Depression and Disconnection

With depression comes many different symptoms and side effects, including physical, 
mental, and emotional effects. One thing you may experience with your depression is 
disconnection. This is when you feel detached from other people and other things in 
your life, as if you are on one level, and everybody else is on another. Here is more 
information about disconnection or detachment and how to deal with it.

Where Disconnection and Detachment Comes From

If you have been feeling detached from other people as a result of your depression, you 
might be aware that this happens, but not entirely sure why. Understanding why this 
happens helps a lot with coping with it and learning how to navigate it. Detachment 
often occurs due to your distorted thinking, which is also the result of the depression. 
People with depression have distorted thoughts and feelings, brought on by this mental 
illness, similar to someone with sever anxiety.

Over time, you don’t feel like yourself. You have low self esteem and low sense of self-
worth, which can cerate a snowball effect of feeling worthless. This will start to cause 
you to become disconnected from other people, leading to more isolation, which makes 
you feel worse. 

What You Can do About it

Just because you have been experiencing this detachment doesn’t mean all hope is 
lost. Here are a few strategies to help you feel more connected to other people:
Start a Grounding Practice – Grounding is a practice where you put your feet on the 
earth or another natural surface. It is amazingly therapeutic and is used for people with 
stress, anxiety, and depression. Often times when you go through depression, your 
detachment isn’t just from people, but things and the world around you. Grounding 
yourself can bring you back to reality and feel more connected to the earth. It must be 
with the actual earth’s surface, to stand on dirt, sand, or grass.

Find a Physically-Stimulating Activity – Another way you can relieve this 
disconnection is to find a more physically-stimulating activity. The benefits are very 
similar to grounding yourself, where you are focusing on your body and how it moves, 
which can be a nice distraction from your mind and keeps your thoughts from taking 
over. IT can be exercise, which also releases endorphins, or any other physical activity 
or game that you enjoy.

If you have felt disconnected from friends or loved ones, find something you can do 
together.


