Body Pain as
a Physical Symptom of Depression

Recognizing the physical symptoms of depression is an important part of understanding how depression affects you.

Body pain from exertion is fairly easy to identify. It is different than a physical symptom of depression.

If you work at a computer or desk all day and come home with a sore neck, it is from the exertion of having your body in the same position all day long.

A physical symptom of depression in the neck could be stiffness at the base of the skull caused by clenching your jaw all day. This, however, is just one example of the difference between exertion and a physical symptom of depression.

The most common physical complaint from people suffering from chronic depression is also chronic pain, the unending pain that seems to follow you everywhere, and puts a wedge between you and having fun.

You're too tired or in too much back, neck, or headache pain to participate in life.

The chronic pain makes you want to stay home, and the feelings of uselessness and being left out precipitate the ongoing depression.

It is a vicious cycle.

In her book "Stop Your Depression," Sharon Shurman has an entire chapter on chronic pain as a physical symptom of depression, where she lists some of the causes of chronic pain and how they can continue to affect your life for months, even years leading to depression...

"It takes a toll, both physically and emotionally. It can lead to depression, anxiety, anger, insomnia, and irritability."

Undiagnosed and untreated, chronic pain can lead to others things to alleviate it such as drug or alcohol use.

Because many drugs and all alcohol is a sedative, you will only increase your depression long term instead of identifying pain as a physical symptom of depression and then taking steps to alleviate all of the symptoms, including the decline in serotonin, a natural anti depressant that your body makes naturally and is inhibited by chronic pain.

Back from Physical Symptom of Depression
to Depression Help Treatment

Dealing with Depression Advice

Avoid negative thinking

C.J. Green's book "Conquering Stress" discusses how we can only have one thought at once, even though for the most part they come in rapid succession.

Since we can only hold on thought at once, we need to practice allowing those thoughts to be positive.

Worry and despair are like sugared candy to depression, it feeds off of it.

Learning how to think positively in unhappy situations will become automatic eventually, but it does take practice.

Eventually, you will be seeing the gift in everything instead of the dark clouds of depression. This is also the basic difference between being a happy person or a cynical one.