Maybe you hear an old song.

Perhaps you watch a sad movie or read a news article. Quite likely, you are scrolling Instagram and catch a glimpse of someone you used to know’s perfect life, and suddenly the fog sets in.

You push it away.

A couple days later, it happens again. But this time the dark clouds are a bit thicker. They shift to your chest. Your heart starts to prickle.

Maybe a thought or an image circles in your mind about the thing that upset you. Undoubtedly it’s subconscious.

You become distracted.

Then it happens again. A rain cloud moves in. Your chest seems to collapse. The ache is like the dull heaviness of your arm after receiving a vaccination, but in this case, the muscle is your heart.

There’s no time to address it. You have a job. Kids. A phone call to take. Emails to read and respond to. Dinner needs to be made. It’s midnight and you need to go to sleep. And anyway, what can you do? There is no Advil for sadness. So you shove it all back down again.

Now everything seems a little blacker. Or rather, bluer. Now you are distracted all the time. Now the negative thoughts and unsettling images are always there.

And then it reaches a fever pitch.

Hot lava seems to spill through your inside. A melancholy hole in your chest gapes open. Maybe it’s a sharp stab. Maybe your eyes well up. You may lose your breathe for a moment. You want to lie down. You want to pull the covers over your head.

Depression.

A mood disorder.

Emotional sensitivity.

Depressive tendencies.

They are a series of physiological, cognitive, habitual thought patterns that are of no use. They are non-adaptive.

But that doesn’t matter. The funk is real.