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Someone comes to therapy for a depression that has dogged them for years, and somewhere in the third or fourth session mentions, almost in passing, that…
People expect depression to hurt. What surprises many who carry this version of it is that the dominant experience is not pain but its absence, a…
Someone comes in asking for help with depression and describes it in present-tense terms. They cannot feel joy, the negativity never lets up, their relationships keep…
Getting dressed can take an hour, and not because of indecision. A person changes outfits repeatedly, checks the mirror, turns away, comes back, and arrives somewhere…
The thoughts do not feel like depression. They feel like accuracy. “I’m not smart enough for that.” “Success isn’t for people like me.” “Why bother, I’ll…
Years after a decision, a person can still find their mind returning to it without invitation, replaying the choice and its fallout in the same worn…
A transplant who moved to Atlanta for a job finds that the small talk at work runs on references they do not share, that the rhythm…
A sixteen-year-old who used to fill the house with friends now spends weekends behind a closed door, grades sliding, answering questions in single syllables. A college…
A person mentions, almost in passing, that a friendship ended a few months ago, and then adds that they feel ridiculous for how flattened they still…
When someone dies after a long illness, the people around the survivor often assume the grief should be gentler, because there was time to prepare and…
The last child’s room still holds the shape of them, and a parent stands in its doorway on an ordinary afternoon, unable to name what is…
A photograph from ten years ago stops a person mid-scroll. Not because they looked happier, but because they looked like the person they still feel like…
Months after a humiliation, a person can still feel the room go quiet. A speech that fell apart, a confrontation that played out in front of…
A person lies in bed knowing exactly what they need to do. Shower. Eat something. Answer the message that has sat unread for three days. They…
Someone can move through a full week, answering emails, making small talk at the coffee shop, sending the occasional meme to a group chat, and still…
A niece’s birthday happens over a video call held up at the dinner table, the picture freezing at the moment everyone laughs. A parent mentions, in…
A specialist appointment ends with the line a lot of people in this situation have heard: “Given everything your body is going through, of course you…
A report sits finished on the screen, good enough by any reasonable measure, and a person cannot bring themselves to send it. There is always one…
Asking an adult child for a ride to a doctor’s appointment can land harder than the appointment itself. For someone who spent decades being the one…
A woman in her late seventies has grown quiet, forgetful, slow to get dressed, and her family assumes this is simply what eighty looks like now.…
A person reaches an age by which they were supposed to be married, or in the career, or owning the home, or raising the children, and…
A person can sit at a crowded table, surrounded by people who genuinely care about them, and feel a glass wall between themselves and the room.…
A partner asks what is wrong, and the honest answer is that the person genuinely does not know. They can feel something heavy moving in them,…
A woman manages a team of nine, gets her kids to school, drives her father to dialysis twice a week, and answers a sister’s late-night calls…
A daughter managing her mother’s medications, a husband caring for a wife whose memory is going, a parent tending a child with a serious illness, these…