what are you type 4’s experiences with depression?

i have a pretty cyclical depression, where i’ll go through depressive episodes that get better with medication, have a stable period where things are going alright, and then right back into a depression.

when i’m not depressed, i feel like a 4w3 in integration. i have ambition in school and work, i enjoy time with friends, and let myself have a healthy (ish?) amount of thinking time to myself. there are still a lot of internal feelings of something being missing, but i can ignore it and push through and for the most part and while i have feelings of envy, therapy has taught me a lot about using gratitude to counter that. i’m more practical, and am better at taking real steps towards bettering my life. i see my depressed self as not my true self, and even though i feel a lot of imposter syndrome, i’m able to see those thoughts and not fully identify with them - even if i do a little bit, i don’t let it control my life! i tend to see myself as unique in a good way, and can appreciate these parts of me without letting them completely alienate myself.

on the other side, when i’m depressed i go fully into a 4w5 in stress/disintegration. all i want to do is feel my feelings and think about them and try to understand why i feel so wrong. i don’t want to be social, i get annoyed when my family interrupts my “thinking time” (which, in lockdown, is 90% of my waking day!). i look at myself in my non depressive state and i think that that was all fake - i may have been happy, but i’ve been ignoring this missing piece that i feel in myself! like my non depressive states are just complete, inauthentic expressions of myself. gratitude goes out the window and doing anything, school or work related, seems like there is absolutely no point in doing! i resist having to take actual, practical steps in getting myself out of this depression, because i feel like if i can think my way out of it and figure out what is missing in me that then i can finally find peace and be less insecure and happy with myself. or, then i get obsessed trying to name my depression - reading published studies about different types of depression, and what it stems from in the brain. that maybe if i understand it i can do something about it (that isn’t taking the hard, practical steps like exercising, fixing diet, and doing other healthy things that should help but never feel good in the moment). all of these practical steps feel empty and pointless if i can’t address the core hollow, missing piece feeling. how am i supposed to explain to myself that i’m not missing anything if i don’t understand what i’m missing/why i feel like something is missing?

i’m pretty depressed right now. hopefully a med change will help my mental state, i know practical steps are needed as well but when my depression gets this bad i usually need an initial med increase to bring me to a space where i can take more action to better myself. just wanted to share my experience with depression, and see how it relates to other type 4’s mental health experiences.