The Unedited Truth About Navigating Life Through A Depression Fog

It’s a disturbing feeling when you wake up and realize you’ve isolated yourself from most everyone in your life.

When you’re depressed, being alone is something you desire but also something you fear. Over the last 3 years, I’ve been coming out of this depressive fog. It was something that encompassed my emotions, clouded my judgment, and affected nearly all of my relationships. I had started inadvertently pushing old and new friends away as I drifted further and further into the cloudy arms of self-doubt.

Pair this subconscious desire of ‘wanting to be alone’ with a selfish attitude and you have a personality that no one wants to be around. The hard part is that no one tells you what you need to fix or how to fix it— that’s something you need to find out on your own. This isn’t because people don’t care about you, (although, it can feel like it.) But rather that everyone has their own issues they’re constantly working on and living through. So in the moment, it can feel like no one really cares. It doesn’t matter if that’s true or false, all that matters is that you feel it and to you, in that moment, it feels real.

That was a hard pill for me to swallow.

Through my time self-reflecting on my depression, I looked at my behaviors, actions, thoughts, and words. At some point, I had drifted from being a good, morally-upright person to a self-obsessed, vain, shallow one—I didn’t even recognize myself.

A big contributor to this transition was because of the habits and patterns I let myself fall into. When your mind is clouded by ‘the fog of depression’ your self-care tends to go down the drain. I drank a lot. I didn’t eat well. I had very negative self-talk. I didn’t believe in myself. I didn’t think I was capable of achieving any of my inner dreams to pursue a music career. And on and on and on.

Once you’re wrapped up that deep in self-doubt, it’s hard to come back from. Some days you wallow in it. Some days you try to change something or anything. Most days you’re just kind of…drifting. It’s like a state of passive consciousness. A lucid dream.

I needed a good pull to get out of there. Through a combination of friends, family, professional guidance, self-reflection, and enveloping myself in my music, I have been able to find my way out of the fog. Now that I’m out, I can see more clearly how being depressed affected my everyday thoughts and emotions. How it affected my relationships. And how it affected my view of the world. It’s hard to see the possibilities and opportunities for change when you’re in the fog, so sometimes you need someone else to show them to you.

Getting out is only a part of the process, though. My emotions are still a part of me. The good and the bad. I’ve had to learn how to manage my anxiety, to be wary of my self-talk, and how to consciously guide my thoughts and feelings from dragging me back. I still wake up some days feeling so overwhelmed, it feels like I’m in the same spot I was 3 years ago. This is where my new daily habits come in.

Journaling, meditating, positive affirmations, there are a lot of ways to combat the negativity that can find a home in us. Songwriting has been my #1 go-to for a lot of my emotional development and understanding, but there’s no limit to what can be done to benefit someone positively. The important thing is to be mindful of what you’re allowing in your life.