Why your sun never seems to shine

We all have days when everything seems like far to much trouble or when nothing seems to go our way, Days when we feel that getting out of bed was just a bad idea. We have times when we are not sure about ourselves and just nothing is going right.... This is Normal stuff, this is day to day normality and we do manage to get out of bed, and we do manage to take a shower, pick ourselves up, shake ourselves down and get on with life.

Now imagine you cannot....getting out of bed is virtually impossible, and you can't see any light at the end of the tunnel. You hate yourself and everything about yourself. Work is impossible as you cannot concentrate. You have no energy for your family. You seem to cry constantly and when you are not crying you are angry. The overwhelming sense of sadness is unbearable, nothing gives you pleasure in the way it used to, you have no desire for sex and you are either eating and eating and eating, or have no appetite. You feel like you are in a very deep black hole with no way to get out.
The worst thing is when we are going through this we often don't see it.  It is visible to your friends; visible to your family, and visible to your colleagues.... but you cannot even see the forest for the trees.
This is a picture of Clinical depression. People suffering with clinical depression need to seek help, and I will try to explain why:
The brain is a little like Palma de Mallorca airport, … it is a central hub for information with messages coming in and going out thousands of times a minute . In fact it controls all the basic functions of the body; it controls movement, emotions, thoughts and actions, and these are controlled by a rather complex mix of chemical and electrical processes.
The most researched area of the brain when it comes to depression is called the Limbic system.  This is the part the brain that actually regulates activities such as emotions, physical and sexual drives, and the stress response.  So another analogy....This Limbic  system is a little like the air traffic control centre at the airport... it includes lots of very important parts of the brain.  These parts work both independently and dependently of each other.  Another important part of this story is the hypothalamus (the hypothalamus resides within the limbic system, so i guess this is the chief air traffic controller ), The hypothalamus does things like control heart beat, breathing, body temperature, sleep, appetite, sexual drive and stress reaction. It also controls the function of the pituitary gland and this regulates hormones!!
In fact the activities of the Limbic system are so important and so very complicated, that if there is any disturbances, it affects how the hormones and 'neurotransmitters' function; and if they are not working in complete balance we have a situation that affects our mood and behaviour.
Neurotransmitters are really, really important.   Neurotransmitters are the chemicals through which information is sent from one nerve to another.   These neurotransmitters (serotonin, nor-epinephrine, and dopamine) like order and they leap around from neuron to neuron (nerves) in a very orderly manner.  Hormones that come from the pituitary like to keep this order, but sadly they often fail (especially in women pre-menstrually, post pregnancy and during menopause, which is why depression can be so pronounced in women during these times) But it is not all about women, men also can experience fluctuations in Hormone levels.
The glands that secrete hormones actually have a sophisticated ability to release and stop releasing hormones.  These glands function a little bit like the thermostat on your central heating... If the thermostat gets broken either you have too many circulating hormones or not enough! This can cause depression!
Now there is just one more ingredient to add to this list: It goes by the name of cortisol. This hormone is secreted by the adrenal glands that sit on top of each kidney. The adrenal's are controlled by the pituitary (one of the air traffic controllers at Mallorca central air traffic control ) and cortisol is the hormone that controls our stress response; i.e. fight or flight.   If the levels of cortisol are not kept in check then we become depressed.
Enough of the Science.  The reason for explaining all of this goes back to the beginning of the article when I said that depressed people can sometimes not see the forest for the trees. There is still an awful lot of shame attached to depression and people still think they should 'pull themselves together' or 'get a grip.'    Hopefully I have explained it in a way that its possible to see that sometimes it is impossible to do that...clinical depression is ALL about imbalance in the brain and nothing to do with weakness at all.  Counselling and psychotherapy go a long way to helping people work out their thought processes but if there hormones and out of whack its impossible to think straight.
In part two I will explain how we can get help either for us or for a friend or relative. So watch this space.