People often consider depression to be the opposite of happiness–a fundamentally incompatible experience. But depression and happiness can and do coexist.
Having a depressive disorder or an anxiety disorder can absolutely impact your quality of life. It can affect the way you are able to enjoy things you love, function socially and occupationally and how you feel about yourself. But depression is not a monolithic experience, and it looks different for different people.
The truth is, experts don’t really understand what causes depression.
In fact, much of how we treat it is still theoretical. We know antidepressants such as SSRIs are successful in treating depression and anxiety for some people, but we still aren’t sure exactly why. (I recall this being pretty shocking revelation when I was in graduate school.) In theory, they work by increasing certain neurotransmitters in the brain associated with mood. Ultimately, anxiety and depression in humans are still somewhat of a mystery.
Depression can be correlated to a number of things: genetics, chemical imbalances, hormones, adverse life events, trauma, grief, stress or burnout. Sometimes depression can be intense and causes a major impediment in functioning. Some depression is so subtle and persistent that it may stop feeling like depression and simply feel like our “baseline”.
Depression is a mental illness, not a state of being.
It is entirely possible for a person to meet most of the commonly accepted markers for happiness–contentment, sense of purpose, satisfaction with life and relationships–and also be depressed. Sometimes it can compound the pain a person is already in if they feel guilty or shameful for struggling with depression. I will hear them say, “Everything in my life is great, I have nothing to be unhappy about. I don’t know why I feel this way.” I always tell my clients that you never feel better by feeling bad about feeling bad.
There isn’t always a “good reason” to feel depressed or anxious.
But therapy can help you figure out the underlying cause so that you can treat it appropriately. I recently came upon an interesting study that suggests depression, anxiety and happiness overlap much more often than we think. Depression isn’t necessarily a predictor of future happiness, and Generalized Anxiety Disorder (which co-occurs with depression more than half the time) may not have much of an effect at all on self-reported happiness.
Personality plays a big role in how much mental health disorders influence how happy we are.
While having a depressive or anxiety disorder predictably does impact someone’s well-being, being high in neurotic traits can make a person more prone to being unhappy regardless of the severity of their mental illness.¹
Neuroticism is recognized as a fundamental personality trait. People with high levels of neuroticism experience high levels of emotional volatility, anxiety, irritability, low self-esteem and anger. They have poor distress tolerance and tend to respond poorly to environmental stressors and are less resilient.²
While neuroticism can be symptomatic of larger issues, such as a personality disorder, it is also a predictor of how much mental illness will impact a person’s overall happiness and well-being, as well as how well they are able to respond to treatment.¹
If you’re struggling with depression, anxiety, neurotic traits or any combination of the above, therapy can help you understand yourself and your needs so you can get the most effective treatment for your unique experience. Even the happiest people on earth struggle, and there’s no shame in getting help when you need it.
Sources:
1. Spinhoven P, Elzinga BM, Giltay E, Penninx BWJH (2015) Anxious or Depressed and Still Happy? PLoS ONE 10(10): e0139912. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0139912
2. Widiger TA, Oltmanns JR. Neuroticism is a fundamental domain of personality with enormous public health implications. World Psychiatry. 2017 Jun;16(2):144-145. doi: 10.1002/wps.20411. PMID: 28498583; PMCID: PMC5428182.
One comment
Diane
September 23, 2020 at 8:34 pm
I feel like i live with some level of depression all the time.. One of the big warning signs for me that it is getting out of hand is when I stop feeling anything, stop caring about anything. When everything feels too hard, too exhausting. I haven’t had good experiences with medication but I have learned that if I can make myself get on the rowing machine or do some kind of exercise that gets my heart rate going even for 10 minutes a day, I will start feeling a turn around. Self-monitoring and knowing your patterns of behavior can help avoid a deeper dive into the pit of despair.