You sleepwalk through your days, craving the ‘little death’ of sleep to escape the torture of being awake.

Sadness is a common feeling in the kaleidoscope of diverse human emotions. It can be triggered by a terrible experience such as going through a romantic breakup or listening to survivors of a mass shooting talking on television. You will cry, perhaps turn down social engagements, feel darkness but in time the kaleidoscope will shift to a cheerier hue. However, for the 6.8% of adults in the United States who suffer a major depressive episode each year, it is darkness 24/7. A clinically-depressed person is often _beyond sadness—_his or her feelings hidden deep beneath a throbbing wall of numbness.

This famous quote was taken from the best-selling memoir by Elizabeth Wurtzel, Prozac Nation: Young and Depressed in America (1994). It perfectly describes the utter hopelessness of enduring what feels like endless blackness. Human beings need hope to lift themselves up. If your thoughts tell you there is no possibility of ever feeling better, the chances of recovering are dimmed. Then there is little motivation or ability to work in therapy or partake in any pleasurable activities. Expecting the worst helps create a self-fulfilling prophecy. Here's the good news: The cage can be opened when you begin challenging those hobbling negative thoughts. For instance, when you think, Nothing good ever happens to me remind yourself, Not true. I found a wonderful person to marry.

There are few things more energizing than waking up from a good night’s sleep feeling refreshed and ready to tackle the day. Alas, no matter how many hours someone with the overwhelming emotional fatigue that comes with clinical depression sleeps he or she awakes to that stomach-drop feeling of Oh no, I’ve got to get through another full day before I can go to back to bed. No matter what age you are, emotionally you feel as if you are 100-years-old. You drag yourself with leaden feet through daily chores, counting down the hours until you can lie down and shut out the world again.

Actors choose to play a role; severely depressed people feel they have no choice but to put on an Academy Award-worthy performance of someone who is enjoying his or her time on the planet. However, there are huge emotional costs to hiding your truth such as an increase in the sense of disconnect from others in your life. When there is no one with whom you can be ‘real’, there is no break from your misery and solitude. Thus the sense of exhaustion that is wrapped into depression grows exponentially. Each time you lie and say you are fine, you die a little more inside.

Major depression and anxiety disorders often go hand in hand. Indeed, one study postulates that 85% of people who suffer from major depression also have generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), with 35% showing signs of panic disorder. There are similarities in symptomology (i.e. irritability) between the two illnesses. However other symptoms are diametrically opposed, such as having no energy to try to make a friend, versus being too terrified of rejection to reach out to someone appealing. The treatments used for these conditions are often the same. For example, cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) works on the response patterns for depression and anxiety, and serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) are also often used for both.

Those who suffer from depression know more than anyone that they are not—well—fun to be around. It is a drag to be at dinner with someone literally crying into his or her soup. Others empathize with your pain…to a point. But unless they’ve spent time at the bottom of the emotional barrel, they can’t really get what it feels like. They mean well saying something along the lines of, I’ve been sad, dear, and what got me back to myself was a yoga weekend and thinking positive. Gave a fresh perspective! Such a tone-deaf comment can at least for a moment lift the depressed person to a new level—ANGER!

26 Quotes About Depression From People Who Understand It

Table of Contents

“Mental pain is less dramatic than physical pain, but it is more common and also more hard to bear. The frequent attempt to conceal mental pain increases the burden: It is easier to say, “My tooth is aching,” than to say, “My heart is broken.”

—CS Lewis

This is one of my favorite quotes about depression because it gets right to the heart of the matter: Depression is incredibly common, and yet, it’s very hard to talk about openly.

This causes a dangerous cycle—being unable to talk about your sadness, anxiety, grief, and trauma make the feelings of isolation and depression worse.

Fortunately, there have been brave people throughout history who have shared their thoughts and experiences about depression. Their willingness to be open and vulnerable give some excellent insights on the true nature of depression.

I’ve gathered together some of my favorite quotes about depression in this article. These aren’t the cheesy quotes you’d see in a greeting card; these quotes are from people who have experienced depression themselves and captured it with their words.

If you’re struggling with depression, there are resources that can help you. Reach out to a family member or friend you love and trust, or try one of these resources:

Visit the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline | 1-800-273-8255

More Mental Health Resources from Everyday Health

Quotes about what depression feels like

When you’re suffering from depression, it can be hard to explain to others what it feels like. Our feelings can be so unique, and they’re often so complicated it’s a challenge to put them into words.

That doesn’t mean people haven’t found ways to explain what it feels like. Here are a few quotes from people giving their take on the unique, difficult feeling of depression.

There are wounds that never show on the body that are deeper and more hurtful than anything that bleeds.

—Laurell K. Hamilton, Mistral’s Kiss

Depression is melancholy minus its charms.

