I haven't felt anything besides low burning self contempt for years. Emotions like sadness and happiness elude me. I haven't sincerely shouted for joy or wept in years. I also have no desire to get close to other people and form relationships. This makes it nigh impossible for me to give a shit about even important things. While I don't feel much pain anymore, I also lack the spark that makes life worth living. I feel like a soulless automaton.
Does this sound like it's related to neurodivergence? I'm 100% depressed, but years of therapy and various different medications haven't done much, so I feel like there must be more to it.
I haven't sincerely shouted for joy or wept in years.
This implies that you haven't always felt this way. If so, well you might or might not be neurodivergent, but your complaint is a consequence of treatment resistant depression.
Possibly, it's hard to tell just from that. It could "just" be chronic depression, but there could be comorbid neuro-divergence like autism, or other things like a personality disorder or schizophrenia prodrome. You'd need a psychiatric evaluation to know.
You're describing depersonalization disorder. I had it. Transitioning helped me with it, but that's not the solution for everyone
Right but I still have ADD. It didn't cure my depression, it didn't make me the perfect NT workerdrone and sometimes the side effects are worse than if I hadn't taken it and I need to pause so my nerves can reabsorb the dopamine.
Having chronic depression sucks and it's not "great" if it's caused by ADD because "there's a pill for that" because actually there is no pill for that. There are pills that help with some aspects in your life where being more like non-ADD person would improve your quality of life. But it's not "great" and there is no magic pill.
edit: also how the fuck do they link all those causalities together, like with what authority? What reasoning? Oh yeah you likely are ND (Why do you think this?). Which caused burnout. Not "can cause", it "caused" it. This "caused" that, that "caused" some other thing. This person is make sweeping statements about another users mental health based on two paragraphs??
Oh also they hope OP has ADD because then they can take the pill "for that". Fuck them.
edit2: Just to be superclear on why I have such an issue with this. It's very patronizing. They immediately figured out what was wrong with OP, wow such an easy problem to solve! It trivializes the struggle even if what they said is correct, which I'm very very doubtful about.
edit3: Luckily there is a pill for that and its called "Humility"
edit4 because I can't help myself (wow where's that impulse control I was promised): Taking a pill is the least impactful thing in my life and how I navigate it with ADD. The most impactful thing is stuff like a strict routine for every little fucking thing. It takes ages to find a routine that works, longer still to practice it until it sticks and forcing myself to interrupt what I was doing because the circle with the two dials says so still feels like I'm being cruel to myself even if I can do The ThingTM completely on auto-pilot.
I think you read a bit of your own mood into everything here.
I have severe ADHD. I'd be unemployed without stimulants. In an ideal world that wouldn't matter. But that's not the world we live in.
I also have generalized anxiety disorder. Without medication, my body just decides that I'm going to spend my days and nights in fight or flight mode.
To think! I didn't explain the universe of psychopharmacology and caveat every clause of the original post. the horror. I spoke authoritatively because the original author's pattern of behavior matched my own experience. If someone wanted more information from me then, because this is a forum... they can just ask. You know, instead of going on an emotional screed, then falling victim to the exact same logical fallacies you got so mad about me for. You don't know me or what my credentials or experience are. But here you are, making judgments about me based off of a few dozen words - The exact same thing you accuse me of doing in my original post. And not even for a good cause! For an imagined scenario, borne out by no reality but the universe in your own head.
To elaborate more on my original post (because I really do want to provide extra context and commented just before going to sleep originally), in my experience a lot of psychiatrists tend not to go straight for an ADHD diagnosis because they want to treat the symptoms that are presented to them initially. From the mouth of my own psychiatrist, he wouldn't have tried to screen me for ADHD until about 2 years of other treatments not working to alleviate the symptoms of depression and anxiety.
I say this is someone who has visited maybe a dozen psychiatrists and tried about 25 different medications at multiple doses for my own issues..... BEFORE being diagnosed with ADHD.
In a nutshell, the pattern goes like this for neurodivergent people (ADHD/'tism) (personal sample size of 4):
Early in life and maybe into early adulthood, you can manage pretty well or struggle along just fine to get through school. If you're very intelligent, then you might even do really well at school since you never have to study.
At some point, neurotypical expectations become too much to handle. Since you're young and not burnt out yet, you stretch yourself 110% to meet the demands on your cognitive ability.
Eventually it becomes too much. It might happen slowly or all at once, but it does happen. For me it was around age 25, just after I left college.
In the background of this pattern, You've always had a low level of anxiety or a fear of doing something wrong, along with the everyday stressors of things that are very difficult for a neurodivergent person to do but very easy for neurotypical. That low-grade anxiety just ratchets up over time and never quite goes away.
Long-Term anxiety, when left untreated, turns into depression just about 100% of the time- and that's according to my current psychiatrist.
Some of the symptoms of depression are not necessarily suicidal ideation or tons of crying. It can manifest as you just sitting in your room and staring silently at a wall for 4 hours after work. Typically, the loss of enjoyment in everyday things such as typical hobbies, is a classic sign of depression. That's straight out of the DSM-5. The same pattern holds for other typically dopamine-inducing activities not producing the same result in the depressed person. The inability to feel emotions in the moment is called alexithymia if eventually you do actually feel the feelings. The inability to feel joy is called andhedonia. These may have underlying causes other than depression, but they usually are comorbid with depression regardless of the underlying cause.
