Depression and Anxiety

Attention: This thread is not for debate or seeking / giving advice regarding mental illness, no matter how well-intended. If you need help please look for online communities or (even better) see a doctor. Thank-you. @big soft moose @jannert (tagged for transparency and in case this thread is not in accordance with the rules)

I was reading another thread about a week ago where a member said that one should strive to "show" conditions like depression or anxiety in your fiction, and avoid using the DSM-5 terminology unless it happens to fit your story. In other words, don't just say that a character has depression or anxiety.

Everyone's experience with these matters will differ. I imagine it will be personal (this includes myself), or it may be seeing others going through it. This is not about who's wrong or right, what's technically accurate and what's not, or a competition, or for critique.

My only reason for making this thread is that I am writing a novel where these mental conditions feature significantly. Beyond impacting the characters, they also influence the setting, the mood, and even thematically. I would prefer to not limit myself to my own experience.

I would be interested to see the way that people would show these conditions in their fiction. How it can change the way one sees the world around them, and the manner in which they act in that world. How it can manifest in symbolism. You can share excerpts from your own writing, or from books you have read. You can recommend movies or documentaries. Also, you can recommend non-fiction books on these matters that you believe will help conceptualize and understand such a condition.

My own examples (some more cliche than others):

-an ant "death spiral"
-overcast, rain, cold
-a compass that spins in circles
-grayscale, washed-out color palette
-seeing the world from behind a glass wall (feeling detached, alone)
-a broken watch

 

For depression:
-Skewed, negative opinion of others
-Describing the character's physical responses to emotion but having the character unaware or refuse to accept any feelings
-More description as the character focuses away from life and on physical things around them
-being distracted by fantasies that are weird, ominous, or even violent
-sudden outbursts with no buildup
-the character is inert in several scenes and sometimes questions the necessity of doing something (Do I really need to get up and take a shower? )

 

Thank-you. I'll stay in touch with you if things stray out-of-bounds.

I would also say that that is relateable for my personal onsets! Is there anything else you happen to remember from those novels? Or, if not, would you recommend it for my research, or do you think it doesn't really play a big enough part to be worth it?

These are really helpful for me. I can also see "skewed, negative opinion of others" being extended to things in general.

I forgot about this movie! Someone had recommended it to me once upon a time for these very reasons. I'm sold; I'll be ordering this very soon. Appreciate it Selbbin.

 

Some suggested symbols

Anxiety:

2am on the clock - the sleep that never comes
Circled date on a calendar, the dreaded day is almost here
Everything future, it's so scary - the mounting bills, the stagnant career
Fidgeting, twitching because - I can feel their eyes are watching, In case I lose myself again, Sometimes I think I'm happy here (Sometimes) Sometimes, yet I still pretend (NIN)


Depression:

Bottomless pit
Hole digging
Crushing boulder of debt
A cell with no way out
Apathy and lack of motivation because - I believe I can see the future, 'Cause I repeat the same routine I think I used to have a purpose But then again, that might have been a dream (NIN)

 

My limited experience about Death is only reading The Little Prince in early age (Learning concept of Death). Later experiencing death of three close relatives. The mystery of depression is an amazing problem. I am still processing it for decades. My best answer is that "you did not yet see all the wonders".

I am trying to write something concise in English to defeat the Little Prince problem. In Sci-Fi way

 

If my characters are dealing with depression, I usually let them express it the same way I express mine; with an odd mixture of anger, apathy, sarcasm, and an inability to motivate themselves to do anything actually important. I don't advertise that they're depressed, though. Hopefully context will bring people to that conclusion, with maybe showing the character on a good day to give some contrast and make them ask why, during specific times, there's such a problem.

 

You may possibly mastered the problem statements about the depression being eternal. I hate the difficult unsolvable puzzles. So the answer to any unsolvable problem is the Wait.

 

I could give good examples from my own life, but not here in front of everyone. Maybe in a PM, depends on if I feel up to it. Open invitation to those who would like help and examples on the subject. Just not a guarantee on a timely response.

 

Oh, holy shit. Those clips are amazingly good. Especially the first one. It could be depression, but it could also just be ageing. Something I am feeling now. That quote (Millicent) more or less sums it up for me. Marking off time. The future is behind me. There comes a point when that's what it is, and no hysterical euphoria will alter the fact.

