trauma or an overwhelming loss, such as the death of a loved one. If you have suffered such loss, you are probably very aware of the grief and anguish you feel. But if you suffer bout after bout of depression that doesn’t seem to be linked to any particular event, you may want to examine your feelings more closely to try to uncover what’s behind your depression. In such cases, depression can be linked to unrecognized or repressed feelings, according to O’Conner.
Many people who are struggling with depression, he says, may have learned ineffective or self-defeating ways of coping with feelings. More specifically, they are out of touch with their emotions because they fear feeling them. But the fear is misplaced, say, therapists. To regain mental health, people need to understand that suffering is sometimes caused not by the feelings themselves, but by the fear of experiencing them and the habits that spring up to control or avoid that fear.
The danger of tuning out your feelings, therapists say, is that if you lose your ability to feel painful feelings, you can also lose your ability to feel joy and vitality. The result: an emotional grayness or numbness can take over your life.
This emotional numbing may cause you to withdraw from people and become isolated.
Acting out inappropriately or self-destructively is also common, and the behavior – including quarreling, road rage, or developing addictions to keep anxiety and painful feelings at bay – is often repeated over and over. Other consequences may include a loss of interest in work, family or friends as well as divorce, fatigue (it takes a lot of energy to repress emotions), insomnia, increased stress, and even physical illness.
“One of the main consequences of depression is you avoid life,” says Patricia Lee Padgett, a marriage and family therapist in private practice in Walnut Creek, California. “You avoid the things that could be nurturing or beneficial to you, including taking risks and making different choices.”
Treat Your Own Feelings with Compassion
Many of us treat other people’s feelings gently but