The High-Functioning Depressed Person

Click the photo above to visit the article at The Minds JournalChronic Depression. Eternal, day in and day out depression...High-Functioning Depression.

You get up, make your bed, make breakfast, get the kids off to school, go to work. You smile all the while, and people at work think you're great to work with, and that you're "fun." You might laugh a lot. You watch funny videos and laugh. Your children tell funny stories and you laugh. You're not joyless, but you're not happy either.

But you want to die. You wish you could disappear, but for your children and for other people you love, you keep going. You open your eyes, stand up, and go. You can't stop so you continue.

Because you keep going, because you can still laugh, and sometimes especially because you can laugh, most people think you're okay. They might even think you're worthy of emulation. You might be considered the on-site comedian at work and at family reunions and other social functions. You probably have the weirdest sense of humor of anyone except for that other high-functioning depressed person. Some people like to be around you just to see what you'll say next because it will either be zany, or insightful, or both.

Maybe you've read every self-help book you can get your hands on. I have. Maybe you've found a social or political grievance that gives you an outlet for angst, for that sense of horror. I've done that too. There is evil in the world, and you know it because you hurt every single day, sometimes for no apparent reason. We're crazy...but maybe we're not. Maybe all the rest of humanity is crazy. But no, I have to believe I'm the crazy one because the world can't possibly be as bleak as I perceive it to be. We have to believe that the world as we perceive it is not the world that truly exists. We have faith in the rest of you, that your rosy perception is the right one.

Click the photo to read an article about high functioning
depressed mothers.Some of us separate what we feel and what we know. We live a bifurcated life where we know how we feel, but we love the fact that at least others can be happy.

We are truly happy for you if you are happy, although I suppose some of us are narcissistic enough to want to bring you down.  We are not envious of you, at least most of us aren't. Envy requires at least a little hope. Your happiness is beautiful to us, just knowing you exist and that you're happy. Many of us hope to contribute to your happiness in some way, because you deserve happiness. We love you and admire you.

Men and women suffer from high-functioning depression. You probably don't know it because we generally don't mention it. Our spouses usually know. Our children often know something is wrong. Perhaps we've had to tell our managers at work. But for the most part, you'd never know.

We are ashamed of everything, so we work hard to overcome shame by being perfect at our work or at parenting and at everything else. We're perfectionists at church, at school, at work, at home. Some people watch us run around and they admire us for our strong work ethic. But we think we're lazy and stupid. Sometimes we might overcompensate for our perceived shortcomings, and sometimes you'll think our behavior is strange. When we realize we've been acting strangely, we feel shameful about that too. Everything fills us with shame or guilt, or both.

And please, please, please do not treat us with pity or feel badly for us. That's just another reason for us to feel bad. We don't want to hurt you. In fact, we want to make you happy. We do this in different ways, usually something in the creative arts. Maybe we make crafts, or we paint, or we write, or we become comedians...We want to be one of the many reasons you are happy.

Our conscience is a cruel and unforgiving god. We try to overcome the heartlessness of this god by loving others, and being less cruel to humanity than our inner judge is to ourselves.

Some of us surround ourselves with people who constantly remind us how unworthy and imperfect we are.  At some level we feel less crazy if we can keep a third party representative for our inner judge close at hand. So we find friends or jobs whose opinions of us represent the inner judge. At least then someone tells us exactly what we're feeling. You're stupid. I would be better off without you. Why are you so incompetent? Why are you so lazy? My guess about why we keep these people around is that it's way less crazy to feel that way because someone is constantly telling us so, compared to simply feeling that way for no good reason at all.

We love life in a way, seeing the beauty around us, and knowing it's beautiful. We look at you, your goodness and kindness, and we love you. We can contemplate all this beauty and feel it deeply. For example, I look at a quiet snow-covered landscape, and I feel peace.

I see myself walking into it, into the trees, and never coming out--disappearing into the forest, merging with it, ceasing to be me, having never existed at all except as part of the beauty I'm witnessing.









https://www.healthline.com/health/dep...
https://themindsjournal.com/overlook-...
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000245/
https://www.romper.com/p/13-things-ev...