Depression Rewires Your Brain, But You Can Rewire It Back! (Part 1)
By Jordan Ryan, LPC
Depression isn’t just sadness. Depression is a lingering experience that settles in like heavy fog, making everything feel distant, slow, and out of reach. It’s waking up exhausted no matter how much you sleep. It’s feeling like you should care about things but somehow… don’t. It’s carrying a weight that no one else can see.
If you’re like most of the clients I’ve worked with, you’ve probably collected a greatest-hits album of unhelpful advice. Just think positively. Be grateful. Try harder. Maybe people have meant well, but those words can feel less like support and more like being handed an umbrella in a hurricane.
Maybe you’ve been fighting it for years. Maybe you’ve tried therapy, medication, lifestyle changes, only to find yourself back in the same place. If that’s you, I want to offer a different perspective:
Ironically, the harder you fight against depression, the harder it will fight back. Real change begins with a gentler approach in which you slowly befriend depression to learn how it’s been trying to protect you, even when it’s not necessary.
Why Depression Feels Automatic: The Opossum Effect
In nature, some animals have a built-in survival trick. They play dead when they sense danger. The Virginia opossum is a perfect example. When faced with a threat it can’t outrun or fight off, its body automatically shuts down. It goes completely still, its breathing slows, and it appears lifeless. This isn’t a conscious decision. The opossum isn’t thinking, “Okay, time to act dead!” It’s an automatic response wired for survival. (Click for proof nature’s original “Nope, I’m out!” response).
Your brain does something similar.
If life has felt overwhelming, unpredictable, or painful for long enough, your brain and nervous system may have learned to “play dead” emotionally. Depression can be what happens when your brain decides that shutting down is the safest option. Not because you chose it, but because, at some point, it became a survival strategy.
This is why depression can feel automatic:
Just like the opossum doesn’t choose to collapse, you don’t choose to feel numb, exhausted, or disconnected from life.
Your brain is running an old pattern, one that might have made sense at some point—even if it’s not helping you now.
Think of your mind like a house. Every room holds memories, emotions, and parts of you shaped by different experiences. If you’ve been through pain or hardship, certain rooms may start to feel unsafe. Rather than walking into them, your mind might close the doors, dim the lights, and retreat. Depression can be what happens when too many doors stay shut for too long.
Not because you’re lazy or unmotivated, but because, at some point, shutting down felt like the safest thing to do.
But just because your brain learned this pattern doesn’t mean you’re stuck with it. Because what’s been wired in for survival can also be rewired for healing.
The Science of Stuckness: Why You Can’t Just “Get Over It”
If depression was just about mindset, willpower alone would be enough to break free. But anyone who has struggled with depression knows it doesn’t work that way.
Long-term depression actually changes the brain. Think of your mind as a network of highways, carrying thoughts, emotions, and energy where they need to go. When everything is running smoothly, you can shift between emotions, focus on tasks, and feel connected to the world around you.
But in depression, certain pathways slow down or become blocked:
Motivation struggles to reach the parts of your brain that generate action.
Joy doesn’t travel as easily to the places that let you feel it.
Instead, the brain gets stuck in patterns of fatigue, self-doubt, and isolation
Scientists call this neuroplasticity - the brain’s ability to change and adapt based on experience. The more a certain pathway is used, the stronger it gets, like a trail in the woods that becomes easier to walk the more it’s traveled. Depression can make the trails that lead to hopelessness, exhaustion, and disconnection stronger and more automatic over time. (Learn more about how depression rewires the brain).
How Depression Rewires the Brain
Depression slows down or blocks neural pathways, making it harder to access motivation and joy. (How depression affects the brain)
Neuroplasticity means the brain can change, forming new, healthier pathways over time. (The power of neuroplasticity)
Healing requires experiences that help retrain the brain—not just positive thinking. (Understanding depression recovery)
Here’s the good news: the brain is always capable of change. New experiences, new thoughts, and even small shifts in behavior can start carving out new paths, making it easier to access feelings like motivation and connection again.
Depression carves out a path in the mind, one so well-trodden that it feels like the only way forward. And when you’ve walked the same trail for long enough, it’s easy to forget (or not believe at all) that your brain can still create new paths.
Most of my clients tell me they’ve heard some version of this before, like they need to force themselves to feel better by just thinking more positively. That’s not what I offer here. Instead, I offer that healing from depression requires learning how to access subtle shifts within your experience. This means noticing when the trail bends, like when a conversation leaves you feeling slightly lighter or some memory sparts a flicker of warmth. Noticing even the smallest shifts will lead you down new paths, not ones that are forced or imaginary, but new paths that your brain can actually walk down.
These shifts don’t demand grand efforts or leaps of faith. They ask only for your curiosity and willingness to notice when something, however small, feels just different enough to be worth following.
So how do you begin to find these moments when depression tells you there’s nothing to notice? That’s what we’re about to explore in Part 2. I hope you’ll keep reading because even the smallest spark of curiosity is a step forward towards healing. Click here to keep exploring your curiosity.