Life feels a bit of a hill. One that you can climb only once. You climb it with a lot of energy, even if it takes a while and takes effort, then you reach the crest and enjoy the view and your sense of accomplishment ...then you start back down. In some ways the downhill slope is easier, and goes faster, and you have a broader view ...but you can't turn around and go back either. And the bottom is there, waiting for you. So you just keep heading towards it, knowing that you at least had the summit, but also knowing you won't have it again.

 

Good NIN song. And the lyrics convey the raw thought process I'm after incredibly well.

All good examples, thank-you. Time and time again in this thread I wonder why I hadn't thought of that (especially when I can personally relate), but I think as writers we sometimes get caught up in our work and have a hard time getting a new perspective.

Thanks for sharing those pieces of writing. And I'll be sure to check out that movie as well. It looks great!

That's exactly how I want to approach it. Especially since the very premise of my story was "depression as a plane of existence" (I daresay akin to Dante conceptualizing Hell in The Divine Comedy), I know I am running the risk of being too hamfisted. I want to take the path of subtlety and *show* rather than tell.

As long as you are comfortable with it; I will send you a private message in the near future.

 

I love that NIN song! It captures this state of mind so well and so simply with lyrics that hit hard and pull on the hearts strings. I wish we all could be that self aware and self reflective.

I think it's because we may not be aware of some of these ourselves, a lot of these feelings are hidden in the subconscious. Though, even when we are aware it can be hard to explore this subject. There is a lot of guilt and shame there that usually comes along and it's hard to open that can of worms on a personal level.

I think it might be good to have a support thread where people can discuss how anxiety and depression affects them and to give each other support.

 

I agree!

The closest thing we've got is The Not Happy Thread. Understandably, forums have to be careful with how to handle discussions of mental illness because there's significant liability involved. Even if nothing bad happens, it's not a good look legally when there are people playing as doctor.

Generally speaking, private messaging or private blogs are okay. And many forums (including this one) have both of those features. Since this is a writing forum, it makes sense that things are more restrictive than they'd be on, say, a forum specifically for depression or something.

 

Mod hat on here: We did have one of those a while back, but it tended to morph into a mental health 'advice' and symptom thread, which we really aren't qualified to discuss, here on a writing forum. After some Staff discussions, we closed it. It's not an issue we intend to revive.

There is a related thread however, that has been ongoing for a while. https://www.writingforums.org/threads/mental-health-for-writers.162318/page-6#post-1794366
You're welcome to join in, as long as the topic is about writing through or around mental health issues. (See contribution #110 on that thread, for confirmation of the purpose.)

 

Hi @Foxxx.
I won't go into describing how I felt as such, its always difficult even for a writer to describe such feelings but I can give you an example of how I was living for many months following a suicide attempt/severe depression:

Some friends offered a roof over my head so I moved in with them whilst recovering. Trouble was, I was still incredibly depressed and they didn't understand. (I rarely let anyone close enough to enable them to even try to). So, in the state I was, I couldn't bear to see or talk to anyone. It was painful, people asked difficult questions and I simply didn't want to be a part of the larger world anyway. I hid away in my small bedroom, sleeping, thinking, or if I could concentrate for more than 30 seconds, perhaps watching a movie. I only left the room when my friends went off to work, at which point I'd scurry into the kitchen like a rat and try to find some bits and pieces to eat. I mostly survived on breakfast cereal for months since I was scared of being 'caught' in the open and this was a quick easy meal and I could get back to my hideaway. Weekends, when they didn't work I'd usually go hungry unless they both happened to leave the house for some reason. I recall one particular night when I felt rather weak and shaky and had an immense craving for something sweet (low blood sugar perhaps?). I crept out of my room in the middle of the night, terrified my friends might hear me and wake up/talk to me (God knows why) and found a box of Muesli in the kitchen. I dug my hand down deep inside the box searching desperately for the sweet juicy raisins.
My friends gave up asking how I was quite quickly when I didn't respond.
It wasn't a pleasant time, but in some perverse way I felt kind of safe living that way. I'm quite aware how pathetic this all sounds, if even perhaps crazy - and its different for everyone. but that was my reality at the time.


