Miguel RodriguesThese days, it feels like everyone has depression.
Or at least, everyone says they do.
Any difficult phase, any moment of sadness, any period of exhaustion or lack of motivation — it all gets grouped under the same word.
“I’m depressed.”
And the more I hear it, the more it doesn’t sit right with me.
Not because I think people are making it up.
But because I think we’re mixing different things.
Being tired is not the same as being depressed.
Being sad is not the same as having depression.
Going through a hard time is not the same as having a clinical condition.
And that distinction matters.
In a clinical sense, depression isn’t just an emotional state.
It’s a medical condition.
It involves:
- a specific set of symptoms
- over a minimum period of time
- with real impact on daily functioning
It’s not just “I don’t feel good.”
It’s something deeper, more persistent, more debilitating.
But in real life, what I often see is something else.
People who are:
- overwhelmed with work
- dealing with high levels of stress
- anxious
- going through loss or major life changes
And very often, people who lack direction.
No clear goal.
Nothing to build toward.
No strong reason to get up in the morning.
Lack of purpose weighs more than people think.
When you don’t have direction:
- effort starts to feel meaningless
- time feels slow and heavy
- everything loses its sense of meaning
And that kind of emptiness is easily mistaken for depression.
There’s an interesting example of this with people who become very rich very quickly.
On the surface, it looks like they’ve solved all their problems.
But what often happens is the opposite.
No need to work.
No clear goals.
Nothing left to chase.
They lose structure.
They lose direction.
And many of them end up in what gets described as a “depressive” state.
But in many cases, what disappeared wasn’t their ability to feel — it was their sense of purpose.
There’s a growing tendency to use the word “depression” as a catch-all for any kind of suffering.
And in my opinion, that creates two problems.
The first is that it removes clarity.
If everything is depression, then nothing really is.
We lose the ability to distinguish between:
- a temporary state
- and a serious clinical condition
And that makes it harder to recognize when someone truly needs deeper help.
The second problem is more personal.
When we label what we feel incorrectly, we also tend to look for the wrong solutions.
If you believe you’re depressed, you might assume:
- there’s not much you can do
- it’s outside of your control
- it will only pass with time or medication
But what if what you’re actually dealing with is:
- exhaustion
- lack of direction
- absence of purpose
- a difficult period that needs to be processed
In that case, the approach can be completely different.
None of this invalidates the suffering.
Feeling lost, directionless, or unmotivated can be extremely heavy.
But naming things correctly matters.
Because that’s what determines what you do next.
Of course, real cases of clinical depression do exist.
And in those cases, we’re not talking about:
- “a phase”
- or “a bad moment”
We’re talking about a condition that can involve:
- changes in how the brain functions
- persistent negative thought patterns
- loss of energy and interest
- real difficulty functioning in daily life
And in those cases, professional help isn’t optional — it’s essential.
My point is not to deny the existence of depression.
If anything, it’s the opposite.
It’s to say that depression is too serious to be used casually.
Not everything is depression.
But that doesn’t mean what you’re feeling isn’t important.
It just means that maybe the first step is to understand exactly what it is.