one of the most insidious things about depression is it doesn’t ‘feel’ like depression. even when you have it, you know you have it, you’ve been diagnosed—you still find yourself thinking, no, nope, this isn’t it, can’t be. it’s like the mental illness equivalent of that knight in monty python that keeps going ‘it’s a flesh wound! i’m fine, really! this is just a scratch, i’ll be up in a moment!’ even after all his limbs have been hacked off and he’s lying there helpless.
one of the most common narratives around it is that no one realizes they have depression until they start checking off what they consider to be normal aspects of their lives—and personal character flaws— against the checklist for depression symptoms. really key symptoms include:
- lack of motivation
- constant tiredness, even exhaustion
- finding no pleasure or satisfaction in activities they used to like, or that they know should feel good
- not seeing the point of doing anything
- increased and even unmanageable anxiety and fearfulness
any one of these symptoms drains away your ability to do work, cope with setbacks, overcome difficulties, or stop procrastinating. multiple symptoms create a pretty perfect storm of intertia and anxious self-loathing. you stop doing anything because it’s hard to get going, unpleasant while you’re at it, and afterwards there’s no reward. why bother, right? and when you’re always tired you get conservative of what little energy you can manage, and when you only feel emotions on the ‘empty to miserable’ spectrum you get really aversive to making mistakes. the whole mess very quickly and very insidiously loads every single thing in your life with toxic emotional baggage.
and then someone says to you— or you say to yourself, ‘stop being lazy’. and that haunts you forever. because you’re lazy! the work is so easy. everyone else does it. everyone but you, you lazy asshole, lying around all day not doing this totally easy thing that you should be able to but aren’t. you don’t have depression! of course not. mental illness is for victims, is for blameless innocent people who can’t be blamed for being so understandably sick. but you can be blamed. you have a character flaw, and it’s getting worse by the minute.
and that is how people who have been diagnosed, who have been medicated, who have been through therapy, can still spend all day hiding in bed and chewing themselves up over their failure to just somehow magically be a good, healthy, useful person, instead of treating themselves to a sick day and saying ‘yup! it’s depression. i need to be kind to myself.’
Fuck this is so important and relevant
Nope reblogging twice in a row because u want to scream this from the roof and plaster it over the walls and never shut up about it
Tag: mental illness
One thing I think is useful to conceptualize when thinking about the severity of depression is figuring out what counts as a ‘task’ to your brain
for example, healthy people outlining the tasks they need to do that day might be something like
– class
– work
– homeworkif a healthy person is having a low energy day, maybe it becomes
– make breakfast
– go to class
– class
– go to work
– work
– come home from work
– work on an essay
– do 2 readingsa depressed person, on a high energy day will probably see that same day as
– make breakfast
– eat breakfast
– take meds
– shower
– get dressed
– walk to bus
– take bus
… etca depressed person, on a low energy day will see that same day as
– wake up
– get out of bed
– walk to bathroom
– use bathroom
– stand back up
– walk to kitchen
– open fridge
– take out juice
– set on counter
– go to cabinet
– reach up arm
– take down glass
– unscrew lid of juice carton
– pour juice
– drink the juice
– finish the juice
…etcthe sort of chronic exhaustion manifests in how each ‘task’ takes a certain amount of energy and when you have depression, what begins to take that amount of energy- and thus, cognitively count as a ‘task’- are smaller and smaller subdivisions of what other people consider tasks.
And the more ‘tasks’ you do, the less energy you have, and the smaller the subdivisions must be to take equivalent amounts of energy. And the longer that “to do” list of tasks is, the more exhausting and overwhelming and hopeless it feels, which creates a feedback loop of dysfunction.
So say our depressed person on a low energy day gets all the way to finishing their glass of juice. They’ve actually gotten through a lot of tasks! They’ve tried really hard.
But to a healthy person, even on a low energy day, that probably looks like not having done anything- not having gotten through any tasks. And when our depressed person is surrounded by healthy people, they will likely internalize that they haven’t done anything, and further that they can’t complete any tasks no matter how hard they try. And that feeds worthlessness and suicidal ideation
That, I think, is why it’s so important to encourage your depressed and chronically low-energy friends when they accomplish tasks, even if they’re operating at a level of subdivision that you don’t recognize. It is an accomplishment to get water and actually drink it for some folks. It is an accomplishment to get to class or to work.
And acknowledging how hard someone is trying and how much energy they’re putting towards accomplishing those tasks can make a huge difference in whether they feel worthless and hopeless or whether they feel like it’s worth it to keep doing what they can.
This actually made me feel really good about my day because I somehow managed 80 points?
a fuckin. professional.
30
the only thing that got me out of bed today was the fact that my neighbors wouldn’t stop screaming
*waves little flag*
this is not good
i just realized that im waiting for it to be late enough for me to go to bed
this is bad
i sure hope this isnt the isotretinoin bc damn it i want my skin clear
stuff about depression under the read more
so like i dont think i can use my mood as a predictor/gauge for my depression very accurately anymore
because mood wise i feel basically fine! not great, bc i never feel great but not bad.
so i would assume im fine except that i havent showered for over a week, yesterday was the first time i brushed my teeth in more time than i care to remember, and ive been lying in bed since i came home like 3-4 hours ago
i need to see my therapist
i know y’all don’t want to hear this but coping mechanisms aren’t inherently healthy and just because it helps you in the moment doesn’t mean it won’t hurt you in the long run
when people tell you your coping mechanism is unhealthy they aren’t trying to police you or tell you what to do, they’re pointing out that you are hurting yourself and possibly hurting others and that you should find better ways to work through your trauma to have a better outcome in life
listen if this post makes you mad, I’m sorry, but i made this as someone who is mentally ill, as someone who is an abuse victim who has and still uses unhealthy coping mechanisms because people on this website discouraged me from seeking help
it’s hard to recognize youre hurting yourself. it’s hard to break out of that. im just tired of the prominent anti-recovery rhetoric on tumblr dot com and a lot of others are too.
