Depression takes many forms and comes at different times.  One thing that I took a while to learn was that depression also has many reasons.  I thought that ‘real depression’ would only apply to people that had lost everything, or had everything go wrong, or had no prospects.  It took me a while to realise that everything could seem fine but I could still feel depressed – and that this was normal.  Sometimes even the fact that you theoretically have so much going for you can exacerbate the feeling of depression, making you feel even more out of touch.

My first step to dealing with these bouts of depression was to realise that I’m not unusual or abnormal for feeling depressed when other people aren’t.  It’s perfectly acceptable to feel differently from other people, and to feel sad, or scared, or uneasy, at something that other people seem to take as normal.  Accepting my feelings as normal has been a good way for me to move on from them.