I Wasn’t Sad. So How Could I Be Depressed?

A little while ago, something felt different.

I wasn't particularly sad. I wasn't frightened of going out. I just wanted to stay at home, away from everything. Even when I tried to get on with something, I’d find myself needing to sit down and do absolutely nothing for a while.

I was restless, but I also wanted to switch off. Eventually I was so tired that I'd sometimes sleep at lunchtime. And I had this strange, hazy feeling, almost as though I was looking through my own eyes but wasn't fully there.

I didn't know what was happening to me.

When you hear the word depression, what do you picture?

For a long time, I would probably have pictured sadness. Someone crying, unable to get out of bed, unhappy with their life.

And those experiences are real. But they're not the only ways someone can struggle. Depression can involve loss of interest, low energy, restlessness and withdrawal, sometimes without sadness being the feeling someone would mention first. Those symptoms can have other causes too. I wouldn't claim a diagnosis based on them.

What interests me is the language.

Words like depression, mental and disorder are familiar. They're not difficult medical terms that require years of training to pronounce. Yet they carry meanings and associations that can be very different from the experience of the person hearing them.

We've worked hard to challenge the stigma around mind health. We've encouraged people to talk, and that's been valuable. I was fortunate to have people at work who listened to me when I needed it.

But I've started wondering whether we're missing another question.

What if some of the words we're asking people to embrace are part of what makes the conversation difficult?

I didn't just struggle to recognise myself in the word depression. I struggled with what I thought that word would make other people see when they looked at me.

I worried that someone might hear the word and think, “What have you got to be depressed about? You've got a great life.”

We describe someone as having a mental health problem, while the word mental is also thrown around as an insult. We use disorder as a medical description, while in everyday conversation it suggests chaos or something being wrong. We talk about depression as though its meaning must be obvious, even when the word doesn't resemble someone's lived experience.

I'm not arguing that we should throw away diagnoses. They matter. Nor do I have a new set of words I think everybody should use.

I just wonder why the everyday conversation has to begin with the label.

We don't expect people to know the scientific name of every plant. There's room for an everyday name and a specialist one. Could there be more room for that kind of thinking about ourselves?

Perhaps someone says, "I don't feel like me." Or, "I can't settle." Or, "Everything feels a bit strange." And perhaps we listen to that before deciding what to call it.

Because the word may be useful, but the experience comes first.

I don't pretend to know whether changing language would change stigma. I suspect people will disagree about which words help, and that's worth hearing too.

It's one of the reasons I'm starting to write under a small idea called Me and Myself: two voices, two perspectives, one connection. A place for stories, questions and things we don't always have the words for.

There's always more to the story.