“Depression is feeling like you’ve lost something but having no clue when or where you last had it.  Then one day you realize what you lost is yourself.”

I don’t recognize myself anymore is a common refrain of someone suffering from clinical depression.

People will call your name, recognizing someone they think they know. But looking back at you from the mirror is a stranger with a haunted, hopeless expression. You remember once experiencing anticipation and joy but it feels like those emotions occurred in a far-off, never-to-be revisited galaxy.  You recall happy memories like scenes from a movie once viewed, not as something personally experienced. I know I used to laugh and joke but now all I want to do is sleep, more than one patient in the throes of depression has told me.

Depression sufferers are trapped in a psychological hellish twilight zone.

By Sherry Amatenstein, LCSW