Here's a question that might seem absurd: What if depression isn't a disorder to eliminate, but a signal to interpret?

The standard framing treats depression as pathology—something broken that needs fixing. This assumption shapes everything: how we research it, how we treat it, how we experience it. But what if that assumption is wrong? What if it's not just incomplete, but actually counterproductive?

Consider this: your body has evolved sophisticated signaling systems over millions of years. Pain signals tissue damage. Fever signals infection. Hunger signals nutritional need. These aren't malfunctions—they're information. They're your body's way of communicating that something requires attention.

"Your assumption about what depression IS determines your entire response to it."

The Evolutionary Lens

From an evolutionary perspective, depression makes little sense as a random malfunction. Evolution tends to eliminate traits that reduce survival and reproduction. Yet depression persists across cultures, across millennia, across species. Why?

One possibility: it serves a function. Depression might be the psychological equivalent of pain—an uncomfortable but ultimately protective signal that something in your life requires change. Your environment. Your relationships. Your direction. Something isn't working, and your psyche is trying to get your attention.

This doesn't mean depression is pleasant or desirable. Pain isn't pleasant either. But interpreting pain as "my body trying to kill me" produces very different behavior than interpreting it as "my body alerting me to a problem." The same applies here.

The Two Layers

Here's where it gets interesting. We can distinguish between two types of depression:

"Little d" depression—the raw signal. The low energy, the withdrawal, the sense that something needs to change. This is the functional layer, the information itself.

"Big D" Depression—everything we layer on top. The self-criticism. The shame. The belief that feeling this way means we're broken, defective, or failures. This is the interpretation layer.

The signal is data. The shame is optional suffering.

Most of what people experience as unbearable about depression isn't the signal itself—it's their reaction to having the signal. The existential terror of "what's wrong with me?" The comparison to how they "should" feel. The stories about what this means for their future.

The Practical Implication

If this framing is accurate (and it's testable in your own experience), it suggests a radically different approach. Instead of asking "how do I make this feeling go away?", you might ask "what is this feeling trying to tell me?"

Instead of fighting the signal, you interpret it. Instead of adding shame to discomfort, you get curious about information. The depression doesn't disappear, but the suffering about the depression—the second layer—can dissolve almost entirely.

I've watched clients make this shift. The transformation isn't in their circumstances or even their mood. It's in their relationship to their experience. They stop treating themselves as broken machines and start treating themselves as intelligent systems trying to communicate something important.

The Compound Effect

Here's what makes this powerful: the reframe compounds. Each time you successfully interpret depression as "helpful signal" rather than "evidence of defectiveness," you condition yourself to respond differently. Eventually, the shame response becomes almost impossible to activate. Not because you've suppressed it, but because the interpretation that triggers it no longer seems plausible.

You've upgraded your psychological operating system.

"The signal is data. The shame is optional suffering."

The Question Worth Sitting With

This isn't about denying that depression can be severe, debilitating, or in some cases require medical intervention. It's about examining whether the pathology-first framing is always the most useful lens—or whether, in many cases, a signal-first framing might serve better.

What if the thing you've been fighting is actually trying to help you? What would change if you started listening instead?