Depression has multiple symptoms that can push you into a (as I call it) downward spiral.
The downward spiral can begin with negative feelings or thoughts. For me it mostly began with thoughts of belittleing myself.
I felt useless and weak, I always wrote when I felt that way, but I wrote about how useless I am and how I couldn’t achieve anything I wanted. I will take an example situation to show you which thoughts and feelings I experienced, but also to which actions that downward spiral led to.
When I was 17, I was in a psychosomatic clinic. During that time I had one specifically horrible night. I was missing my mother that night. I felt lonely, this was the first time being seperated from my mother against my own will.
I thought about my mom, how I missed her. Then I instantly drifted into a bad feeling and the thought that I was a disappointment to my mother.
„I am a disappointment, I couldn’t be strong enough to continue going to school. Now all I can do is go to the main subjects in school, 2 or 3 hours a day and partake in my personal therapy, group therapy, sports and other therapies they assigned me to do. I was always told I am strong, but I’m not strong, I am weak. I can’t even keep it together and attend school. I can’t deal with being alone. I don’t like myself. I used to go outside, sing, write, make up stories, compose songs, meet with friends, now I do nothing. I don’t want to do anything. I am just a burden to my family to worry about. Heck, my dad probably doesn’t even really miss me, he doesn’t contact me on his own except for once in a while. He only writes more often if I tell him to or cry to him about feeling lonely on social media in the messenger…. I am probably just annoying…. Why am I even around? I should go somewhere and break off contact to my family and friends, so I can’t be a burden anymore“
The feelings I went through were loneliness, self discomfort, self disappointment, self doubt, self hate and in the end, feeling empty, not feeling anything. I write feeling empty, but that is difficult to describe, I did not feel any love, hate, sadness, or happiness but my body and heart felt very heavy.
The actions that followed, was me staying up all night, sleeping in the morning, not caring about having to go to school. I got sleeping pills to help me sleep at night, I refused to take them. I slept through my therapies as well. I stopped doing anything… I even skipped the meals… It took 1 whole day until the next morning for my therapist to come to check up on me and ask what was going on.
This is one of many countless downward spirals I have experienced. I purposely did not choose one of the more extreme spirals, because I do not want to risk someone thinking of suicide reading an emotional spiral leading to extreme bad feelings. I have been through such and I don’t want you to think I do not know about them nor understand them, but I do not want to dig up emotions like that by reading the process of the downward spiral.
I have always experienced downward spirals as one huge wave after another, you have the big impact, then some crying or even crying the whole time. Then you have a short moment of crying after the big impact of feelings and thoughts, then the next huge wave comes with worse feelings and thoughts. The thoughts and emotions feed each other and the spiral goes further down. Some people also describe it as falling into a deep dark hole with no end in sight and nothing to hold on to.
These downward spirals can be experienced in all kinds of situations in life. Sometimes a downward spiral is the beginning of a depression, sometimes it occurs sporadically during a depression.
Downward spirals have a huge impact on our lives, we mostly feel demotivated, helpless, useless, weak and depending on what the thoughts are that we experience, we can also sometimes end up in self hate. Most of all, these downward spirals pull us into our own realm.
My “realm“ is easy to describe in a picture. I felt like I only existed in my mind. My mind was pitchblack, mostly I had my eyes open spacing, but I did not look through my eyes. I only saw the black in my mind, sitting alone with all my thoughts and emotions. I often found myself falling into darkness, noone around, nothing to hold on to and no where out.
The most dangerous stage of experiencing such a “fall“ or downward spiral, is when you reach the point when you just accept it and stop fighting. You give in to negativity, self belittling, darkness and loneliness. After a while you feel nothing, the negative thoughts continue, but you feel absolutely nothing, you have surrendered to this darkness and become “empty“
Since I do not want to leave you with only understanding this process and how dangerous it is, please check out my post with methods to break this cycle (@rashia/methods-to-stop-the-cycle-of-sorrow-depression).
With this post I want to show people who have heard about “falling into a pit“ or a “downward spiral“, but could not understand it, what it means to suffer from this happening. I also want to help people who have experienced, it feel understood and understand that they are not alone! I also wish to help people who are dealing with these situations find solutions for themselves.
Please, I know I write this often but not many take this opportunity, I encourage anyone to comment below. Let me know if this post helped you understand this aspect of depression better, tell me if you have questions and let me know if this post helped you feel more understood and less alone.
Thank you for reading.
I wish everyone a wonderful bright day 😊