Member Article

Discouragement Versus Depression in Midlife Women

Joanna Poppink, LMFT

Discouragement versus depression in midlife women: The difference can shape how you understand your emotions and your healing path. Discouragement is a temporary emotional response to frustration or loss, while depression is a deeper withdrawal of vitality that signals psychological and spiritual distress. Knowing this difference helps you recognize when your struggle is part of ordinary discouragement—and when it has become depression that needs care.

Discouragement: A Temporary Shadow

Discouragement is part of being alive. It comes when effort meets resistance — when your hopes and reality collide. You may feel deflated when a project stalls, a relationship falters, or your energy falls short. Yet even in discouragement, you care. You still want to move forward, even if you need to rest first.

Discouragement usually lifts with time, understanding, or a sense of connection. A conversation with a trusted friend, a walk outdoors, or a new perspective can restore your balance. Life re-enters your body. (If you want more on exhaustion that doesn’t fix itself with a good night’s sleep.

Depression: When Vitality Withdraws

Depression is different. It’s not about one disappointment — it colors everything. You may feel detached, fatigued, or hopeless, as if life has moved far away. You might sleep too much or too little, lose interest in what once brought joy, or wonder who you are now.

Depth psychology understands depression as a withdrawal of psychic energy — a retreat of the soul when the outer life no longer supports the inner truth. It isn’t a weakness. The psyche attempts to protect, regroup, and point toward change. (For a clinical description of common depression symptoms, you can read the U.S. National Institute of Mental Health’s overview of depression.)

This is often where midlife women say, quietly, “Something in me is shutting down.” Shutting down is more than just sadness. It’s loss of vitality.

How to Tell the Difference Between Discouragement and Depression

Here is a way to sense where you are:

Discouragement	Depression
Caused by a specific loss or setback	Persists beyond any clear reason
You still feel moments of hope	Hope feels unreachable
Energy returns with rest or encouragement	Energy remains low despite effort
The world still feels real and engaging	Life feels distant and meaningless

If low mood lasts more than two weeks, if daily functioning suffers, or if pleasure feels impossible, you may be moving from discouragement into depression. That shift — the difference between discouragement and depression in midlife women — is the point where it’s time to reach for help, not “push through.”

Emotional Companions: Envy, Jealousy, Sad Nostalgia

Discouragement and depression rarely travel alone. They bring other emotional states that can confuse you or shame you.

Envy
Envy can flare when you see someone thriving in a way you crave — creative work, intimacy, freedom. In discouragement, envy can sting but still points forward. It shows you what you long to live. In depression, envy can harden into self-blame: “I’ll never have that.”

Jealousy
Jealousy appears when you fear being replaced or forgotten. In discouragement, jealousy can motivate honest conversation and repair. In depression, jealousy often fades into numbness. You stop feeling worth protecting.

Sad nostalgia
Sad nostalgia looks backward. You long for a time when you felt more alive. In discouragement, nostalgia can warm you and remind you of possibility. In depression, it can lock you in the belief that life’s meaning is already behind you.

These emotions are not failures. They are signals.

Healing and Renewal

Discouragement calls for patience and perspective.
Depression calls for understanding and accompaniment.

Psychotherapy offers a space to explore what the depression is asking for — rest, truth, limits, change, grief, or an honest confrontation with how you’ve been living. For more about this approach, see Depth-Oriented Psychotherapy for Midlife Women.

FAQ

How can I tell if I’m depressed or just discouraged?
If your low mood is temporary and tied to a clear event, it’s likely discouragement. If it persists, numbs joy, and affects your daily life, depression may be present.

Can discouragement turn into depression?
Yes. When discouragement isn’t processed — when you keep pushing yourself instead of tending to your emotional needs — it can deepen into depression.

Does depression have a psychological purpose?
From a depth-psychological view, yes. Depression can signal that something in you requires transformation. The energy that feels gone is often gathering to return in a more honest form.

How does therapy help?
Therapy provides a steady, confidential space to uncover what the depression is asking for. Healing begins when your inner voice is heard, not dismissed.

Resources

Websites/Articles

• Live Well Psychiatry. “Am I Depressed or Discouraged?” Published October 19, 2024. 
• Mayo Clinic. “Depression (major depressive disorder) – Symptoms & causes.” October 14, 2022. 

Books
Calhoun, Ada. Why We Can’t Sleep: Women’s New Midlife Crisis. Grove Press, 2020.
Burns, David D. Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy. Harper, revised edition.

Joanna Poppink, LMFT, psychotherapist, speaker, and author of Healing Your Hungry Heart: Recovering from Your Eating Disorder, is in private practice and specializes in Eating Disorder Recovery for adult women and with an emphasis on building a fulfilling life beyond recovery. She is licensed in California, Florida, Oregon, and Utah. All appointments are virtual. Website: EatingDisorderRecovery.net