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Twenty seven years ago I was sitting in a friend's kitchen, kids playing in the garden, trying to explain something I had never said out loud before.
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There was a black cloud, I told her. One that followed me quietly and could, without warning, engulf me completely. Hours lost. Sometimes days. A heavy nothingness with no desire to do, to have, or to be anything at all.
She looked at me blankly. No recognition at all.
She was the first real connection I'd felt in years after moving to Scotland. And she had no idea what I was talking about.
The friendship didn't last much longer after that. And the lesson my nervous system took from that moment was clear: sharing what's really happening inside is not safe. It drives people away. Keep it in.
The thing is, from the outside I looked fine. I was the happy one. The chatty one. The funny, positive, motivational one. The one who held it together.
How could I possibly have been depressed?
But here's what I've come to understand. To depress something means to press it down. To lower it. To reduce its activity, its level, its presence.
That's what I had been doing with my feelings for years. Depressing them. Pressing them down because there was nowhere safe to put them. Because being seen had taught me it wasn't worth the risk. Because being the happy one was the version of me that kept people close.
It was labelled postnatal depression at the time. I know now it was something longer and deeper than that. Years of not feeling seen. Years of learning that being fully myself carried a cost.
The healing took a long time. Coaches, therapists, my own searching. Lightbulb moments and muddy patches and steep climbs. And in more recent years, understanding my ADHD, which made so much else make sense.
What I know now is that nothing really stuck until I learned to see myself clearly, and to stay there without flinching.
If you have spent years being the one who holds it together for everyone else, who keeps the feelings pressed down because there is nowhere safe to put them, who shows up as the capable version while something quieter goes unheard inside, this is for you.
You don't have to keep depressing it.
If this resonated and you are struggling right now, please don't sit with it alone. Reach out to someone you trust, or contact a mental health professional in your area. You can also message me directly at judith@thenervoussystemmentor.com and I will do my best to point you in the right direction.
If you're ready to feel seen, here's where we start.