Have you ever thought about the physical symptoms of depression? Check out this excerpt from The Huffington Post’s “What Does Depression Physically Feel Like?” to get a sense of them, and if they sound familiar, please reach out.
For people with depression, it can be a truly difficult task to explain their condition. Because it is a disease that is more commonly associated with mental symptoms — not outward, physical ones –those on the outside are often curious about what depression feels like. And it certainly feels like something: “In general, the worse the painful physical symptoms, the more severe the depression,” researchers wrote in an overview of depression and physical symptoms in the Journal of Clinical Psychology. “Symptoms have been found to increase the duration of depressed mood.”
In fact, patients often first complain of physical symptoms to a primary care physician, making depression more apt to be misdiagnosed…
“Physically to me, it feels like someone with an army boot is pressing down on my chest.”
“I feel really tight in the chest, like someone has grabbed my heart and holding on tightly.”