Why do I feel depressed?

“I feel depressed” is a common complaint my clients present with. This depression may also accompany thoughts of wanting to end their life or wishing they were not alive. Life tends to feel very ‘grey’—as if all the color has seeped out of it. You might feel like you’re just going through the motions, and that feeling is absolutely intolerable. We’ll do anything to escape it—so why does our body give us these feelings? What could possibly be happening when we feel this way?

There are 227 possible ways that someone could satisfy the criteria for Major Depressive Disorder as per the DSM-5 (I looked it up). But one thing all those people will agree on is, “I feel stuck.” It’s precisely this feeling of ‘stuckness’ that leads someone into feeling depressed. So how might one become ‘stuck’ and, therefore, ‘unstuck’?

The nervous system—the network in your body whose job is to keep you alive—makes all its decisions based on how something feels. Have you ever had the experience of confessing something that has been on your mind and then literally feeling like a weight has been lifted off your shoulders? Suddenly, you can walk with more spring in your step and even take a deeper breath. That’s because the secret you were keeping felt like a weight—it literally ‘kept you down’. That was no accident or anomaly. Your nervous system codes emotional and mental information the same way it does physical information. If you’ve ever had a distressing thought and then noticed your heart racing, your hands getting sweaty, or feeling a chill, then you know what I mean.

So, if you are emotionally stuck—in your life circumstances, relationships, or not being allowed to feel or express certain emotions—depression or ‘hypo-arousal’ often follows. But why the negative thoughts? Why the lack of energy—shouldn’t your system be doing the opposite? It needs to get you out of this, right? Actually, no. Hypo-arousal is what ensues when you are truly ‘stuck’.

Now, think about this scenario: You’re out walking through a marshy field somewhere in the country when you suddenly realize you’ve sunk into the mud and are stuck. What would you do? There’s no one around, no one knows where you are, and let’s say you left your cellphone in the car (that one time!). You yell for a bit, but no one comes. You try to extract yourself and sink deeper. You realize that the best thing to do is not to move so you don’t sink further. It’s starting to get dark. You are well and truly stuck. You can’t fight it, run from it, or panic your way out of it—so what would be the most adaptive thing your body could do right now to ensure your survival? It would be to conserve energy. To ensure that you don’t move.

How does it make sure we don’t move? It makes the rest of the world pretty unattractive, doesn’t it? It turns everything grey, takes the fun and color out of life, and sucks your energy. Even if you wanted to go do something, you literally feel like you can’t—your limbs feel like tree trunks and anyway, “what’s the point?”. You can see how someone starts to feel pretty bad about themselves when they feel this way in a culture that values constant productivity, traditional norms, and mental ‘typicality’.

So, how do we get ‘unstuck’? And therefore, stop feeling so ‘stuck’? That involves non-judgmental, curious inquiry into your inner world and system. Although the end point might look the same, everyone takes their own path to hypo-arousal. That’s where I come in. With my clients, I help them understand depression not from a pathological perspective (as if it’s something wrong with them), but rather from a functional, adaptive lens. Our bodies hold wisdom far beyond what our awareness can grasp at any one time. I’ll partner with you on your journey and help you to get curious (with compassion) about the part of you that feels ‘stuck’. Together, we’ll work to notice what brings more energy into your system and help you move toward that at the appropriate time.

Disclosure: This blog post was polished into its final form with editing by AI software; however, the ideas conveyed are completely my own. If you’d like to see the original version, I’d be happy to email you a copy.