Why I’m Writing This
I wasn’t sure what I was going to talk about for this article in my depression series, and I decided to discuss the difference between young depression and middle-age depression. I thought about making the title “The Difference Between Young Depression and Old Depression,” but I don’t know what old depression is like yet because I’m not officially old. I still qualify as middle age. So I don’t want to speak about depression as an old man. I’m not quite there yet. I’ll be there soon, but not quite there yet.
There are things about life and biology that make depression different at those different life stages. Each human being is unique. If you struggle with depression, your struggle is unique. You have to be careful about applying too much of my personal journey to your situation or to the situation of a person you love or care about. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t talk about it. Some of what I’ve been through and learned and discovered might help you or another person. It might. That’s why we’re going to talk about it.
My struggle with depression has gotten significantly easier as I’ve gotten older. That’s a message I want to share with young people who might be struggling with depression right now. It can get easier. That doesn’t mean it gets easier for everybody, but it did get easier for me.
My Depression as a Young Person
What are the differences between the depression I experienced as a young person—teens, late teens, and early adulthood—versus the depression I experience now? There might have been a transitional phase in my 30s, but the clearest contrast is between young adulthood and middle age.
As a young person, my depression was untreated. I take a small dose of antidepressant now, but then I had no medication or other forms of treatment. Those aren’t the same things. Medication is a form of treatment, but there are other things I do now to treat my depression like diet, exercise, and trying to get enough sleep. My depression was completely untreated as a young person.
I was very unaware that I even had depression or what depression was. That seems crazy to me now, but that’s the reality. All I knew was that I felt sad. I felt lonely. I hurt. I was in emotional pain. And I just thought that was normal. I thought that was a normal part of being a teenager, a normal part of being a young person.
When I got into my early 20s, I started to have some recognition just from being out in the world that there was a thing called depression and that I probably had it. But it took a long time for me to fully realize that. I didn’t even fully begin to realize it until I got married and my wife started to help me identify some of those things.
How Severe It Was
Because my depression was untreated and I was unaware that I had it, it was severe. Really severe. Excruciating emotional pain. Terrible loneliness. Thoughts of suicide. Serious thoughts of suicide. How often? All the time. If not daily, then multiple times per week. It was constant, and it was horrible suffering. It was a terrible way to live, and I did it for years. Ten years. I did a decade like that.
It was really bad. I don’t think I would have survived another decade like that. Almost undoubtedly I would not have survived. I’ve told my wife and other people that Mary saved my life for a lot of different reasons. She gave me a purpose and a family, someone to love and to fill my life with color and happiness and meaning. But she also helped me become more aware that I struggle with depression and that I needed to get treatment.
She undoubtedly saved my life. I’m fairly confident that if I had not met my wife and if I had remained alone, I would have taken my life at some point in my early to mid-20s. I was on that trend line.
My Depression Now as a Middle-Aged Man
Now, fast forward to middle age. My depression is much less severe. It’s treated. I take a small dose of medication. I treat my depression through diet and exercise and getting better sleep and work-life balance and managing stress. I’m very self-aware about it. I know when I’m depressed. I know when I start to engage in self-destructive behaviors or thoughts. I’m aware when I’m being negative about myself or my place in the world. I know when I’m doing that and I can say, “Okay, you need to stop that.” I can see when I’m becoming detached from people that I love and care about. I can recognize those patterns and behaviors now. I know where they lead and what they mean.
I’m much more self-aware. I can usually identify when I’m being depressed and what those emotions are. I can say, “Hey, this is not normal. This is depression, and I need to be careful about how I make decisions in this state. I need to recognize these emotions for what they are and try to deal with them in a healthy way.” Very rarely am I in a deep depression now without recognizing it. I know even when I’m in a mild depression. That may not seem significant, but if you’ve ever had depression, you realize that is a huge deal.
Just being aware of when you’re in that state of mind can prevent a lot of problems. As a depressed person, you can make bad decisions and self-harm and engage in other harmful behaviors that make your depression worse. Then you engage in more harmful behaviors, and it becomes a vicious cycle. The ability to just identify that you are depressed and then use that awareness to stop the harmful behaviors is actually really important. It stops the whole downward spiral.
The Synergy Between Youth and Depression
I haven’t talked yet about the synergy between being a young man and having depression. I’m going to call it synergy because I don’t have a better word. Usually we think of synergy as a positive thing, but in this case it’s a bad thing. There was synergy between my depression and the normal things you go through as a teenager and young adult. Things like hormonal changes. I was an awkward teen. I was scrawny and a late bloomer. I had really bad acne and thick eyeglasses. Guys my age bullied me. Girls my age either ignored me or made fun of me and were cruel. I was dealing with hormonal changes and being scrawny and lanky and not fleshed out in my frame. There was physical awkwardness plus the hormonal changes.
