Why Depression Hurts, Physically (Instead Of Just In Your Mind)
You're not imagining it.
getty Depression affects 20 million Americans and 350 million people worldwide every year. This range goes from mild depression, situational depression to significant forms of depression.
What about it?
Depression isn't a lack of happiness, joy, or expansive emotions. Depression shows up in response to the exterior and/or interior conflicts. It is an answer to an internal imbalance and unresolved inner friction that reduces the ability to feel any emotions correctly.
In most societies worldwide, depression is put in a box of emotional pain or mental illness without exception, whether it is a situational depression or a serious form of depression. But there is a physical connection, too, and very real physical symptoms of depression.
Today, there's more research, more knowledge, and wisdom about depression and its conjunction with our physical and energetic body. I will tell you more about how our body, mind, and soul collaborate and how our physical hurt connects to depression.
The forms Of Depression:
My purpose of this article is to focus on the situational form of depression and the physical connection instead of the serious types of depressions. The physical connection applies to all kinds of depression.
What are the severe forms of depression called?
I will mention a couple of the more severe forms of depression to inform and make the range of depression conscious. There are some severe depression forms named for instance major depression, bipolar depression, hormone-related depression, psychotic depression, seasonal depression, and some others.
It is a broad field, and it is essential to understand which type of depression someone has and to get it correctly diagnosed to treat it as an illness and not a personal characteristic.
What are the physical symptoms of depression?
- Feeling sad
- Feeling hopeless
- Feeling empty
- Loss of interest in activities
- Loss of appetite
- Loss of sexual interest
- Feeling of worthlessness
- Sleeping disturbance
- Back pain
- Headache
- Chest pain
If you feel like you're dealing with some symptoms a great of a time and it just won't move at all, please check in with your doctor or find an online questionnaire for depression and take an honest self-assessment.
Take care of yourself. Love yourself. Help is available. Depression is nothing to fool around with.
Situational Depression:
Have you ever heard of situational depression?
In contrary to the above serious forms, situational depression is something that most of us are familiar with. Situational depression appears, for instance, in times of tremendous life change and is a natural reaction and experience.To most of us, it is familiar and a natural whole body reaction to recovery.
Most of us have experienced situational depression. It appears when we feel down, sad, unmotivated, teary, unable to sleep, eat or function and isolated.
It is not a problem. It is a reaction to the problem and it holds a treasure for all of us.
Depression and the connection to our physical body:
Our body is connected to our mind and brain, and depression cannot only be seen in relation to our mental state. There's an undoubted association to our body.
What is the relation between physical hurt and depression?
In my point of view and from a perspective of holistic and integrated Psychology and Yoga Psychology, the state of depression is understood as not only one emotion.
It is a summary of emotions, life decisions, life experiences, circumstances, and health issues that find expression through the body as a channel to deliver the message to stop and to start to listen deeper to the message and the voice from the soul. It is a full body response and a response to complex issues.
There is a saying, "Our issues live in our tissues." Our body reacts in different forms to show up and get attention.
Therefore, physical hurt is the call or scream of your soul to get attention and to be heard.
Sometimes the physical hurt is the only way how our soul can get attention to let us know that a change of our life course might be considered. The reaction can be an answer to an internal imbalance or battle we fight and it can also be a response that arises from our culture itself.
Depression often can be a symptom of unresolved trauma, burnout, nutritional deficiency, and autoimmune disease such as multiple sclerosis, certain thyroid diseases, rheumatoid arthritis.
All of the above can show up as hurt in your physical body. It can come from a source of chemical imbalance caused by unhealthy food, chronic pain, emotional wounds, or invisible illness.
Depression is also seen as a risk for heart disease and osteoporosis. And these are only some examples to make aware the relation between depression and body reactions, body symptoms and illness.
Nutrition plays in the field of depression a significant role.
Some researchers investigated the connection between our digestive system and psyche and one cause of the onset of depression might be our digestive system and nutrition. In 2013, they found that fast food can increase the risk of depression.
An unhealthy diet can cause digestive issues. Digestive issues can show up in some pain or hurt such as cramps, which can lower the energy and influences the release of hormones in our digestive system that control our mood and cause depression.
The stomach and gut health is seen as the second brain where neurons sit in and send responses back to the brain. And in reverse, the brain sends chemical answers back to our organs that are triggered by thoughts and emotions. We also often talk about the gut feeling as our inner wisdom.
RELATED: 5 Surprising Causes Of Depression (And How To Survive Them)
Today, the science of the body-mind connection know that our body organs communicate directly with our brain and our brain reacts instantly to our body organs.
It is understood that some issues are related to specific organs and cause the release of stress hormones that lower our energy, and we feel depressed.
For instance, relationship issues are connected to our kidneys. One can have an issue in a relationship that causes emotional stress and destructive thoughts, we feel low in energy and depressed, and our kidneys react, show pain as in lower back pain.
Our thoughts, emotions, feelings, and brain affects and communicates directly with the organs of our bodies, our immune system, hormone system, and nervous system.
Destructive thoughts such as "I'm not lovable", "I'm worthless," "I'm not good enough," sorrow, and repressed emotions cause stress in our body because of the chemical impact that our feelings have on our immune system, organs such as the kidneys and hormone system.
In case of autoimmune system disease, our own system attacks our body. Why should a body or cell normally attack our body when everything is fine unless messages were sent by self-destructive thoughts
Mental depression is related not only to self-destructive thoughts that cause the inner war in your little inner village it is also related to your immune system and can attack your body. People with the autoimmune disease often suffer from depression.
Another relation between body and depression is the feeling of stress and loneliness, which are parts of low energy and depression. These can activate an inactive herpes virus and cause physical hurt.
These are examples to show the connection between depression and our physical bodies, and how our bodies react in different ways.
And the sciences of the body-mind connection shown how our emotional and psychological wounds become physical and show up in hurt. At the same time, it also supports the capacity in everyone to heal from these conditions,
One step towards healing:
A necessary healing step is to honor and accept the depression and listen to the wisdom in it. Fighting and suppressing the depression increases the intensity.
I'm aware of and understand how difficult it is to see it from a different perspective, especially concerning our conditions in our different cultures and societies that expect more to overcome and ignore it rather than reflect on it and your direction in life.
Unfortunately, our cultures don't yet welcome and value reflection. That means only if depression is pathologized will get it permission to be recognized by society to reflect on. It's a paradox, isn't it?
And I hope I encourage to allow to take a different perspective on depression and the physical language that sends us valuable messages.
Although it can destabilize your psyche and can be destructive to your body, depression has a healing purpose. It is a calling to listen closely to your depression, to the wisdom of your body and soul.
It is to be seen more as if it belongs to yourself like a friend and teacher instead of fighting it and killing the message and the voice of your body and soul.
I hope more people engage depression and practice more understanding of the message of depression what has occurred inside and outside of you to imbalance and to feel depressed. It stops you for a reason.
Hopefully, you can welcome and thank you for your depression one day!
Annabelle-C. Breuer-Udo is an Osteopath, Coach, Naturopath, Psychotherapist and TriYoga Instructor. She is passionate about and an Expert in Somatic Coaching, Process Oriented Psychology, Great Story Coaching, and Leadership from inside out. She has great experience in the combination of Yoga, Somatic Coaching, and Psychology.