I briefly explained and constantly bring up the fact that I feel emotions stronger than what has been deemed typical. There have been studies on the spectrum in which people experience emotions. That is how we understand psychopath as not having strong feelings of guilt, anxiety, or fear. Also how we understand people being overcome by the intensity at which they feel which is different than suffering from a mental illness. Understanding the spectrum of experiencing emotions helps psychologist and psychiatrist understand mental illness as well. I am a deep feeler with depression, plus an interesting back story and that makes life interesting. Before I start I need to make it clear that professionals in the mental health field and Neuroscience field that deals with psychological and emotional well-being typically agree that "deep feelers" are often misdiagnosed with mood "emotional regulation" disorders. I have been diagnosed with several mood disorders and insomnia, which is thought to be a byproduct of my mood disorders, currently all with my doctors knowledge that I am a deep feeler.
I have Chronic Major Depression with Seasonal Affective Disorder. My depression the worst in the winter and usually tolerable in the summer. I start declining in the fall and recovering in the spring. I live in a cycle controlled by the weather. Dark and cold means depressed, warm and bright means I'm alright. But sometime due to life, stress, or whatever I'll be terrible in the summer and the winter, because life is unfair. I have ADHD and General Anxiety. My brain moves really fast and makes it hard to concentrate on things I deem boring or unimportant. My brain fixates on things I decide are interesting, tuning out the rest of the world. The house could be on fire, I'm starting to catch on fire, with fireworks, alarms, screams, and sirens, I would not notice. The anxiety makes me feel like my skin is crawling. There's cobwebs covering me or something just ever so lightly brushing up against the tip of the hair on my arms. The anxiety feels like constant impeding doom, short breaths, a tightness in my chest, and a knot in my stomach. The fun thing about having anxiety and ADHD is I constantly have to be doing something as to not succumb to the panic. Riding the bus I'm listening to music, on the train I'm reading a comic, in the car I'm navigating/checking my email/ talking to anyone else in the car/ and preparing for where ever I'm about to be. If I don't have my phone, or it's dead, I have my notebook so I can write and doodle. I can't idly sit by. On top of all of these I build up tolerances to drugs I'm on for long periods of time so I constantly have to switch. Mental health drugs for all of my stuff though need to work as a team. If I switch 1 it means I'm more than likely going to have to change them all. Finding a new combination that works is a constant game of guess and check made more complicated by my seasonal cycle.
So what is it like to have all of that going on when I already feel more than the average person. Sometimes it's amazing. I get higher than most people. I know a happiness few will ever know. But most of the time it sucks. Knowing great happiness but not to live in that constant happiness frequently enough is pain. I know depths, layers, and complexities of sadness, pain, and hurt; a profound insight I never asked for nor wanted.
There is a physical aspect to depression, lack of energy, sleepiness, not eating. However, I not only feel the emotional symptoms to an exceptional degree but the physical symptoms as well, but emotionally. Having no energy emotionally manifest to a sensation of being all but dead. My limbs don't ache like I worked out to much, or from injury. They feel especially heavy. Each finger feels like weighs considerably more than I remember, and more than it should. To wake up just as sleepy as you went to bed despite having slept 9 hours is a special type of hell. I constantly wonder if I even went to sleep. Hunger is a physical and emotional feeling. As a deep feeler the emotional hunger, or lack thereof drowns out my body's physical hunger for days. I only realize I haven't eaten once I start getting light-headed or having headaches. For a about a year I lived without ever feeling hungry.
The emotional symptoms of depression take a special toll. Apathy is the first thing listed as a symptom, probably because it starts with a. I wish I felt apathy. I've been numb before and I distinctly remember hating it. I know I prefer to feel nothing to pain but not by much. But I digress. Hopeless and a lack of interest are two that I feel but not in the traditional sense. I feel there is no hope that I will lead a happier life. I feel all hope is lost on not wanting to die/be dead. I know that I shouldn't want to die. I don't want to kill myself either but the longing and fantasizing persist even when I'm feeling better. But I don't generally feel helpless as a person or in my future in general. I never want to do anything. I lack interest in things I like, love, dislike, and hate. I have no interest anymore. When it comes to emotional opinions I'm apathetic. I live to travel and I love it. However, the day of I am always filled with buyers remorse. I snooze my alarms 3 times thinking to myself, "I could say I'm sick and cancel no one would suspect a thing." By the 4th alarm I convince myself that I can always leave if I don't enjoy myself. Bargaining with myself is the only way I get to go to anything or get anything done. Finally there's the sadness, sadness that is oceans deep. I get lost in the sadness like a row boat to far from shore, no map, no compass, and no knowledge of the stars. The sadness, like the ocean, is filled with far too many creatures that would feast on me if I ever threw myself to the depths.
The emotional side of my depression is so intense that it causes physical manifestations. All the above mentioned feelings that I experienced generally manifest as an illness. Hopeless, lacking the will to live, sad, and honestly having no interest in staying alive, my body gives up. Right around the time I got diagnosed, I was fighting off a myriad of diseases one by one. I kept getting sick. I would either having some illness or my body would attack itself which caused physical pain. The doctors said I had some sort of autoimmune disease. They couldn't find the cause and it wasn't like anything that would be genetic. They couldn't put me on an immunosuppressant because my immune system fluctuated too wildly. It was either too low which led to constant hospitalization or too high where it would attack itself which lead to pain. Psychosomatic they said. No will to live no immune system to fight. A longing die, you're literally killing yourself from the inside. I had to get better mentally in order to stabilize myself physically.
It was very hard for me to fight for my mental heath when it was just eating regardless of not being hungry, going outside, personal hygiene, spending time with friends despite being too sad to leave my bed, taking my meds everyday, and talking to my therapist once a week. It was effortless to improve my mental health when I was physically dying. It's a lot easier to know you're alive when constantly have to hear the sound of your own heartbeat. Physical illness gave me something to fight, there was a clear enemy, the virus, the bacteria, the misbehaving white blood cells, ect. I could measure my progress and get better. There was a finite end goal. I would momentarily find the will to live in my physically deteriorating state. Indignant, I was not going to die in a hospital. Every suicidal person has a picturesque image in their mind of how they want to die. Ironically my sick brain decided on something rather poetic. I wanted to die, but I wanted to die living. My cause of death shall living a full, all be it wild and reckless, life. Something I cannot very well do in the throes of depression. To die I have to get better, and ideally, when I'm better I won't want to die. For in the moment of all that extremely loud noise and incredible lights I will realize I am alive, and then I will live.
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