Are you actually feeling pain? One major feature of some people's experience of depression is phantom pain or feelings of illness. Especially shooting pains in the arms or legs. Also headaches and backaches are common, sometimes genuine but caused solely by the clenched muscles that people with depression often have. I've had chronic clinical depression since I was 16 and was finally treated at a major teaching hospital where I had a very detailed intake at age 30. A great segment of the questions designed to determine depression centered not on how my
mood was, but rather a simple, "how do you feel?" questions. I distinctly remember one, "Do you think there is something seriously wrong with you that a doctor just hasn't found yet?" Almost everyone's who's depressed answers "yes" to that. I felt terrible in every physical sense before my depression was diagnosed. Excruciating headaches, hyperventilation, chest pain, upset stomach, and shooting pains down my arms that -- especially combined with the tightness in my chest -- made me think I was having a heart attack. Once I got on an appropriate dose of antidepressant medication, all my physical symptoms disappeared.
I'm not telling you to self-diagnose, but ask your primary care physician for a referral to a competent psychiatric diagnostician if there's any possibility you could be depressed. They might just tell you, "No, you aren't depressed." Sometimes people (me, for instance) are depressed for so long they don't think they're
depressed -- they just think that it's their personality be it serious, stressed out, sickly, prone to binge drinking, constantly worrying, explosively angry, or other "characteristics" that don't fit with their mental image of "depression." I don't know if you are a man of a woman, but men are statistically more likely to sublimate their depressed mood in a form that doesn't seem to be sadness or "the blues."
My suggestion might be totally off the mark, but it may be worth considering if you can't find another explanation for how you feel. There's no stigma to being depressed today. It's a screw up in the chemicals in your brain. Sometimes hard to regulate, but at least trying is better than suffering in silence ... or worse yet, making other people miserable. If you are already taking an antidepressant, or did before, maybe you just need an adjustment in the medication. There are many different kinds and some work for some people better than others. Get a start by taking this brief quiz:
Depression Symptoms Quiz
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