(Just for clarity, this was some time ago and I'm now that happiest I have ever been and thankful every day for life - and the voices tell me I'm not crazy)


All the best
NC

 

That's a very useful description of how a depressed person might behave. Thanks for the contribution.

 

I went through a similar phase, although in some respects I may have had an easier time seeing how I wasn't living with my friends; just going to school with them. I largely wanted to be left alone too. I started staying up late until the sun rose and sleeping all day to avoid my parents and people in general.

Thank-you for sharing! Isolating oneself is another characteristic I want to fit into my story.

I'm really glad you're feeling better.

 

ok, as an adult looking back on my childhood, I wouldn't say that i was a depressed kid or even an anxious kid. I was bullied and my stutter made things hard. But i did write a lot of poetry and I've kept those journals of poetry. As an adult reading them, the words "depressed" and "anxious" now come to mind. Reading them NOW makes me feel sad for the little kid that I was.
here are 2:

WORDS
if only the words swirling out of my mouth
Crashing into each other like train wrecks
And screeching to a halt leaving skid marks in its wake
Would straighten out and move accordingly
Like the soldiering ants in their straight little lines
Following each other with perfect speed
Perfect spaces and an even pace
If only words weren’t so hard to say
No more constricting syllables tying me in knots
Squeezing the breath from my lungs
And causing stares
And fears coupled with rising tears
I would be that person laughing in that room
Or that person presenting on stage
Not that person pulled by rage
But a normal person without the difficulties of speech
Without the train wreck of words
Jumbling me up until words are nothing more than a mass
Of incoherent nothingness
My thoughts are suppressed
every time I show weakness
every time I open my mouth
I’m Cautious but useless


MESSAGE TO THE MAKER
Please help me Maker, for I am flawed
My eyes don’t work, my speech is stalled

My ears are deceiving, my touch is unbelieving
My heart is just plain wrong!

Please, Maker, repair my eyes and help me see
See the truth that’s around me

Pease, Maker, fix my speech
So my feelings will not always be out of reach

Please, Maker, train my ears
So the things I hear, wont bring me to tears

Please Maker, reprogram my touch
So little thing, wont hurt so much

…But please, Maker, please steel my heart
So petty things wont have to matter from the start

 

and "The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman comes to mind as well.
With my sister, her depression was basically laying in a dark room, day in and day out. she was always sad and immobile, and just.... there. The in Gilman's short, the character manifests her anxiety and depression into things on the wallpaper and directs her behavior towards it. I guess, there is active and passive depressive traits?
Internal, where its the characters thoughts that are the focus (for example, my poems... I was a happy, active kid) and external where the character's actions are the focus (woman in The Yellow Wallpaper ripping up the wallpaper in her room).

I guess I've never really thought about too in depth until this thread

 