extraordinary-arbiter-bluebird:
Laziness: I’d rather sit here than pick up those clothes
Executive Dysfunction: I need to pick up those clothes I need to pick up those clothes why am I still watching this thing on Netflix while sitting down c’mon stand up I need to pick up those clothes I need to pick up those clothes I need to-
The Kind Of Actual Pathology-of-Motivation Associated With Major Depressive Disorder*: I know I need to pick up those clothes, and if I don’t pick up those clothes my quality of life will continue to decline, and theoretically the consequences of picking up those clothes are ones I don’t want, and if I don’t pick up those clothes they will get wrinkled and dirty again and I won’t have clean clothes to wear, but my life is an undifferentiated mass of grey and despite knowing all of these things I cannot actually make myself fucking care I will just stay here and stare at the clothes while Netflix plays until it stops. And tell myself how fucking lazy, stupid and useless I am because if I weren’t I would realize that I need to pick up those clothes and make myself do it. This is totally fine.
[yes, this is actually separate from executive dysfunction; it’s also a symptom of illness, a potentially really serious one, and tends to spring from complications due to anhedonia, or lack of the ability to experience positive stimuli] [it is also often COMORBID – that is, happening at the same time – with executive dysfunction]
Can you expand on how “i just can’t care” is different from “lazy”? Is it the internal ability to care, that it’s just lacking, whereas with laziness you have the capacity to do the thing, you just choose not to. I’m having trouble with cementing the actual explanation. Laziness is a values thing and the rest is a base-functionality thing?
In terms of what I meant, the crux there is cannot make myself.
Say I’m being lazy with my afternoon, and someone I know comes in and says, “You need to stop being lazy and do the thing, or Bad Consequence will happen.” And the consequence is genuinely bad.
For instance, say I’m Not Cleaning the Kitchen and someone comes to me and says, “You need to clean the kitchen or you’re going to get ants”. And they’re even right.
If I’m being lazy, and I agree that now that I think about it, ants aren’t good, I don’t want ants, I kick my own ass, get up and clean the kitchen. This is based on the ability of my brain to literally experience a Reward, a Positive State, from having a cleaner kitchen and not having ants.
If I’m having catastrophic anhedonic motivation failure? That doesn’t work. It’s not that I want to stay on the couch more than I don’t want to have ants. It’s that I can’t make myself care about EITHER state because it’s all fucking horrible. Nothing gets better. I might as well fucking have ants. I deserve ants. Look at me I can’t even fucking keep my kitchen clean I don’t even WANT my kitchen clean obviously since I’m still lying here so fuck it, I’ll just lie here and have ants. Oh look now I have ants. Isn’t that fantastic proof of how fucking awful I am.
Of course the entire thing is usually not that articulated in the brain, you know? This whole thing is an example. Usually it’s more like:
Laziness: … meh put away clothes later.
Executive Dysfunction: *want to put away clothes* *constantly stall on the initial cognitive step of How To Put Away Clothes* *get more and more distressed/stressed about not putting away clothes* *keep stalling* *cry*
Anhedonic Lack of Motivation: *lie there. stare at clothes. know clothes should probably go away. can even think of whole set of steps to put away clothes.* *cannot fucking feel anything about putting away clothes* *stalls out forever in pit of ‘why do i even fucking bother i should lie here and rot’* *uses fact that clothes have not been put away as evidence*But the original form is pithier and has better rhythm.
So, it looks the same to a third party, but it feels/behaves differently on the inside
Well yes. They ALL look the same to a third party, at least casually – that’s the point.
If you know the person it’s pretty easy to see the difference (the general aura of misery and disinterest in anything else in the universe is a big hint).
This is something I wish was more widely understood. Executive dysfunction has become known about in my irl circles and while there’s definitely one or two for which this a problem most of the rest seem to use it as an explanation for the symptoms of unmanaged depression. As a society we are really bad at recognising the flat, empty, grey gaping maw that eats time and quietly lets us ruin our lives through neglectful apathy. Because that’s laziness, right? So I can understand wanting an explanation that doesn’t relegate blame. The problem is the most easily accessible, without further stigma (eg. depression as a moral failing) is an incorrect one, and genuinely unhelpful. Not the same strategies to address, plus depression can use more brain broken to feed to ifs narrative of I Hate You.
I mean: executive dysfunction is also a symptom of depression, and like I noted they’re often very much comorbid. I have had whole periods where what made my life fall apart was the total demise of my executive function.
But yes, executive dysfunction and anhedonic lack of motivation are actually different things, and they also require different things to fix.
And gods yeah, I think that the way that anhedonia – the actual impairment or destruction of your ability to experience positive emotions and stimulus – is something that needs way, way more attention, w/r/t how it works and how it affects your ability to function.
i wonder if theres such a thing as a disconnect between the action and the reward–as in you do feel a reward from doing something, it’s just that while you’re not doing it you sort of can’t believe in or don’t care about the reward? and so it doesn’t seem worth doing, but then if you do somehow get forced or just do it in a random fit of motivation the reward does happen, it’s not gone.
Fuck yeah! The brain reward system is a major problem in most disorders of motivation and executive function. Sciency links:
The brain reward circuitry in mood disorders
holy fuck those ARE two different things
In case you’re ever not okay.
just moving along like everyone else 