People with high-functioning depression have a persistent sense of sadness, yet they are able to function in life, sleep and eat well, and appear healthy and joyful from the outside.
People with high functioning depression suffer significantly. They suffer from depression for years. Knowing the signs and symptoms will help you figure out what to do if you or a loved one is dealing with this difficult mental health issue.
1. Weight Fluctuation
If you’re not trying to gain or lose weight, but your weight is fluctuating a lot, it could be an indication of sadness, because depression causes biochemical changes in the body, which can lead to weight gain or loss. Other symptoms, such as a decrease in appetite linked to a loss of enjoyment of food, might accompany weight loss.
2. Irregular Sleep Patterns
Sleep can be disrupted in a variety of ways when you have high-functioning depression. You could be suffering from sleeplessness. That is, you are having difficulty falling asleep or remaining asleep. You could also be sleeping too much. When you know you should have the energy to enjoy the day, you may find yourself looking for reasons to stay in bed. When you’re depressed, it’s easy to fall asleep when you need to be alert. It can also keep you awake when you should be sleeping. You haven’t made any mistakes. This is a sign of depression.
3. Inability To Rest
After a long day at work, you need to clean, tidy, and organize the house before you can even think about relaxing. Slowness, quiet, and fallow stretches of time make you uncomfortable because of the unpleasant thoughts and feelings you encounter when you actually slow down. People with high functioning depression keep themselves as busy as possible to avoid confronting the true issue. You rush from one meeting to the next, eat on the go, and work until you get home. You’d do anything to escape those moments when you can hear your own thoughts.
4. Lack of Motivation
5. Lower Self-Esteem
Negative self-talk might be a result of high-functioning depression symptoms. You feel guilty about not being a better parent, partner, or employee. Your self-esteem begins to deteriorate. You persuade yourself not to seek treatment for your symptoms because you believe you are strong and intelligent enough to recover on your own.
This simply adds to your feelings of shame and guilt. If only you knew the true cause of your misery, depression, which you did not cause or bring upon yourself.
6. Setting Unrealistic Standards
Another unhealthy coping method used by people with high functioning depression is overcompensation. This frequently manifests itself in the form of absurdly high and unrealistic expectations. To put it another way, you raise the bar to show yourself (and others) that you’re fine or capable of overcoming depression on your own. However, the higher the criteria, the less likely it is that they will be met. Essentially, you’re putting yourself in a position to fail without even realizing it.
7. Feeling Tired
Exhaustion is a sign that is shared by all types of depression. You’ll start to experience regular spells of weariness if you insist on going about your life as if everything is OK despite the fact that you’re emotionally depleted. You still become fatigued more readily than you used to, no matter how much sleep you get or how well you eat. That’s because the issue isn’t your way of life, but rather the mental upheaval that’s depleting your vitality.
8. Worrying About Everything
You become overwhelmed or extremely stressed as a result of an event that previously would not have seemed so significant. Instead of being a nuisance, it feels like the end of the world. You see that your stress responses are out of proportion to the situation. You’re concerned that you chose the wrong major in college, that your biological clock is ticking, that you married the wrong person, that you’ll be unable to care for your parents as they age, and so on.