I lay on my bed, pathetic and paralysed. I’d spent far too much of my prime alone on this bed. My entire body was infused with unease, every limb and extremity awash with a pervading sense of dread. A condemned prisoner of solitude, too tired and proud to seek the comfort of company, I accept my self-imposed fate without the faintest hint of struggle. From my window, a strong wind blowing through the leaves of an English oak tempts me into taking a walk, as if the wind might blow through me and jolt my mind back into the natural world. A sudden burst of sunlight illuminates the swaying leaves, and I turn away. Isolation is an ever present companion. Even when drifting through the streets of my neighbourhood, the polluted air punctuated by wailing sirens and the droning hum of coffee shops teaming with satisfied people, my seclusion becomes unbearably pronounced. I walk past these people as an impostor, curiously looking on as the swirl of life takes place all around me, yet with no danger of ever being enveloped by it.
It’s early evening, and the weakness of my body reminds me that I hadn’t eaten all day. I light another cigarette and return to the strange comfort of my indefinable condition. My life had seen occasional entrees into a world I could never hope to permanently inhabit, accompanied by friends and lovers who once deemed me worthy. For now, it’s as if they never existed. I do all I can to avoid calling my own existence, such as it is, into question. Tomorrow I will be forced to embrace the mundanity of my life in its most extreme form. I am being led to the gallows without any last words. My hunger becomes impossible to ignore, as does the irony of seeking sustenance to prolong my malaise into another brutal day. The alternative is to lay in this bed until I starve. I could imagine my family, upon hearing news of my death, coming to my room to collect my belongings and being forced to question who the hell I was. Certainly a question better left to me alone. The least I could do is hang on until there was no longer anyone left to care.
I’d spent the previous month doing as I pleased having been signed off work. The unrelenting tedium of a job that allowed no room for self-expression, and that I was hopelessly incompetent at anyway, had crushed whatever was left of my already barely detectable spirit. The city was choking me and I needed a way out. I’d spent some time at my mother’s house in the countryside, with the white noise of a distant motorway serving as the only reminder of a world waiting to swallow me up again. Day after sunny day was spent in the garden drinking too much and thinking too loudly. This garden had become my sanctuary and for the first time since I was a child, I felt something approaching peace. At the end of the garden was an old apple tree that I came to see as something of a companion for the duration of my stay. Every year, my mother would make me pick the apples that were ready to be picked, and collect those that had already fallen. This year however, the tree did not bear any fruit.
The neighbouring garden was separated by a short picket fence that offered no privacy. On one of these heatwave stricken days, I watched the young mother next door water her plants as a little boy stamped around her feet. She called out to the boy that it was his bath time while pointing the hose in his direction with a lazy flick of the wrist. As the boy sprinted off, laughing in delight at this fabulous joke, I suddenly felt like a voyeur, a Peeping Tom gazing unforgivably into someone else’s idyllic life, the kind of life that had escaped me until now and was likely to continue to do so. I thought of my own son and how I would never able to share such a moment with him unless his mother happened to miraculously and mercifully cease to exist. They say it’s the hope that kills you.
Much of my time in the countryside had been spent thinking of Lisa. My infatuation with Lisa had begun two months beforehand in the kitchen of a flat she shared with my friend, Olivia. I was in the grip of an excruciating and familiar bout of self-pity one evening and had decided to turn to a bottle of whiskey, my most trusted remedy for such occasions. Olivia had messaged and asked if I could keep her company at her flat. With it being a Friday night, I thought it might be slightly less pitiable if I were to self-medicate in the presence of others under the respectable yet highly deceptive guise of sociability. This may not have been my only motivation for leaving the house as I got the impression that Olivia craved attention from the opposite sex just as I did. Her search for validation appeared to be driven by an emotional need for acceptance whereas mine had always been egotistical in nature and framed by the conquest. As far as I was concerned, it was a numbers game.
Olivia was a relatively new acquaintance. We’d been on a date some time ago that while pleasant enough, had led to nothing memorable. Although I didn’t know her well, I accepted the invitation and made the short walk across the neighbourhood to see her while wondering what we could possibly have to talk about. I was also painfully aware of my demeanour which screamed of a man in despair, gripped by loneliness and the slow, creeping beginnings of alcoholism. I arrived at her flat, clutching my bottle of whiskey not entirely unlike an overgrown toddler with a pacifier, where I was introduced to a variety of people who I was forced to make small talk with and who were thrown with equal and unwanted force into engaging with me.
Olivia guided me to the kitchen where I was first introduced to Lisa. She barely looked up from the meal she was preparing. Wearing her pyjamas and with her back turned to me, all I could see of her was her long straw-like blonde hair. Sitting at the small kitchen table was Ken, another of the flat’s occupants and his dinner companion, whose name I made no effort to remember. By way of contrast to Lisa, Ken’s air of detached friendliness gave me the impression that he was not completely averse to a surface level conversation with yet another one of Olivia’s transient acquaintances. Of Asian descent and wearing a white kimono, he spoke in a campy drawl and at the end of every sentence, seemed to lift his chin and peer down his nose as if trying to suss me out. Like Olivia, Ken was a photographer. I asked what kind of photography he did before Olivia interjected;
''He shoots porn.''
''I thought I recognised you from somewhere'' I replied, uncertain as to how my humour would land with these people.
''Ha!'' exclaimed Lisa, entirely unexpectedly.
Having poured myself a drink, Olivia then led me to the living room and introduced me to Natalia who was perched on an armchair. With her legs elegantly arranged underneath her, and a laptop resting on her knees, Natalia had the look of someone quite used to interacting with the strays Olivia brought home for company on dreary and colourless nights. I wondered what the hell I was doing there as the clink of ice in my glass brought attention to the fact that I was the only one drinking. Lisa came into to the room and fiddled with something on the window before announcing to no one in particular that she was going to the shop to buy some chocolate. I had now caught a glimpse of her face, moon-shaped and youthful and really very pretty. Having returned from the shop, she went straight to her room to spend her evening with whatever gets her through the night. It would be the last I saw of her for the next few weeks and in truth, I didn’t give her a second thought.
Olivia was deep into a lengthy moan about how she wasn’t getting laid when the doorbell rang. Ken, who by this time had finished dinner and was also being subjected to Olivia’s frustrations having replaced Natalia on the armchair, got up to answer the door. Alex breezed in, full of easy charm and boyish good looks, and set about dominating the turf I had thought to be my own. Handsome and well spoken, Alex was friends with Ken and reminded me of a better version of myself. By this stage I’d already realised that I had no interest in sleeping with Olivia, and didn’t at all mind being overshadowed by him. I’d pissed on other people’s parades in a similar fashion more times than I could remember. I had to appreciate the man’s art. After a round of mild flirting between Olivia and Alex, and having finished my last drop of whiskey, I decided it was time to leave.


