Signs Of High Functioning Depression You Shouldn't Ignore | BetterHelp

[Music] hi my name is hey sue and today we're gonna be talking about high functioning depression so for those of you that are really familiar with mental health and some of the disorders that we can find in the DSM you might know this as dysthymia so we're gonna talk a little bit more about signs that you could be looking for whether you might be experiencing high functioning depression or somebody that you know and care about is going through this challenge and struggle so first let's think about depression in general when you think of somebody that's depressed what comes to mind for me I'm thinking of somebody that has a hard time getting out of bed has a hard time leaving their home maybe they've lost interest in things they used to really enjoy like hobbies or certain types of food restaurants things that they liked to do with their free time maybe they're not really so good at maintaining relationships with their family their friends maybe they've lost their job because they've lost motivation and this will in this drive to live their life so on the flip side let's think about people in your life that are very high-functioning you might have a co-worker for instance or have had a co-worker that seems to somehow manage to get up early every day before work to exercise maintains a healthy diet has good relationships as far as we know with family friends co-workers in general just seems to keep all their stuff together or maybe somebody else that you've known in the past great work ethic really an assertive communicator just seems generally like he knows what's going on with life has everything figured out so now that we have these images in mind of someone with depression and someone that seemingly doesn't want to shift gears a little bit to talk to you about a functioning alcoholic we've all heard this term so what does it mean when we say somebody's a functioning alcoholic or generally referring to someone that probably does have some kind of problem with alcohol but they're able to maintain their job they're able to maintain relationships family but the problem I guess is that sometimes they're not able to maintain those things in healthy ways and it's very difficult sometimes to identify a functioning alcoholic because they are able to keep some aspects of their life together so jumping back to the original topic here of someone with high functioning depression otherwise known as dysthymia it's really hard to identify these people sometimes and sometimes it's us sometimes we can't even identify when it's us that we're suffering from these things so today again we want to talk about things that you can be looking for or things that you might have noticed in yourself that could be a sign that you're experiencing high-functioning depression so people with high-functioning depression or experiencing dysthymia are often difficult to identify we're not seeing these overt traits of a very depressed person no catatonic states in fact people with high-functioning depression are often able to maintain really healthy lifestyles good relationships with other people and that and it vertically almost makes the risk a little bit scarier in a different kind of way why someone with overt symptoms of anything we can find them we can get them into some kind of services or try to help them as best as we can for people flying under the radar for people experiencing symptoms that we don't see it's really difficult to identify them and then get them help it's really difficult to communicate to them that maybe they should consider finding help for themselves so when we think about mental health services in general there already is a pretty big stigma around this a lot of people out there adults in the United States for instance have a hard time seeking out treatment because of you know the idea that if you seek out therapy you're crazy or you can't handle things on your own or something about you is weak because you can't seem to get out of this funk by yourself however the idea right now is to start thinking about seeking out mental health services as something that's normal as something that can help you with a lot of individuals suffering from high-functioning depression we see people that are driven motivated you know successful in their careers successful in their relationships with people so the stigmatization around mental health services might be even greater for them because they don't want to clue people in their lives in to the fact that they might be struggling with something or that they might need help with something and so for people experiencing this we have a hard time finding them and they have a hard time finding help because you know maybe some part of them doesn't really want to be identified where this other part does but we don't know how to find them so what are we looking for in order to identify whether we ourselves are having a hard time with this or somebody that we care about might be going through a hard time with this there are some things that you can be looking for or tuning into in yourself to determine whether you might be having some kind of challenge with high functioning depression so one of the first things to look for is this general sense of sadness going back to this image you may have of this depressed person you could be thinking someone crying all day just having a hard time with life slumped over catatonic even maybe not moving very much you're not going to really see this with someone with high functioning depression but rather like I said a subtle and general sense of sadness most of the time almost every day if not every day and it's a little bit inexplicable sometimes you can't really tell where this feeling is coming from or pinpoint any particular trigger that hurt your feelings or anything like that some other things to be looking for and thinking about is the inability or you know the loss of ability to experience joy loss of interests and things that you used to really find to be something that makes you feel good or bring some kind of satisfaction to your life you might also notice diminished energy so like I said not necessarily not being able to get out of bed but just diminished you feel fatigued a lot of the time where maybe before you didn't experience it that way other things to be looking for is being really self-critical which leads to perfectionism which can also contribute to blowing things out of proportion finding really small things in your life to turn into huge problems so I think there's a saying making a mountain out of a molehill a lot of people struggling with high functioning depression experienced these things like I said really self-critical feeling a lot of guilt and shame about the past and even the future things that haven't even happened yet this is something that a lot of people couldn't be struggling with you might also be thinking about this depressed person who seems sad all the time but there's other feelings involved in depression too you might notice yourself kind of with a short fuse so another way to put this is irritability feeling annoyed by things pretty easily and quickly this is another symptom or sign of a lot of things that could be going on but you're at ability is definitely part of it if you find that things that normally wouldn't bug you are starting to bug you a lot this is something to tune into you might also find yourself turning to coping skills that might not actually be that helpful so another way to think about this stuff is a maladaptive coping skill so something that you've used for a lot of your life to help you feel better or at least help you not think about these things that are making you feel bad but these things may not be addressing the underlying issue so things like substance abuse or reckless behavior you know losing yourself in hours of television these kinds of things can help us escape the problem for a temporary time but it's not really addressing the underlying thing dysthymia is both a biological and an emotional issue that really needs to be treated and looked at if we're not looking at these symptoms to treat then like I said the risk is pretty great because the symptoms can worsen into something else and then you might find yourself meeting criteria for a more severe disorder another thing ironically is self-doubt we mentioned that people that are experiencing this are really driven people a lot of times which makes it so hard to identify them out there in the wild however there's a lot of self-doubt which comes with this other piece that I talked about previously of being really self-critical so just being uncertain unsure of who you are can really contribute to this too so having a loose sense of self-awareness those kinds of things can contribute to this also and finally if you find yourself having a really hard time relaxing just unwinding after a full day of work let's say you get home you're really tired and the last thing you can do is sit down and take some time to you know have a breather instead you're up and going and trying to clean everything and organize and make sure everything is okay this could also be a sign that something is going on if you find that you are unable to relax if you liked this video please feel free to subscribe to our YouTube channel where you'll find a lot more content on a variety of mental health topics and if you're interested in learning more about online counseling please click the link to better help comm below [Music] [Music]

Channel: BetterHelp

Views: 1,823,515

Keywords: dysthymia, high functioning depression test, high functioning depression symptoms, functional depression, high functioning depression treatment, high functioning depression quiz, high functioning depression

Id: xOe9zR0alO0

Length: 10min 10sec (610 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 20 2018