Depression manifests as a chemical imbalance in the brain, but to say it is the result of a chemical imbalance in the brain would be incomplete.
It would be wise to ask the question, why is there a chemical imbalance in the brain in the first place?
Your neurochemistry is constantly responding to your perception 👀 of your environment.
If someone broke into the room you are in right now with a gun and threatened to shoot you and we could test your blood chemistry and neurochemistry at that moment, you would find elevated cortisol, testosterone & norepinephrine.
This chemical imbalance in your brain is not random, your body has entered into a sympathetic fight or flight response based on your perception of danger and is prioritising blood, glucose and oxygen to your extremities to help you either run or fight to stay alive.
Your neurochemistry is constantly responding to your perceptions 👀 of safety/danger, like/dislike, infatuation/resentment, ecstasy/trauma.
We don’t have control of our chemistry directly but what we can control are our perceptions of our environment, if you don’t take the time to re-balance your skewed perceptions and heal past perceived traumatic events then these events get stored in your subconscious creating a low-level background fear/anxiety that affects our ‘normal’ neurochemistry.
Anytime that you are comparing elements of your life to something that you think is ‘better’(maybe you think your life was better before or maybe you think someone on social media has a ‘better life situation’) by contrast your life will suck and you will have feelings of depression.
Sometimes these comparisons are immediately obvious and sometimes they are somewhat unconscious but either way, you can learn how to re-balance these lopsided perceptions in your mind which re-balances your chemistry and clears feelings of depression.