Depression Isn't Laziness: What's Really Happening in Your Body and Mind

The Story We Tell Ourselves About Depression

If you're living with depression, chances are you've heard some version of the same advice over and over: just get up. Go for a walk. Think positive. Try harder. Push through it. And every time someone says these things, there's a quiet voice inside you that wonders: maybe they're right. Maybe I'm just lazy. Maybe there's something fundamentally wrong with me.

I want to say something clearly, because I think you need to hear it: depression is not laziness. It never has been. What you're experiencing isn't a failure of willpower or a character flaw. It's your body doing exactly what it was designed to do when it's overwhelmed, depleted, or carrying too much for too long.

As an integrative psychotherapist working with depression in Kyneton and Melbourne, I see this pattern constantly. People arrive at my door exhausted, ashamed, and convinced that they should be able to fix themselves through sheer effort. And they've been trying. God, have they been trying. The effort it takes just to get through a single day with depression is more than most people will ever understand.

So let's talk about what's actually happening when depression takes hold, because understanding it can be the first step toward something shifting.

What Your Nervous System Is Actually Doing

Your nervous system has three main states. There's the state where you feel engaged, connected, and relatively calm -- what we call ventral vagal, or your "social engagement" mode. There's the state where you're revved up, anxious, on high alert -- that's your sympathetic fight-or-flight response. And then there's a third state that doesn't get talked about nearly enough.

When your system has been overwhelmed for too long -- when the stress, the grief, the unprocessed pain, or the emotional isolation has exceeded what your body can manage -- your nervous system doesn't just keep fighting. It shuts down. This is the dorsal vagal response, and it's one of the oldest survival mechanisms we have.

This is why "just try harder" doesn't work. You can't willpower your way out of a neurobiological shutdown any more than you can willpower your way out of a fever. The instruction to "think positive" lands on a nervous system that has literally reduced its capacity to feel positive emotions. It's not that you won't. It's that, right now, your system can't.

Why Willpower Isn't the Answer

Our culture has a deep attachment to the idea that we can think and effort our way through anything. And when that doesn't work for depression, the shame compounds. You're not just depressed now -- you're depressed and you feel like a failure for not being able to fix it.

But here's what the research and my clinical experience both show: depression that lives in the body cannot be resolved by the mind alone. Purely cognitive approaches -- telling yourself different stories, challenging negative thoughts -- can be helpful as part of a broader approach, but on their own they often fall short. Because depression isn't primarily a thinking problem. It's a nervous system problem. A body problem. A relational problem.

Many of the people I work with have spent years in therapy that focused exclusively on thoughts and behaviours. They can articulate exactly why they're depressed. They understand their patterns intellectually. And yet the heaviness remains, because no one has ever helped them work with what's happening below the neck -- in the body, in the nervous system, in the felt sense of being alive.

The Roots Run Deeper Than You Think

Depression rarely arrives out of nowhere, though it can feel that way. When we look beneath the surface, we usually find some combination of accumulated stress that was never discharged, grief that was never fully felt, relational wounds from childhood that taught your system it wasn't safe to need or to feel, or a prolonged disconnection from your own emotional life.

For many people, depression is the long-term result of having learned, very early on, that their feelings weren't welcome. If you grew up in an environment where sadness was met with impatience, where anger was punished, where your emotional needs were seen as a burden, your nervous system learned to suppress. And suppression, over years and decades, eventually becomes shutdown.

This is where attachment work becomes so important. The patterns we learned in our earliest relationships -- about whether it's safe to feel, to need, to reach out -- are wired into our nervous systems. They're not just memories. They're lived, embodied patterns that shape how we relate to ourselves and others every single day.

How Integrative Therapy Addresses Depression Holistically

When someone comes to me for depression counselling, I don't start by asking them to think differently. I start by helping them notice what's happening in their body. What does the heaviness actually feel like? Where do they carry it? What happens in their chest, their gut, their limbs when the numbness descends?

This might sound strange if you're used to talk therapy. But the body holds information that the mind has often hidden away. When we bring gentle, curious awareness to physical sensations, we begin to access the layers beneath the depression -- the grief, the anger, the longing, the exhaustion that the shutdown has been covering.

My integrative approach to depression counselling in Kyneton and Melbourne draws on several interconnected threads.

Nervous system regulation is often where we begin. Before we can process anything deeper, your system needs to learn that it's safe to come out of shutdown. This happens gradually, through co-regulation in the therapeutic relationship, through breathwork, through gentle somatic practices that help your body remember what it feels like to be present and alive. We're not forcing anything. We're inviting your system to thaw at its own pace.

Somatic awareness allows us to work with the body directly. Depression often involves a profound disconnection from physical sensation -- everything feels muted or numb. As we gently rebuild your relationship with your body, you begin to notice small shifts: a softening in your shoulders, a warmth in your chest, a moment where something actually feels like something. These micro-moments of feeling are the seeds of recovery.

Attachment work helps us understand the relational roots of your depression. If your early experiences taught you that connection was unreliable or that your needs were too much, depression often carries an unspoken belief: I am alone with this, and no one can help. The therapeutic relationship itself becomes a place to challenge that belief -- not through words, but through the lived experience of being truly seen, held, and understood by another person.

Reconnection is ultimately what we're working toward. Reconnection with your body, your emotions, your relationships, your sense of meaning and purpose. Depression narrows your world down to a pinpoint. Healing gradually widens it again -- not all at once, but in small, sustainable ways. A moment of genuine laughter. A flicker of curiosity. An evening where you actually want to cook dinner. These moments accumulate, and slowly, the colour returns.

What Healing Actually Looks Like

I want to be honest with you about this, because I think honesty matters more than reassurance. Healing from depression is not linear. There will be days when you feel like you've taken three steps backward. There will be weeks where the heaviness returns and you wonder if any of this is working.

But underneath those fluctuations, something is shifting. Your nervous system is learning new patterns. Your body is remembering how to feel. Your capacity for connection is growing, even when it doesn't feel like it. The change often happens in ways that are subtle at first -- you sleep a little better, you have a little more patience with yourself, you notice a bird singing and actually hear it.

Recovery from depression isn't about becoming relentlessly positive or never feeling sad again. It's about regaining access to the full range of your emotional life. It's about your nervous system learning that it's safe to come out of shutdown, that the world is not as dangerous or as empty as depression makes it seem.

You Don't Have to Understand It to Begin

One thing I want you to know: you don't need to arrive at therapy with an explanation for your depression. You don't need to have a traumatic event to point to, or a reason that makes logical sense. Sometimes depression is the accumulation of a thousand small things that never got processed. Sometimes it's the body's response to a life that has slowly drifted away from what you actually need.

All you need to bring is yourself, as you are, right now. Even if that self feels flat and empty and barely there. Especially then.

If you're in Kyneton, Melbourne, or anywhere in Victoria, I offer depression counselling both in person and online. The first step is a free 15-minute discovery call where we can talk about what you're experiencing and whether working together might help. There's no commitment, no pressure -- just a conversation between two people.

Depression has been telling you a story about who you are. It's been telling you that you're lazy, broken, beyond help. That story isn't true. What's true is that your nervous system is doing its best to protect you, and with the right support, it can learn a different way.

You don't have to carry this alone.

If you or someone you know is in crisis, please contact Lifeline on 13 11 14 or Beyond Blue on 1300 22 4636. These services are free and available 24/7.