In today’s world, we normally see things as black and white. We forget the different shades that lie in between these two shades and ignore them. Similarly, when we talk of high functioning depression, we either consider it as just mood swings or clinical depression. We tend to ignore the things in between these mood swings and depression, one among them is high functioning depression.
So, what do we mean by high functioning depression? To understand it better, let’s take an example.
Rohan is a well-qualified professional, working in a firm. He is disciplined and quite successful in his job. He is very cordial with his colleagues. Everyone in the office likes him and appreciates him. Rohan also has a lot of friends. He can be often seen having a great time with his friends. Not only with friends, but he also spends quality time with his family. Rohan seems to be one among those people who are perfect in every sense.
Even in your wildest dreams would you ever think that perfect Rohan is suffering from high functioning depression?
Perfect Rohan has to pull himself out of bed every morning and drag himself to work. He thinks he is good for nothing and a complete failure. He always used to doubt whether he had chosen the right career for himself. It used to be a difficult task for him to make himself get out of the house to meet and mingle with his friends and family.
It was difficult for both Rohan and others to understand or detect that he is suffering from high functioning depression. Though the symptoms of high functioning depression may look similar to those of depression, but the major difference is that a person with high functioning depression will appear normal and not depressed at all. We would not even be able to make out if he/she has depression in spite of the fact that the person at that time may be struggling with so many things at an emotional level. This makes it more difficult to detect if he/she has high functioning depression and hence they often don’t get the required treatment.
Some ways to know if you are suffering from high functioning depression
- Daily chores feel difficult and tiring: The daily tasks that once could be done with almost no difficulty now seem like a Herculean task. This increases the feeling of incapability and play a major role in adding to the person’s unhappiness. This, in turn, makes it more unlikely to complete the tasks. And it eventually leads to a cycle.
- We criticize ourselves and everything around: We start thinking that we are good for nothing. We cannot do anything properly. We think people around us don’t understand us. We feel we are surrounded by people who are useless, stupid and idiots. Almost everything is not OK.
3. No one believes that you are depressed: It is difficult for people to even notice that you are depressed. You would do things like going out with friends, going out and having dinner with family, going to work, and a lot of other things that people with depression will not be able to do. These things make people around you feel that you are absolutely fine. No one notices that the efforts required to do these things are much more than what a normal person would require
- You don’t feel like taking care of yourself: You start ignoring yourself. You don’t take care of daily things like sleeping, eating, grooming. You feel it’s OK not to take care of yourself. Others will always come before you.
- You feel like you have accomplished nothing: Nothing seems to make you feel happy. No matter how big your achievement, it seems to be quite small. You feel that people around you are going ahead of you and you have not moved an inch.
- You always doubt yourself: There will be constant doubts about yourself going on within you – doubts about anything and everything you do. These doubts can range from really small to big once, be it the clothes that you have washed are properly washed or not. whether you brought the car keys, or you left it in the car, itself.
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