Most teens struggle with figuring out who they are. What’s their identity? What are their principles? What do they stand for? What do they want out of life? I certainly was dealing with that as a young adult, just gaining confidence and learning to navigate the world.
I grew up pretty young. I was out on my own at 17, so I learned some lessons the hard way pretty quick. But even in my early 20s, I was still trying to figure some stuff out, especially early experiences with young women my age. Even in my early 20s, I didn’t have a super healthy view of young women. I wasn’t comfortable around young women my age. I was still really struggling to learn how to navigate attraction and sexuality and how to handle myself around young women.
All that fed into my depression, and my depression made the social awkwardness worse. The depression made normal heartbreak—the normal heartbreak you go through as a young adult—worse. Those things made my depression worse. There was a synergy there that was not helpful.
Forces Pushing Against Depression in Middle Age
As a middle-aged man, I’ve got some forces pushing the other way. Some natural things about being middle-aged push against the depression, or the tendency to be depressed.
I’m confident as a professional. I believe I’m good at my job. I’m pretty successful as a professional. I’m a competent adult. I tend not to crisis manage. Even when life has thrown me some punches, especially the last year, I take my punches standing up. My life is not a complete disaster. I’m a hot mess sometimes, but I don’t know that I’m more of a hot mess than the other adults in my social circle.
I have confidence. I’m definitely much more confident than I was as a young man. I’m less anxious about the future because I know I can handle what’s coming my way most of the time. I’m a religious person and I’m a Christian. I understand my religious faith better. I’ve had it tempered, so I’m a little less idealistic and a little more pragmatic, even when it comes to my religious faith. I’m more pragmatic about life in general and also about my faith.
I have a better understanding of who God is and my relationship with God and how Bible principles shape my life in ways I didn’t necessarily fully understand as a young man. Some of it’s just competence, confidence, and life experience. All of those things push against the depression.
Now, there are things you deal with in middle age that you don’t deal with as a young man. I do deal with some health problems. I’m losing my hair. I got forehead wrinkles. I don’t recover like when I fall down the side of a mountain with a bunch of survey gear. I don’t bounce back up like I used to. I move a little slower. Some health challenges.
When you get middle-aged, you deal with more death. My dad’s dead. I’ve lost an uncle. I’ve lost great-grandparents. I’ll lose grandparents soon. I’ve lost friends to death. Tragically, I’ve lost some friends even my own age. You just deal with more loss. You deal with illness, your own and people you love. Death. You deal with disappointment, people who flame out or ruin their lives. You have to deal with that and it’s hard because they’re people you care about, you love. You deal with that disappointment and frustration.
There are problems you have in middle age that you don’t necessarily have as a young person, but I think those other forces—competence, confidence, life experience—are stronger than the problems. As a general rule, for me at least as a middle-aged person, it’s been easier to not be depressed. That’s a positive thing.
The Arc of My Depression Journey
For me, my depression has been an arc, a journey. It started very young, pre-teen. It got way worse. It was definitely worse in my late teens. Very early 20s was the worst part for me. And then it’s been on a gradual decline.
Since my late 20s, it’s been on a gradual decline for a lot of reasons—medication and lifestyle choices and treatment and self-awareness. I still struggle with it. I’m not going to say it’s not a struggle. It is. I think for me it’ll always be a struggle until God decides to fix the wires in my brain, which I believe he will do at a future time. But between now and then, I’m going to struggle with it every day.
Some days are worse than other days, but I have mostly good days now. I do have mostly good days. I have very few bad days. I’m rarely suicidal. Rarely. And never seriously suicidal. I never hold the knife or the gun like I used to when I was in my late teens. I function well, all things considered. I’m pretty functional. I have people who depend on me and I take care of them. I run a small business and I have an extended Mexican family that I love very much and I’m trying to take care of.
A Message of Hope for Young People
So if you’re a young person struggling with depression and you read this or listen to it, know that for me it got way better. Not a little bit better. Significantly better. A decrease in the suffering. You just get better at managing this if you make the right decisions, if you educate yourself and do your research. If you practice self-awareness and make good decisions, you can get better at it. You get better at recognizing depression and treating it and managing your treatment and managing the consequences of depression. It gets easier.
Part of why I wanted to talk about this is that’s a message of hope. If you’re a young person struggling with really severe depression like I did, you don’t have to think that it’s always going to be this bad or that it’s going to get worse. There’s a very real possibility that it’ll actually get better as you get older. You’ll learn more about yourself. You’ll learn more about life. You will get better at treating your particular depression. And things will get better. So there’s hope.
Many things in life get easier as you get older and gain life experience. Managing depression is one of those things.