—Susan Sontag

It is very hard to explain to people who have never known serious depression or anxiety the sheer continuous intensity of it. There is no off switch.

—Matt Haig

Depression is like a bruise that never goes away. A bruise in your mind. You just got to be careful not to touch it where it hurts. It’s always there, though.

—Jeffrey Eugenides, The Marriage Plot

I lie in the bedroom with the curtains drawn and nothingness washing over me like a sluggish wave.

—Margaret Atwood, Cat’s Eye

Quotes about people who don’t understand depression

It can be incredibly difficult to give advice to someone who is suffering from depression, especially if you’ve never battled it yourself.

This can lead to depressed people hearing a lot of bad advice, like “Why not go for a walk?” or the dreaded, “Can’t you just snap out of it?”

If you’re dealing with depression, you know how irritating these kinds of statements can be. The people who gave us these quotes can relate:

There is no point treating a depressed person as though she were just feeling sad, saying, ‘There now, hang on, you’ll get over it.’ Sadness is more or less like a head cold—with patience, it passes. Depression is like cancer.

—Barbara Kingsolver, The Bean Trees

That’s the thing about depression: A human being can survive almost anything, as long as she sees the end in sight. But depression is so insidious, and it compounds daily, that it’s impossible to ever see the end.

—Elizabeth Wurtzel, Prozac Nation

If you know someone who’s depressed, please resolve never to ask them why. Depression isn’t a straightforward response to a bad situation; depression just is, like the weather.

—Stephen Fry

All it takes is a beautiful fake smile to hide an injured soul and they will never notice how broken you really are.

—Robin Williams

Depression is being colorblind and constantly told how colorful the world is.

—ATTICUS

Quotes about depression and anxiety

Depression and anxiety are a pair of loathsome twins. They go hand in hand and often can be indistinguishable from each other.

I’ve written about relationship anxiety before and what that feels like. But when anxiety is coupled with depression, it’s a different experience altogether. Here’s how a few bright minds have captured it.

Worrying doesn’t empty tomorrow of its sorrows; it empties today of its strengths.

—Corrie Ten Boom

Anxiety is a thin stream of fear trickling through the mind. If encouraged, it cuts a channel into which all other thoughts are drained.

—Arthur Somers Roche

“Worrying often gives a small thing a big shadow.

—Swedish Proverb

Anxiety is like a rocking chair. It gives you something to do, but it doesn’t get you very far.

—Jodi Picoult, Sing You Home

Many of us feel stress and get overwhelmed not because we’re taking on too much, but because we’re taking on too little of what really strengthens us.

—Marcus Buckingham

Quotes about depression and loneliness

If anxiety is depression’s twin, then loneliness is its best friend. Most people who feel depressed also feel isolated and alone—which only makes it harder to reach out for help.

The pairing of depression and loneliness is so common, it’s a common talking point for people who are struggling with their mental health. Here are some insights from people who have felt the isolating effects of depression.

A big part of depression is feeling really lonely, even if you’re in a room full of a million people.

—Lilly Singh

A great fire burns within me, but no one stops to warm themselves at it, and passers-by only see a wisp of smoke.

—Vincent Van Gogh

What should young people do with their lives today? Many things, obviously. But the most daring thing is to create stable communities in which the terrible disease of loneliness can be cured.

—Kurt Vonnegut

The trouble is not that I am single and likely to stay single, but that I am lonely and likely to stay lonely.

—Charlotte Brontë

Be strong enough to stand alone, smart enough to know when you need help, and brave enough to ask for it.

—Tim Fargo

Quotes about managing depression

Here’s some good news: There are many ways to treat depression. Mental health counseling is an important first step—a licensed therapist can help you develop techniques for managing your own depression, and may be able to advise you on medication that could help.

Many people who have battled depression have won the battle. Here are some of their wise words:

Getting better from depression demands a lifelong commitment. I’ve made that commitment for my life’s sake and for the sake of those who love me.

—Susan Polis Schutz

If you could only sense how important you are to the lives of those you meet; how important you can be to the people you may never even dream of. There is something of yourself that you leave at every meeting with another person.

—Fred Rogers

Maybe you have to know the darkness before you can appreciate the light.

—Madeleine L’Engle

Listen to the people who love you. Believe that they are worth living for even when you don’t believe it. Seek out the memories depression takes away and project them into the future. Be brave; be strong; take your pills. Exercise because it’s good for you even if every step weighs a thousand pounds. Eat when food itself disgusts you. Reason with yourself when you have lost your reason.

—Andrew Solomon, The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression

You say you’re ‘depressed’—all I see is resilience. You are allowed to feel messed up and inside out. It doesn’t mean you’re defective—it just means you’re human.

