How does depression affect your daily life?

Depression is a disorder that can ruin your life. For many people depression sneaks up on us gradually. We are going about our daily lives and it is only in looking back that we start to realise that our attitude to life has changed. Often it is our family, friends or work colleagues that notice these changes before us.

• It affects your physical well-being, resulting in chronic fatigue, sleep problems, and changes in appetite.
• It prevents you from enjoying and living your life to the fullest
• You've lost interest in sex or even physical affection
• It affects your mood, with feelings of sadness, emptiness, hopelessness and dysphoria.
• Your place is a mess; laundry and dishes are piled up, mail is unopened, etc.
• We no longer have the same energy and enthusiasm in our relationships.
• You've been making excuses to friends why you can't get together with them, or you're telling them you're "just too tired."
• We often prefer to stay home rather than go out, be alone rather than share and talk. We push others away.
• We become very self focussed and sensitive, easily offended, and quick to snap.
• As our relationships start to break down, we blame ourselves. We feel worthless, believing that no-one would want to be with us because we don't want to be with ourselves. We push people away and then feel worse because we are alone.
• It takes you a whole weekend to do chores that used to only occupy a morning.
• You've really let yourself go - you're wearing clothes that make you look dumpy, you've stopped exercising, you're not shaving unless it's absolutely necessary.
• It affects the way you think, interfering with concentration and decision making.
• You miss out on the sun, the moon, the stars, the sky, the universe, and cats & dogs.
• You're drinking or using drugs to escape the pain.
• it affects your behavior, with increased irritability and loss of temper, social withdrawal, and a reduction in your desire to engage in pleasurable activities.
• You lose things, you lose track of things and can't always remember what day it is.
• You've pretty much stopped eating, or caring what you eat and whether it tastes good.
• On the flip side, you may be eating all the time because you're bored and hope that food will somehow satisfy the vacant feeling you have.
• Sleeping difficulties have started creeping in - either difficulty sleeping, erratic sleeping patterns or difficulty staying awake.