Depression and Anxiety: A Life Unlived

Depression and anxiety can become you. Over 70% of people with depression also suffer from anxiety and vice versa. Both will stop you in your tracks and gradually (sometimes immediately) destroy your ability to operate normally.

They turn your decision making into emotional reaction. This lack of control puts you into an insecure state where you feel vulnerable and afraid. You are either Depressed because you are anxious or anxious because you are depressed. They feed on one another.

Depression seems to be a shutdown. Anxiety is a kind of looking to the future, seeing dangerous things that might happen in the next hour, day or weeks. Depression is all that with the addition of “I really don’t think I’m going to be able to cope with this, maybe I’ll just give up.” It’s shutdown marked by mental, cognitive or behavioral slowing.

At the core is some shared mechanism that is not functioning well. Some research points to over-reactivity of the stress response system, which sends into overdrive emotional centers of the brain, including the “fear center” in the amygdala. Negative stimuli make a disproportionate impact and hijack response systems.

Who is at risk for combined anxiety and depression? There’s definitely a family component. Looking at what disorders are in the family history of a person who presents with either primary anxiety or depression provides a clue to whether he or she will end up with both.

Age plays a role, too. A person who develops an anxiety disorder for the first time after age 40 is likely also to have depression. Someone who develops panic attacks for the first time at age 50 often has a history of depression or is experiencing depression at the same time.”

Usually, anxiety precedes depression, typically by several years. Currently, the average age of onset of any anxiety disorder is late childhood/early adolescence.

The shared cornerstone of anxiety and depression is the continuous process of overestimating the risk in a situation and underestimating personal resources for coping. Those vulnerable see lots of risk in everyday things such as applying for a job, asking for a favor, or asking for a date.

This show is about climbing out of both and taking control of your life, getting back to living, and connecting with the world, rather than coping. Tune in and learn!