—David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

Depression isn’t easy, and it can make life seem impossible. But you don’t have to battle it alone. If you or someone you know is going through a difficult period, please visit these resources for help:

Visit the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline | 1-800-273-8255

More Mental Health Resources from Everyday Health

Quotes from the book “Out of Depression. Salvation from the swamp of chronic failures”

Quotes from the book “Out of Depression. Salvation from the swamp of chronic failures ”by John Kabat-Zinn📚 — the best aphorisms, sayings and catchphrases — MyBook.

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📚Out of depression. Rescue from the swamp of chronic failure
Quotes from the book

Self-digging always backfires. It only makes our misery worse. It is a heroic attempt to solve a problem that cannot be solved. Because in order to fight misfortune, you need a completely different state of consciousness.

March 22, 2020

If you live in the present moment and treat your thoughts and emotions as passing messages like sounds, sights, smells, tastes and touches, then these thoughts and emotions will not drown out the signals of the senses - signals that can keep us from sinking into negative thoughts.

June 4, 2020

When we feel bad, we start to introspect, because we believe that this will open the way for us to solve our problems. But the opposite always happens: our ability to solve problems is clearly degraded. And there is plenty of evidence for this, indicating that introspection is part of the problem, not the solution.

March 20, 2020

The habit of judging oneself severely disguises itself as an attempt to help oneself be better and live better, but in reality this habit begins to behave like an unreasonable and insatiable tyrant, for whom everything is not enough.

November 1, 2020

So, when we return to a certain mood, memories and thoughts related to it automatically pop up in our minds, whether we like it or not. and with them those thought patterns that were created then, in that mood.

October 4, 2020

The problem comes when your mind reacts to sadness.

September 8, 2020

When we stop trying: • to impose pleasant feelings on oneself, they arise more freely on their own; • confront unpleasant feelings, we find that they can go away on their own; • do something, then a whole world of vivid and unexpected impressions can become available to us.

June 6, 2020

Depression is a midday demon that only you can see; darkness that only you can see

April 8, 2020

Freedom from depression is possible, but that freedom comes from a completely new vision and understanding of the true nature of the problem - this understanding will serve as a map leading us through new territory within our own lives and our experience, where we can discover and use the deep inner resources of the mind that most of us did not even know existed.

July 2, 2020

Self-digging is part of the problem, not the solution.

June 4, 2020

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90,000 quotes about depression.

Sayings, aphorisms and quotes about depression.

Showing 1-30 of 43

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How does depression come on? Gradually, and then suddenly. And then one day you wake up and you are afraid to live on.

• Ernest M. Hemingway

Depression, Life, Fear

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In principle, all nations went through this stage. When you had already done everything, when the period of satiety began, depression began, degeneration began. All these transgender toilets, same-sex marriages, all these utter nonsense with humanism that turns into its opposite... And where is the most antidepressants consumed? Most antidepressants are consumed in the most prosperous countries. So here we are, where this well-being is still far away - there is something to "gnaw out". Well, for now, this is our happiness.

• Mikhail I. Weller

Humanism, Depression, Sarcastic Quotes, Happiness

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I'm getting depressed. No, nothing serious is happening: no crocodile tears, no tranquilizers, no lack of appetite, no desire to close oneself and not see anyone. It just got me.

• Anna Gavalda

Appetite, Depression, Fatigue

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You are not alone and the world does not wish you harm. It is you who hurt yourself and your loved ones. And until you decide to stop swimming in unhappiness, no medicines and no doctors will help you ...

• Lady Gaga

Depression, Wise quotes

110

- took me yesterday 9002 9002 depression,
hung gray veils
and kindled black thoughts.
And I did not drive the vile scoundrel,
I was all beaming, her beckoning,
and with an offended muzzle
she left me.

• Igor M. Guberman

Depression, Humor

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Unexpected affectionate word
Heals hidden depression

• Igor M. Guberman

Depression, Friends, Relationships

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I was remembered for "Carnival Night" - cheerful, cheerful. I came to the screen happy and optimistic! It seemed to me: nothing can break me, I will definitely break through! And depression will never touch me. But that person from my early films is no more.

• Lyudmila M. Gurchenko

Sad quotes, Depression, Optimism

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Laziness and depression are a signal system that you are not living.

• Vladimir V. Dovgan

Depression, Laziness

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Nobody advertises this diet, but it is the most effective of all. Depression For Weight Loss. Do you want to lose weight?
Get divorced, fall in love with someone who doesn't love you, live alone and be sad from morning to evening. Extra pounds will melt like snow in the sun. Your body will become slender again and will be able to serve you well - of course, if you survive.

• Frederic Beigbeder

Depression, Health, Beauty, News, Advertising

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What is depression? - this is when you go to the Internet and have nowhere to go.

• Zemfira

Depression, Internet

110

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Enthusiasm cannot whip a person up for a long time. There are natural rhythms in all work. A relatively long violation of them leads to anguish, to depression.

