Oh you'll know. You feel like you're in a deep, dark hole with no way out. Or like you're encased in cement and can't move. You feel totally hopeless and helpless. Getting up to take a shower can seem like a monumental task. You don't care about things that would normally give you pleasure. You don't have the strength to maintain relationships. This goes on endlessly and often is at odds with your having a perfectly good life, things to be happy about and grateful for. You just can't reach out and grasp that life. It's not an ordinary case of the blues that everyone gets from time to time. It's not sadness that anyone would feel over things like the loss of a loved one or a job or a lack of money. Every action feels like you're attempting to climb Mt. Everest. It feels like a part of you. And you feel very alone and scared. It's an awful feeling but luckily it can be treated.

It feels like pain,only pain. The last deep depression I had I had cramps in my abdomen and couldn't sleep,eating wasn't in the works either,weight loss,weight gain,high and low blood sugar counts,sweating,irritability,isolation from even those you care about.etc,,this is my world when I am depressed.

Being very sad for a long time. Not feeling like exerting yourself to do anything. Feeling sleepy (sometimes). Being unable to enjoy anything. The main thing is the duration. Everyone is legitimately sad sometimes.

Most of us know what it is like to experience a wave of sadness. In time—perhaps in just a matter of hours or days—the feeling subsides. Clinical depression, however, is far more serious. In what way? "Those of us who are not depressed know that the rides our emotions take us on eventually end," explains Dr. Mitch Golant, "but the depressed individual experiences the ups and downs, twists and turns of his feelings as if on a runaway train without a clear sense of how or when—or even if—he can ever get off." http://www.watchtower.org/e/20040108/article_02.htm

http://www.depressedtest.com Here's a simple questionaire to find out if you are depressed. It may feel sad, or hopeless. I think it's mostly hopeless for me.

Never been there myself but I would guess that it's a feeling of hopelessness and unhappiness.

To me it feels like time is standing still and I am stuck in a very deep well looking for a ladder to climb out of the shithole. The dangerous thing about being depressed is that you do not notice it. I slept all day, hardly ate and cried myself to sleep in the evening. You do not feel the need to do anything because you think it doesnt matter anyway, in the end you think you do not matter to anyone, even when they tell you you do, you will be like ' you are just saying that to make me feel better'. It feels like there is just no end to it, and negative thoughts rule your head. That was my first real depression when I was 19. Now I recognise it when I get depressed. Not instantly ofcourse but most of the time I notice because I lack emotion. Like I do not feel anything at all. It rains but I cannot even worry about how it will ruin my hair. Someone says something ugly to me but I do not even want to hit them in the face. Things like that.

Being sad is like mild depression for a short period of time. Actually being depressed means you start thinking about something negative, it'll make you think about more and more things that are negative, then you'll think about how much you hate everything, and after a few minutes you'll end up spiraling and snowballing until you become immobilized and care about absolutely nothing.

Well I have Bipolar D/O and I read there are some differences between bipolar depression and unipolar depression so maybe you can't imagine having these symptoms if you're uni but its what I'm feeling and my doctors usually say its depression and anxiety of some degree... Right now, I've been waking up for days and spending a good portion of the day with a feeling that I've been having a hard time placing my finger on, but I feel it, physically, in my heart and stomach. Its a combination of fear but also impending doom, something bad is going to happen over which I cannot control, even if I tried, it would change nothing. In the broadest sense, that includes everything from death (more so a loved one than myself), to never finding a job, to turning another year older in a month, to getting a B instead of an A in a class), from feeling that I'm alone, not just phsyically but in my head, I'm just too different from other people. Not good or bad, just different. Its grieving losses you feel are certain (like my mother passing away in 10 years...she's 66, that may be right around the time when anything after that is borrowed time. Grieving losses in the past, like lost opportunity. Like that I'm another year older next month and I haven't worked since 2007, another year and what have I done? Its guilt and shame. If anyone has ever almost drowned, or otherwise almost died in the water...when the depression comes on sort of out of the blue (like I'm doing something else and then bam), it feels like I'm treading water in the middle of the ocean...and then my body suddenly becomes heavy and I'm starting to get pulled under. Only the extra weight is a part of me...I can't untie the weights attached to my anchles oof free myself from some object I got caught on. And then something happens, a miracle or something and you can push yourself to the surface and you catch a couple short breaths and you're grateful but you're not out yet..you're not ready when a big waves comes down and pushes you further down and everytime your head goes under water, you feel your body fill with cement again. And its that feeling that changes from fear that you're going to drown to the realization that you *will* and all you fear now is how long before its over. And then another cruel miracle happens and you're floating on up to the surface. You catch you're breath, you're greatful...and it happens again. Over and over and each time you are getting worn out, until you can't, you don't want to wait to fight or wait for a miracle anymore, you just want some certainty, are you going to be living, and stop gasping for breath or is it over now? And then theirs the guilt...that you can't will yourself out it. That you can work to distract yourself but eventually your symptoms take over and being to distract you from the work. The guilt that you still have it better than others so why are you feeling this way. I don't know if it was a depressed person who says money can't buy happiness...it must be because only a depressed person can imagine having more money than they can ever need and still there's a reason they feel alone inside their head. The worst part is, you can't believe thta you ever felt different before or that you'll ever feel different than how you feel now. So sometimes even taking your medication seems pointless. But you take it, you want the roller coaster and the uncertainty to end (let me drown or let me breath already you say (even though you and maybe God are the only ones who hear) but living doesn't look promising and dying is not something you're going to do. Its purgatory. But you continue to get up, everyday, and hope you might make some progress out of purgatory today.