Depression and Anxiety: 5 Ways Your Life Is Impacted

With a lack of education around the subject, mental health has vastly grown to become a topic that a lot of us find unsettling to talk about. In actual fact, mental illness has become far more prevalent over the past 20 years where now 1 in 4 people in the UK will experience a mental health problem each year* and it is estimated that almost 450 million people world-wide** suffer from some form of mental illness.

Mixed anxiety and depression is the most common of mental disorders in the United Kingdom with almost 9% of people meeting the diagnosis criteria. Having suffered from anxiety ever since I was a kid and being diagnosed with depression early this year, I know it's not the easiest thing to talk about, especially when mental health is so misunderstood by many outsiders.

So with Mental Health Awareness Week having just been and gone (11th-17th May) here's my input with 5 ways suffering from depression and anxiety impacts your life.

#1. No Middle Ground.

When you are a sufferer of depression and anxiety, it becomes extremely difficult to find any middle ground because both problems counteract each other and make life extremely hard to live. Depression is when you don't care about anything and anxiety is when you care too much about everything. It's like having a fear of failure but not having any motivation of being productive. It's like wanting to try new things but you can't physically leave the house. Wanting to make new friends but hating social situations. Physically not being able to get out of bed and then immediately feeling guilty for not doing so.

It's the ever increasing complexity of what should be simple, easy every-day routines. There is never any middle ground, one day your depression could be pretty mild so anxiety decides to make your day hell, the next day your anxiety is pretty much non-existent but your depression is crushing you. It's a never-ending cycle.

#2. You Constantly Put On A Front.

The stigma surrounding mental health makes it so much harder to talk about your problems. We live in a society where if you fall and cut your knee, everyone comes running but if you openly admit to needing help with your mental state, everybody runs in the opposite direction. Not wanting to burden people with your problems and knowing that people probably wouldn't care for your problems either makes you realise that putting on a front and pretending to be happy is so much easier than admitting that you feel terrible and worthless.

Unless they've been in your situation, nobody would understand how you feel anyway.

#3. You Feel Like A Failure.

Although some people who meet the diagnosis criteria for depression and anxiety know the roots of their problem and can address their reasons for the feelings they have, a lot of us have absolutely no idea why we feel depressed. Depression isn't feeling sad, everybody feels sad from time to time. Depression is constantly feeling like you're completely worthless, feeling like there's no light at the end of the tunnel and incessantly feeling like that black cloud is going to follow you around forever.

Not knowing why you feel depressed and feeling like you shouldn't be depressed is an extremely hard feeling to cope with because it makes you feel like a complete and utter failure. Not only do you feel like you've let yourself down but also the ones you love. You constantly ask yourself “what have I got to be depressed about?” and you're always chasing the answer.

Note: Depression goes a lot deeper than materialistic value. Someone may look like they have it all but in reality, they may feel like they have nothing.

#4. You're Always Exhausted.

No matter how much sleep you get the night before, you are constantly exhausted. In fact, the likelihood of getting a good night's sleep is pretty much zero due to feeling overwhelmed by thoughts and emotions. You are constantly fighting a battle inside your head that nobody else can see and that constant fighting drains all of the energy from you until you spend half the day or more in bed, not wanting to do anything. I think it's true what they say; the monsters don't live under your bed, they live inside of your head.

#5. You're All Alone.

The sad reality of living with a mental disorder, whether it's anxiety and depression or something completely different, the longer you live with it the more you realise how alone you really are. You know that there's nothing anyone can do to help you get out of this rut that you're stuck in, only you can help yourself and when you're in a state of self-loathing that can be a pretty difficult thought to contemplate.

But all you really want is to know that you have people there for you. So if you're reading this and you know someone who is suffering from anxiety and depression, just be there for them. Some days they will inevitably try to push you away but if you remind them that you are there and willing to listen, that will be worth more than a thousand words to them.

If you suffer from a mental illness, just remember you're not alone in your troubles. Although you are the only person that can truly help yourself, that doesn't mean others cannot join you on your journey. Never feel ashamed to admit that you need a helping hand. Don't feel scared to ask for an ear to listen or a heart to understand. We all face problems in our lives, it's all part of being human. The day your life is problem-free, is the day you stop breathing.

*(The Office for National Statistics Psychiatric Morbidity report, 2001)

**(World Health Organisation, 2001)