• Fazil A. Iskander

Depression, Cognitive Quotes, Rhythm, Enthusiasm

105

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Children started smoking in the wrong dishes because they told them not to They started smoking for the same reason adults do - because it helps relieve anxiety and depression. You too would be anxious and depressed if you had to put up with your parents enrolling you in college before you knew which corner of the crib stinks worse! Then they fill you with some nonsense, drag you across the city to some pointless building. Look, no wonder kids started smoking - it helps!

• George Carlin

Depression, Kids, Life quotes, Smoking

110

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Be busy. It is the cheapest medicine on earth - and one of the most effective.

• Dale Carnegie

Depression, Life, Medicine, Efficiency

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Problems are to be solved, not pilled.

• Jim Carrey

Depression, Issues

100

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We all start with the common mistake of tender puberty when you want sex and you mistake it for love. But in twenty years, the dumbest user learns not to confuse these things, and moves on to the next level of delusion. PMS, and you think that everyone is a bastard. Clinical depression, and you're sure you're just tired. It seems that the whole world has gone crazy, but in fact you are the only one who has set off.

• March Ketro

Depression, Delusion, Love, Fear

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In November, every decent person should fall into depression for three to ten days. If for some reason you don’t roll around like an aluminum spoon, this indicates an insufficiently fine mental organization. Therefore, at least do not confess to anyone, do not disgrace yourself.

• March Ketro

Seasons, Depression, Humor

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Those who truly love cannot be depressed. Depression occurs only in those who are fixated on themselves. And the lover thinks about the other person, about the one he loves. And even if a loved one feels bad, he will not give up and will not be depressed. He is not up to tears. Angel de Coitiers

• Angel de Coitet

Depression, Beloved person, Feelings, Emotions

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• Vladimir L. Levy

Depression, Life quotes

108

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Depression is the laziness of a conscientious person, not giving himself the right to be.

• Vladimir L. Levy

Depression

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Depression stretches its hands wide into human affairs.

• Vladimir L. Levy

Depression, Life, Mood

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Who can fight Clark Gable? We got on well. Every time someone was tired or depressed on the set of Gone with the Wind, it was Gable who cheered that person up. Then the papers started saying that Gable and I weren't getting along. It was so funny that we took it as a joke. Since then, our standard greeting has become: "How do you not get along today?".

• Vivien Leigh

Depression, Myself

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There is also a positive in falling. You don't have to be afraid of this. Even depression, I like to fall for a while, it is nutritious for me. And to be all the time in some kind of stability, in contentment. .. This, it seems to me, is some kind of piece of meat, not a person. Man must suffer!

• Renata M. Litvinova

Depression, Positive, Stability, Suffering

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Well, just sit there, sucking longing out of your finger to justify laziness, overgrow with apathy. And such class irreconcilability bubbles between who you are and who you could become. Well, sit like that, swearing angrily through your teeth and sobbing, like clay, that you didn’t find a potter for yourself, so that colored clip cuts would spin in your head, how wonderful everything was in life yesterday. A set-up happened again, unplanned love, a tectonic phase shift - well, it's stupid, after all: this life rolls over you, breaking, and you can only twitch and roar.

• Vera Polozkova

Apathy, Depression

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Going to bed but don't see the point in waking up? Congratulate yourself - it's depression.

• Dmitry Puchkov (Goblin)

Depression, Life, Mood, Awakening

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A recession is when your neighbor is left without a job. Depression is when you yourself are left without a job. Recovery - when Jimmy Carter is left without a job.

• Ronald Reagan

Depression

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Depression is not sadness. It's a cold lack of feeling.

• JK Rowling

Depression

112

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This is a reflection of my face. On such disastrous days, I often look at him. I don't understand anything in this face. The faces of other people are endowed with meaning. Mine is no. I don't even know if it's beautiful or ugly. I think it's ugly - because I was told so. But I don't care. In fact, I am outraged that such properties can be attributed to a person at all - it's like calling a handful of earth or a piece of rock handsome or ugly.

• Jean-Paul Sartre

Depression, Beauty, Personality

103

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Don't care, don't care! Everything will work out somehow and work out. No, not everything. I can deal with anything. With anything. Let them eat and glorify, even if they burst from honors. But - lie, lie! After all, every word is a lie, every newspaper is a lie, you turn on the telly - a lie, you open any book - a lie. Lies, only lies, naked lies, and nothing but lies!

• The Strugatsky brothers

Depression, Lies, Despair, Honors

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In my work, I, like many others, try to solve fundamental questions for existence. I argue, sing, shout about it. It turns out a burning mixture of depression and catharsis.

• Svetlana Surganova

Depression, Singing, Creativity

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Depression is a frozen fear.

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