The commute to work was every bit as slow and painful and joyless as the working day itself, if not more so. It was my first day due back. This particular morning was of course haunted by Lisa. I felt her absence as the weight of the world on my soul. A curious mix of doll-like Russian features and fiery Italian temperament, Lisa was due to travel to Moscow that morning to spend a week with her maternal grandparents. We had parted on a sour note as I’d left her at three a.m. a couple of nights previously, my periodical insomnia and the discomfort of an unfamiliar bed being too much to bear. As I groped around in the dark taking care to not make a sound while I gathered my clothes, she awoke and realised I was leaving. She slammed her legs against the bed in frustration, as a child might flail themselves around in the onslaught of a temper tantrum before getting up to slam the door behind me. Her last impression of me as I shrank half naked into the darkness was that of a cold and awkward creature unable to engage in the simplest act of intimacy. A fitting portrayal, no doubt, as I stood at the bus stop and pondered her capacity for forgiveness. Lisa, by her own admission, was fuelled by anger and vendetta. The kind of person who could never let go of any hurt or perceived slight against her, she would harness her pain and allow it to inspire her. I was astonished one day when she casually mentioned that her father’s uncle had made a failed assassination attempt on the life of Mussolini. Coming from such a bloodline, I should probably take more care not to upset her again.
I waited an age for the bus to arrive. Never taking less than a full hour each way, my journey to work required two separate busses. I particularly resented having to sit next to my fellow commuters lest I be inadvertently touched by some unattractive human or be forced to catch a whiff of their unique odour. In the absolute worst case, someone would cough or sneeze near me. I will invariably move, even if it means giving up a seat on an overcrowded bus and being forced to jostle for a standing position in the aisle. I close my eyes and try to calm my mind as I struggle to block out both the noise of one way phone conversations and my own ringing despair. I step off the bus into a fresh layer of hell and curse every wrong turn I’d made in life that had led me to this point.
The office was cruelly based in what was without doubt the ugliest part of the city. Artless buildings housing god-knows-what and towering new builds designed for the wealthy and tasteless watch over streets milling with swathes of the angry and depressed, of which I was another nameless member. A thick and inescapable layer of grime seemed to seep through every surface and corner and poor soul, none of whom could surely be there out of choice. If there was a neighbourhood anywhere in the world with less charm than this one then I certainly didn’t want to know about it. The place stank of shit from the drains and every alleyway was stained with the stench of urine by the homeless. Wretched forms, once human, once a son or daughter, once loved unconditionally or maybe even never at all, they stumble and meander, drowning in their own filth and bad luck, seeking pity or release. We all look through them. They are already ghosts. Barely breathing and long since stripped of dignity, they are seething masses of scabs and cracked lips, sunken soulless eyes, croaked voices and swollen bandaged legs. They have nothing to live for and nor do I, yet we all somehow endure, in parallel dimensions, and only vaguely aware of each other.
Every morning, my heart would collapse under its own weight before sliding down into the depths of my stomach as I was greeted by the sight of the office building. Putting myself through the rigours of labour to sustain a life I’d long since lost interest in may seem nonsensical, masochistic even, yet I was trapped by circumstance. Every night I would fool myself to sleep with dreams of being someone else and anywhere else. This was my real world. Were the daylight hours a bad dream from which I would soon wake up, or was my whole life a bad trip from which I could never come down?
My artistic sensibility was hampered by a fatal lack of talent. I was a clown without a circus. Doomed to a life of menial and meaningless tasks, I had come to accept that I would be forgotten soon after my death, if not a considerable time before it. Who would be the last person to utter my name, and under what circumstances? My colleagues treated me as a curiosity, unknowable and strange, as much of a ghost as the street creatures we all ignored. My limp half-smiles were rarely returned and why should they be? The seconds, minutes and hours stretched out before me like a life sentence. I was so bored I could barely breathe. The end of my shift seemed as though it were a distant star in an ever expanding cosmos, forever unreachable yet always in sight. My solar sail, powered by daydreams of Lisa and masterfully honed skills of procrastination, would in time bring me to my destination, however improbable it may have seemed in the hopeless void of a grinding mid-afternoon. Not that I had too much to look forward to once the day was done. And of course, there was still the matter of the commute home to contend with. Pouring a glass of cheap red wine before gratefully falling into bed, I thought about when I might see Lisa again as I waited for the walls to close in on me, my sleep to come, and my real life to begin.

