Does Anyone Else Here Experience High Functioning Depression?
Heya, okay so like I know it's not a good thing to self-diagnose but I think I might have some symptoms of high functioning depression or dysthymia and that epiphany has really helped me to figure out just why I can feel like poop yet be able to somewhat function in life.
Unlike most, even when I don't feel like getting out of bed, I can still push myself to get out. I can still push myself to eat instead of starving. I can go to school, have some semblance of a social life and even engage in hobbies. But that doesn't mean I don't have those dark periods where everything seems hopeless and that there's no future and all that jazz. In fact, I tend to overeat and suffer from sleep problems very often.
However, because of my ability to function, I've managed to convince myself that I'm not actually depressed and that I've just made everything up for attention. (Plus, it doesn't help that everyone else arounds me enforces that idea on me anyway.) So even when I've reached the lowest of lows, I can still somehow tell myself that my feelings aren't valid and that people have it worse so therefore I should just suck it up and stop being such an attention seeker. But after watching some videos on the matter, something just kind of clicked.
Does anyone else feel this way or at least experiences something similar? I really don't encourage self-diagnosis but I don't know... It would just explain a lot of the stuff I face in my life.
@DolphinsRLife99 I feel like that too. I usually push my feelings aside or
@DolphinsRLife99 I know what you mean. I'm holding down a full-time, career-type office job. I have a decent car, bought a house a couple years ago. I write, make art, play video games. I present a really solid facade to the world - half my own choice, half learned from an emotionally abusive parent against whom the only defense when I was a child was to completely disengage and show no emotion whatsoever.
But I wind up using up 99% of my coping ability just getting through the day at work every day, so there's nothing left of me for anything else. I'm "functional" by most people's standards, but behind that my brain is still tying itself in knots.
I will say, that convincing yourself you're not *really* depressed seems to actually be super common in people with depression. Part of what depression does to the brain is it makes you over-personalize everything, so you just think you personally are kinda pathetic, rather than being able to see that there's something actually really wrong. So you're definitely not alone in that.