How do you know if it’s really depression?

[Cowardlytiger]

I’ve been off work for ages with “depression”, been very lucky and had loads of help from mental health team but still struggling. Now wondering if this is really illness or if I’ve been over-playing it all and I just need to try a bit harder and sort myself out. How do you tell whether you’re poorly or just having a tough time?

I don't know! That is really subjective isn't it? So, in that vein this response is just about what depression is to me. I have had depression on and off throughout my life - Difficult childhood and lost both my parents by 17 so I had a major bout in my late teens, then had very bad postnatal depression and now I am going into perimenopause and it feels a lot like depression at the minute. (Other smaller periods of depression scattered through my life).

I am resistant to antidepressants - I have tried every one available and nothing helped - some made the situation much worse (and I tried for a long time). I look at the list of symptoms in depression and I tick almost every box.... But I also know there comes a point in every episode when you need to take that tiny bit of energy you do have and push through to getting somewhere better.

I have a kind of schedule in doing this, first care enough to do some housework, care enough to eat better, care enough to start drinking more water, care enough to remember to take your vitamins and then the biggest hurdle - care enough to exercise. It's often joyless and soulless at the beginning of getting better - It feels empty, but there is the feeling of the possibility of change. In the middle of a depressive episode change feels (and is) impossible to achieve! I take depression very seriously - it has affected me a lot and I am much kinder to myself than I used to be but I don't want to give my whole life to it.