Mental Health

The Side of Depression That Isn’t Spoken About

By Gemma | Published: 16 February 2026

“My father was my greatest inspiration. He was a lunatic.” Spike Milligan

I’ve created a series of talks around mental health—beginning with Depression, a common struggle in winter, followed by Anxiety, Stress, Identity, Personality, and more.

The aim of this series isn’t to provide quick fixes, but to offer real information—information that can lead to an awakening. A more honest understanding of mental health can help people move forward with clarity rather than shame.

Each part builds on the last, because mental health isn’t a simple conversation. It’s a vast one, shared by millions of people, shaped by different experiences, environments, and nervous systems.

A woman struggling with depression once said to me:
“I saw a program on TV where a psychologist explained that people with depression have a certain brain structure.”

What I heard beneath that statement was this:

She was searching for a reason for her suffering—
and at the same time finding some relief in the idea,
“It’s not my fault. This is just how I am.”

And here’s where things get both true and false.

It is true that people experiencing depression often show differences in brain structure, particularly in areas involved in mood regulation, memory, and decision-making.

It is false that these differences are a simple, fixed cause of depression.

Let me explain.

The Brain Isn’t Broken — It’s Adapting

The brain is a beautiful, intelligent organ. One of its most remarkable qualities is neuroplasticity—the brain’s ability to physically change in response to experience, environment, and behaviour.

When we observe the brains of people experiencing depression, researchers often notice changes in grey matter in certain regions. This is important—but often misunderstood.

Information processing
Memory
Learning
Sensory perception

Now here’s the part that changes the story.

If we look at the environment of someone who is depressed, we often see a narrowing of life:

They withdraw
They reduce stimulation.
Their days become repetitive and limited.

The brain operates on a simple, efficient principle: use it or lose it.

The brain uses a significant amount of our daily energy, and so it is constantly optimising. When certain functions are used less, the brain scales them down to conserve energy.

So changes in grey matter are not simply the cause of depression.

They are often part of a feedback loop between life experience, behaviour, and the brain’s adaptation.

And the hopeful part of this story is this:
what adapts can also re-adapt.

The brain is not broken.
It is responding to the conditions it finds itself in.

Why Depression Appears in the First Place

So, the question becomes:
Why do we experience depression at all?

Depression often emerges during times of change and adaptation. We tend to think of change as something dramatic—but change also accumulates quietly. Just as trauma can stack, so can transitions.

Too many small shifts can overwhelm the system, even if none of them seem significant on their own:

A conversation.
A loss.
A role changing.
A plan falling through.
Someone leaving or entering your life.
A rite of passage.
A slow drift away from who you thought you were.

We live in a world that is constantly changing—ecologically, socially, technologically. The pace of change around us is fast, while our nervous systems are not designed to update at that speed. We are surrounded by stimulation, yet often disconnected from the present moment.

To put it simply, it’s like walking in one direction your whole life—let’s say sunny south—and one day you wake up and the path is gone. There’s no clear road ahead.

If I’m not going south anymore, then which way do I go?
How do I move?
Why am I here?
What now?
Where is a path for me to follow?

The mind becomes overwhelmed.
Confused.
Disoriented.

When humans experience emotional overload like this, the nervous system does something very natural:

It slows down.
It shuts down.

Not because we are weak—but because there is too much to process all at once. The system reduces outward movement so that something inside can reorganise. In this sense, depression can resemble a kind of psychological hibernation—a pause meant to create space for integration.

This pause can begin as protective.
But when the system gets stuck there for too long, it stops being helpful—and this is often where support becomes important.

The Language of Depression Tells the Story

Listen to how people describe depression:

“I feel stuck.”
“I’m trapped.”
“It’s like I’m in a deep hole.”
“I don’t know what to do.”

Exactly.

If the old path no longer exists and no new path is visible yet, the system pauses.

From this perspective, depression is not a personal failure.
It is a nervous system response to uncertainty and change—something we deeply resist, even though change is an unavoidable part of being human.

A Different Way of Seeing Depression

It slows us down when the old way no longer works.
It creates a pause when direction is lost.
It forces us to confront the question: what now?

But what truly matters is not that this pause exists…

It’s what happens next.