The Ugliness of Depression:

The filth, the stench, the need to bathe and yet, the inability to do so

“The complete lack of hygiene is a new scary level of depression.”

“I am so glad we bathe.”

~my best friend, Holly Anderson

The above quote about us bathing, made me chuckle. But my friend is right. Deep, dark, depression can take you to some scary places, mentally for sure.

But it can also take you to places where it is unbelievably difficult to function, to get out of bed. To do day to day tasks, that seem simple to others. When moving impairs you so that you can barely lift yourself, the idea of bathing, motivating oneself to do so takes an exorbitant amount of gumption.

Experiencing this ourselves, and seeing family members struggle with depression and hygiene, has made us experience this challenge in personal, first-hand, up-close-and-smelly ways.

My friend, Holly is right. That level of depression is frightening, when people are so afflicted by mental pain that they are unable to notice, to care if they bathe, to much mind their stench, to be able to do anything to help themselves, to not notice a difference in how they feel once they are freshly showered.

I remember during one of my mother’s extremely low points, in her elderly years, traumatized by my dad’s death and chronic insomnia, she was in a severe depressive episode. She wasn’t able to do so herself, so I was helping her bathe. I soaped her and scrubbed her, massaged her scalp as I rubbed shampoo and conditioner in it. Then I dried her and lotioned her body, tenderly, lovingly, as I imagined she did for many many years ago when I was a baby.

I asked her afterwards, “See? Isn’t that better? Do you feel better now?”

She stared at me, blankly, such a void in her eyes.

She shrugged. Though she did not say a word, her look, her nonverbal response, was clearly one of, “not really, I don’t notice much difference.”

It was heart-wrenching, to think about that level of emotional and mental pain, that she couldn’t even feel that.

I remember my mother trying to explain it to me once, telling me the she had had this conversation at the doctors’ office. They were asking her about her health.

She said: “They ask me if I’m in pain, physically. But I can’t really tell the difference, between that and the depression.”

I wish more people knew this. As we think about “mental health” month, and again, try to do work to raise awareness and advocate for de-stigmatizing mental illnesses and mental health crises and episodes, we’d do well to remember:

Sometimes we simply cannot grasp that level of emotional pain.

I know I can’t. And I know what it is like to have depression, anxiety, chronic insomnia, chemical imbalance, suicide ideation in my own body and my own way. And I have had my own struggles at points bathing, socializing, getting out of bed.

But never to not bathe for many, many days and not to be able to notice the difference after I do, the difference in how I feel when clean.

Now, I think about how my partner and I will comment that we feel yucky if we don’t bathe for part of a day. We feel sticky, oily, dirty, gross. My hair starts to feel grimy. He said his skin feels oily.

Those are normal responses, cognizant, self-aware of body and hygiene.

But, depression messes with the mind’s ability to be work, including self awareness, when you’re barely able to converse, and you’re taking it minute by minute and just want to die, you don’t care about hygiene.

Depression….strangely, it removes you from your body, and yet, paradoxically, imprisons you there, within your own mind and bodily limitations, laden with trauma, weighed down and altered from a lack of dopamine and serotonin and all the other feel-good hormones.

I can understand why some call depression a different level of consciousness.

We do not all experience consciousness, conscious reality, the waking moments, in the same way. Especially if we don’t—no, if we can’t—eat, drink, sleep, bathe, think, breathe like functioning adult beings.

I am so thankful not to be in that dark hole anymore.

If you are, there is no judgment. Only love and support, all the hope in the world that relief from your mental health episode may one day come, and soon.

<3