 

In my book, I write in first person. It's a fantasy/romance/young adult type story line that deals with HUGE amounts of mental conditions. Loss and reaction to loss is one of the main focuses of my book. My character goes through a few phases of depression and anxiety. Because it's first person, I explain the feelings and emotions he's having at that time in depth. Using person experiences to word things just right. I made my character basically loose his child-like innocence, and grow up quickly, yet he strives to save other children from his path. By giving him that motivation, as well as mental break downs, I can give him more depth.

For symbolism, "shadow" is a constant in my writings, and is even part of the main title, as well as references to the moon and the dark. Though they both also has many good connotations as well in my writing.

For recommendations, I'd say watch Arthdal Chronicles [K-Drama | Netflix], Akami Ga Kill [Anime | M], & Given [Anime | Shounen Ai]. Each of these have strong ties to depression & anxiety. Mostly from loss of life, but other situations as well.


. . . . . . . . . .

Here is a bit of my story. I'm currently working on this part right now, so I'll share it since it will most likely change.

Chapter 3 Clip | Jake's POV [15 years old]

“You know nothing of what I’ve gone through boy! How could you possibly understand what it is like to have other people’s lives in your hand! Deaths on your conscious!” He snapped.

“You would be surprised! I’ve gone through more loss than you can imagined. I saved these people you are trying to kill, and I was unable to save that girl over there! I watched that little girl scream as she was stabbed! I watched her wriggle until she died! I gave up my life to kill the man who was after them! To kill the man who took my father away from me! I was thirteen when I watched Devon kill my father! When I watched my own mother step in front of a train because of the overwhelming loss! My brother and my sister were passed out besides me in the car, woken by my screams as I locked eyes with her as she did it! I fell to Earth because of the pain I felt in death! How dare you look up at me as if I am nothing but an ignorant child! I may be young, but I’ve gone through hell and back and I’ll be damned if I’m going to let some punk ass old man, scared shitless, kill innocent people. Is that understood!” I hissed out, feeling my eyes glow brightly as I shoved him across to his people.

My chest felt tight as my emotions took control of me. Tears streamed down my face as the memories flooded into my mind. The fear and horror of watching both of my parents die. The abandonment I felt from my mother's suicide. The anger and temptation of wanting to see my siblings again, but fear of bringing them into this overpowered world. I felt like screaming at the top of my lungs until all the air had left my body and nothing was left. How dare this man think I was going to just stand aside as Suzi's friends and family stood in danger. She was all I had left to keep in this world I was reborn in to. I'd do anything to keep her safe from a second death. I could not save her before, but I'd be damned if I let her die again. And that motivation calmed me. Made me determined. Made me willing to do anything it took to help them escape.