What If Depression Isn’t A Disease, But A Messenger?

Reframing Symptoms, Reclaiming Meaning

If you’ve ever struggled with depression, you can probably relate to that moment when you realize that something in you has gone quiet. Not peaceful, just… muted.

Joy feels far away. Motivation falters. Everything takes effort, from replying to texts to choosing what to have for dinner. You’re showing up, but not quite present.

Maybe you schedule an appointment with your doctor. In the span of 15 minutes, you have a diagnosis and prescription. Which on one hand can be validating, and on the other hand can feel flattening. As if a diagnosis neatly explains what’s actually a tangled, complex inner world.

And it can you leave you to wonder, is this really all there is to say about my pain?

What if it’s not?

The Old Story: Depression as a Disease

For decades, we’ve been told a single story about depression: that it’s a medical condition, like diabetes or high blood pressure. The narrative goes something like this:

You’re depressed because your brain is “chemically imbalanced.” The solution? Adjust the chemicals with medication, and the symptoms will go away.

It’s a comforting idea in some ways. It implies that your pain isn’t your fault. That there’s a simple fix. That there’s a tidy explanation and a clear path forward.

But the trouble is: this story is incomplete. And in many cases, it’s simply not true.

Depression is not a Prozac deficiency.

The Serotonin Myth

The most widely accepted disease‑model of depression suggests that it’s caused by low serotonin. This theory emerged from research showing that serotonin‑based medications can ease depressive symptoms. The assumption, then, is that if increasing serotonin helps, depression must stem from not having enough of it to begin with.

It seems like a logical deduction. But it’s also an example of confusing correlation with causation.

Just because alcohol eases someone’s social anxiety, it doesn’t mean their anxiety was caused by an alcohol deficiency. And just because SSRIs ease depressive symptoms, it doesn’t mean their depression was caused by a Prozac deficiency.

That doesn’t mean antidepressants are bad. They can absolutely be helpful, sometimes even life-saving. But they’re not the whole story. And ignoring the rest of the story can have long lasting impacts.

“The unfortunate truth is that relegating depression (or anxiety, or substance abuse) to the disease-model fosters surface-level care. Depression? Here’s your Prozac. Anxiety? Valium. Substance abuse? Abstinence.

And while these band-aid measures may help to alleviate symptoms, they do nothing to address the underlying cause. They mitigate the smoke rather than treating the fire.”

~ Dr. Krystina Patton, ND, EP

And that brings us to the heart of the reframe:

Depression Not As A Disease, But As A Messenger.

If we step back from the disease model of depression, a different story starts to unfold.

In many cases, depression emerges not because of a neurotransmitter imbalance, but because of things that are being depressed. Needs that weren’t met. Hurts that couldn’t be spoken. Emotions that had nowhere to go. In the face of such experiences, the system has to adapt, to find a way to cope. And sometimes that coping looks like withdrawal, numbing, or shutting down.

Through this lens, depression is not a disorder, but a signal — like the check engine light on your dashboard. It tells us that something inside requires attention. That something important has been running on empty for too long.

Rather than looking for “what’s wrong,” a more useful question is often “what’s being overridden?”

Common Roots of Depression

While every person’s experience of depression is unique, certain patterns tend to emerge in therapy. These aren’t one-size-fits-all causes, but recurring themes that often wear down our inner resources over time.

Chronic stress and nervous system exhaustion

Many people who struggle with depression have been living in survival mode for a long time. Juggling family, work, caregiving, and expectations — often without enough rest, support, or space to simply be.

From a nervous system perspective, this can lead to hypoarousal; a state of functional shutdown. When the system can’t keep up with the demands, it pulls the emergency brake. Energy drops. Emotions flatten. Nothing feels urgent, but nothing feels alive either.

This isn’t weakness. It’s physiology. It’s your body trying to protect you from overwhelm the only way it knows how.

Unmet emotional needs

We all need to feel safe, connected, and seen. But when you’ve spent years self-abandoning, people-pleasing, or walking on eggshells, those needs often go underground. Over time, the disconnection from yourself — your wants, limits, instincts — starts to register as a kind of emotional absence. Depression can be the echo of that absence.

Unprocessed grief or trauma

Whether it’s a recent loss or a childhood wound that never had room to heal, unresolved grief has a way of sinking beneath the surface. You may not feel “actively” sad. But the heaviness remains. Depression can emerge not as the wound itself, but as the body’s long-held response to carrying it.

Perfectionism and pressure

Many women who struggle with depression describe an inner critic that never rests. The voice that says you should be doing more, handling it better, staying strong. When joy becomes conditional and rest feels like failure, the emotional cost builds silently. Until one day, you go to reach for energy or motivation, and there’s just nothing left.

When seen this way, depression isn’t something that’s gone wrong.

It’s something that’s gone unspoken, unmet, unhealed.

And that brings us to one of the most overlooked aspects of this experience.

Depression Or Suppression?

Often, what presents as depression is actually something else being suppressed. Parts of ourselves that we’ve had to push down in order to keep going. Feelings we were never taught how to feel. Things we couldn’t voice, needs we weren’t allowed to have.

It’s not uncommon that underneath depression we find:

• • • Anger that never had a safe place to land
    • Grief that wasn’t honoured
    • Authentic needs that were consistently minimized
    • Desires that were shamed or dismissed
    • Truths you couldn’t voice
    • Fatigue that had to be overridden

Sometimes, this suppression was necessary. It helped you survive, stay connected, keep the peace. But over time, the cost of holding everything in can surface as depression — a signal that your internal system can’t keep absorbing what’s been pushed down.

Depression often shows up to say: it’s time to come back for what got left behind.

The Turning Point

When we understand depression in this way, we can stop asking, “How do I get rid of this?” and start asking:

• • • What am I carrying?
    • What parts of me have gone quiet?
    • What needs expression, space, or support?
    • What would it mean to reconnect with what’s been silenced?

These questions don’t have quick answers. But they can guide us toward something more meaningful than symptom relief: a return to wholeness.

The Path Forward: From Suppression to Expression

When we stop treating depression like a personal failure and start listening to it as a form of communication, something shifts.

It becomes less about eliminating symptoms, and more about understanding what those symptoms are pointing toward.

That’s what therapy can offer; a space to feel what couldn’t be felt. To name what’s been held in silence. To trace the shape of what’s been missing.

In a world that often pushes us to override our inner signals — to keep going, stay busy, be fine — therapy is where you get to pause. To tune in. To reclaim the parts of yourself that had to be pressed down in order to survive.

There’s no one path through depression.

But there is a way forward.

What you’re feeling may be painful, but it also holds information. It may be the beginning of a deeper return to yourself.

Reach out. Let’s listen to what your symptoms are trying to say. Let’s find what’s been waiting to come to the surface. Let’s take the next step, together.