5 Indicators that You Might Be Experiencing Clinical Depression
Maybe you’ve gone through periods of time when you’ve felt down. In these instances, you may have been able to point to a clear, discernible cause for your low mood. You might have lost a loved one, faced obstacles in your career, or dealt with a breakup. In time, these feelings passed.
But now, you seem to be living under a heavy veil of sadness that just won’t lift. Perhaps these feelings started with a painful event in your life, or perhaps they cropped up out of nowhere. Your quality of life is slowly declining, and no matter how hard you try to just “cheer up,” you never feel any better.
Sometimes, you plaster a smile on your face for the sake of your family and friends, but when you’re alone, the mask crumbles, and you can’t pretend that everything is okay. If this scenario sounds familiar, you might be suffering from clinical depression. Here are five key symptoms that are often indicative of clinical depression.
1. Persistent Sadness and Hopelessness
When you’re dealing with clinical depression, it can feel like your sadness will never end. Each day, you wake up feeling burdened by sadness, and it can seem like a physical weight on your shoulders. The thought that things might get better in the future doesn’t comfort you, either. You don’t see a light at the end of the tunnel. It feels like you have nothing to look forward to.
2. Loss of Interest in Hobbies
Before your symptoms began, you might have had hobbies and activities that comforted you when you were feeling down. Maybe you enjoyed going to the gym, hiking, reading, knitting, or baking. Now, you can’t muster up any interest in your hobbies anymore. You don’t feel any motivation to engage in the activities that used to take up so much of your time. You might have quit taking classes for certain activities and let projects go unfinished.
3. Changes in Appetite
Clinical depression can have varying effects on someone’s appetite. Lately, you might have found yourself feeling hungry all the time. Eating your favorite comfort foods doesn’t seem to satiate you. You may have even gained weight as a result.
Alternatively, you may have very little appetite. Food doesn’t taste as good as it used to, and cooking takes so much energy that you’ve begun reaching for frozen foods instead of nutritious meals. This can lead to weight loss in the long run.
4. Low Energy or Intense Fatigue
In the past, you used to have no trouble getting out of bed in the morning and starting your day. But now, just opening your eyes feels like too much effort. You might manage to drag yourself to work or school, but as soon as you get home, you end up collapsing into bed. On weekends, you may stay on your couch except to take care of necessary errands. Yet no matter how many hours you sleep, the fatigue lingers.
5. Difficulty Concentrating
People with clinical depression might find themselves forgetting details easily or having trouble focusing on important tasks. Maybe you’ve always been a model employee at work, or a top student, but now your performance is suffering. You might be misplacing items around your house or losing important things, like your keys or your wallet. You need to write everything down, or you know that you won’t remember to do it. “Brain fog” can be a particularly frustrating symptom of clinical depression.
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Do you suspect that you might be suffering from symptoms of clinical depression? It may be time to see a therapist. Get in touch with us to learn more about depression counseling or book a session.