Dealing with depression: ‘Why am I so unhappy?’  

Although most studies show that women are more likely than men to experience depression, the condition can affect anyone at any time and for several reasons. However, according to the World Health Organization, people who go through adverse life events and stresses are more likely to develop depression.

Clara, an English teacher now in her sixties, has struggled with mental health since childhood. However, it wasn’t until she was kidnapped and sexually assaulted at the age of twenty that she decided to seek professional help.

“It was such a big shock to my life that I had to ask for help,” she explains, adding that once she started therapy, “everything else showed up.”

Since then, Clara has remained in therapy: “Some people go to church all their life, and I go to my therapist all my life,” she says with a smile, emphasizing that not going to therapy “doesn’t work” for her. 

Cultural differences 

For Marah, who was born in Palestine but grew up in Norway, her mental health struggles began in her teens as she felt left out and caught between cultures.

“I started to notice the cultural differences between my culture and other Norwegians and Europeans,” she says. “They were allowed to do things that I wasn’t allowed to do, or that was kind of taboo in my culture.” 

As her depression progressed, she found it difficult getting up in the morning and gradually started losing interest in activities she once loved -  two common symptoms of depression.

However, she struggled to articulate what she was going through because she had grown up believing that “if you’re depressed, you’re ungrateful for the things you have.”

More importantly, “she didn’t know what mental health was.” It wasn’t until she was hospitalized that she realized the seriousness of her condition and the need to address it.

‘Why am I so unhappy?’

Emma, on the other hand, describes herself as “well-educated" on mental health issues, having supported friends and partners through hard times. Yet, depression “snuck up on her,” and it took her a “long time” to recognize it.

“I felt really bad and thought it was just the circumstances of losing my job and having core pillars in my life all change at the same time,” she explains. She recalls being on vacation, surrounded by beauty, and yet thinking, ‘Why am I so unhappy?’

It was through conversations with friends and her therapist that she realized that it wasn’t just her going through “a shit time”, but that “there was a word” for what she was going through: depression.

Depression and masculinity

Similarly, for Matías, understanding that he was suffering from seasonal depression took nearly thirty years. By the time he sought help, he had reached a point of having suicidal thoughts. He believes the delay was partly due to societal expectations around masculinity.

“There’s a social pressure when you’re a man that you shouldn’t have feelings – or at least ‘bad’ ones,” he explains. Instead, men are encouraged to “get a partner, partying, and doing men’s stuff,” which creates a “constant background noise.”

It wasn’t until he was diagnosed while at university that he realized that he was not “wrong, but maybe it was the people I was surrounded by.”

Learning through therapy

Like Emma Emma and Clara, it is through therapy that Matías learned to recognize warning signs and take them seriously.

“I have learned that depression will come; I will have to go through it during winter,” he says.

Another important lesson he has taken to heart is that “suffering is not a competition,” but rather something that should be addressed if it starts to affect daily life.

For Clara, therapy has given her not only the tools to identify triggers and patterns but also a new vocabulary:

“I thought, ‘the sun has come out!’ There are words for everything. There are words like stigma. There is another word for self-stigma. There is another word for what people do to me, which is stigmatizing. And she gave me a vocabulary,” she says.

Breaking the stigma

For all four, speaking openly about depression is crucial in breaking the stigma surrounding mental health struggles and in getting better.

“Things only have a stigma if we leave them in darkness and don’t talk about them,” says Emma. At the same time, Matías encourages anyone struggling to speak to a friend or a professional, emphasizing that feeling depressed is “maybe not as common or normal as you might think.”

Clara hopes that sharing her story will add nuance to the way survivors are perceived:    

“When you go through a traumatic life event, they are always depicted as tragic in films and newspapers,” says Clara. “They think that you die, but no, I continued living - with a lot of pain, but looking for solutions, which I have found.”

For her, the best revenge against her trauma is to “have a nice, long life.”
 

If you’re struggling with mental health issues, please reach out to your doctor or your healthcare provider, a therapist, or if you live in Catalonia, call the Suicide Prevention Hotline at 061.  

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