Adhd at its core is a lack of dopamine. Stimulants directly raise dopamine in the brain. What stimulants don't do is change your behavior; stimulants change the hardware. Behavior change is up to you.
Starting the reversal of all that is like putting a supermorbidly obese person on a diet. All it does is start a trend. There will be other health problems and issues and medications and interventions that need to take place to fully heal if that's even a possibility. You may need to treat the anxiety and depression and get them to manageable levels before you can ever start a stimulant, just like you can't do gastric bypass surgery on someone who weighs 800 lb.
But the root cause, The start of everything, is some sort of neurodivergence.
The unwillingness of the mental health industry to investigate ADHD (and/or autism) at the outset, unless their patient demands it or mentions it, is a huge barrier to getting the real help that you need when this is the root cause.
One of the biggest tools you can have is knowing the patterns of behavior and information to connect these medical diagnoses and the language they use to your own experience so that you can communicate to a healthcare professional and get the help you need.
I've personally read the DSM-5 cover to cover. I don't claim to be a medical expert and I retained almost none of it except for what was relevant to me and the people close to me. What I can say is that the diagnostic criteria in the DSM-5 for ADHD and autism are woefully inadequate. If you go see a mental healthcare professional that doesn't specialize in these things, then the 10 points for each diagnosis that are listed in the DSM-5 inadequate tools for your healthcare professional to make an accurate diagnosis (or to accurately rule the diagnosis out).
I'm not gonna waste my energy dissecting all that, like the gall of claiming I was projecting my "mood" into everything and then admitting you spoke "authoritatively" about another users mental health because you have ADHD and then writing a huge post telling ME, who you already knew has ADD, what the life of someone with ADHD looks like, again based on what you and your three friends have in common, is just stupid enough to leave on its own without getting into the details of how and which ADHD tropes you just kept regurgitating uncritically and positing them as fact.
But here you are, making judgments about me based off of a few dozen words -
Like yeah, you showed how much of a patronizing ass you are in just a few dozen words and I made a judgement based on that. You didn't have to write this whole essay to prove it.
This bits funny tho
I've personally read the DSM-5 cover to cover.
I don't claim to be a medical expert
Nah you just want to talk with the authority of one
and I retained almost none of it except for what was relevant to me and the people close to me.
Then what good was pointing out you read the DSM-5 cover to cover
Humblebragging is not being humble lol
Do you have other symptoms? Neurodivergences are neurodevelopmental disorders so the question is what were you like as a child?
I have been diagnosed with Autism and ADHD and do not feel any emotions or feel any connection with other people, so it’s possible. It looks like you’re dissociating, which could be caused by regular trauma or neurodivergent sensory/social/expectational trauma.
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Reading your experience through my personal lens:
This sounds like an emotional would. People don't close up and shut down unless they've been deeply hurt. I'm just starting to heal from my neglectful childhood, and I experience much of the same. It's hard to feel, it's hard to sit still (because that's when the bad feelings return, also ADHD), and it's nigh impossible to let people in.
Thank you for opening up in this thread, seriously. Thank you for being a little bit vulnerable.
I can't say if you're neurodivergent, or have "just" gone through some shit. I can say that neurodivergent people are often the target of abuse and neglect.
From what I experience, autism makes some feelings very intense while others get easily pushed in the background. Depending on your situation you might not experience feelings that would feel intense if they came to you
Id add to the general speculation it seems not just depression but dissociation is your main issue. Life lacks salience because your brain is dissociating away so much pain the parts of your brain that are meant to feel things are overmodulated meaning no activity can be had.
I would look into bessel van der kolks work on traumas neurological effects!
I read The Body Keeps the Score back in rehab and it resonated with me quite a bit. Many of the therapies listed in the last third of the book are pretty hard to find in my area sadly.
Not in the sleepy way, but I'm either lying in bed or sitting at my computer most of the time because I lack the volition to do otherwise.
Have you considered wether you might be clinically depressed? What you're describing could kinda sound like it. It's not a big deal if you are. I got the diagnosis and some anti-depressants and it made my life so much better.
I have treatment resistant depression that various different antidepressants and antipsychotics over the years hasn't helped with.
Might be worth investigating an ADHD and/or autism diagnosis as well just to rule those out. I had terrible depression from age 16-29. I got diagnosed with ADHD at 29 and got on stimulant medications and it greatly improved my depression symptoms. I think it was a combo of increased dopamine from the meds and finally understanding how my brain works and why certain things are hard for me.
I am still on SSRIs and probably always will be, but the dark thoughts are so much less frequent and intense these days.
I am very sorry to hear that comrade
I wish I could help you in some way
Could be trauma, could be depression getting worse, could be burn-out from being ND, it could be a lot of not mutually exclusive things.
What would you like to change? Would knowing if you have a disorder and which it is help? For instance having ADD diagnosed helped me by putting a name to what I felt was my "chronic failure disorder" and access to medications for it. But some others might say "So I went through all this trouble only to know I have x. How does that help me in any way? The only difference to before is that I learned the medical term for what's causing me issues"
It's also possible that it's not a disorder at all but a normal reaction to living in hellworld. I felt very similarly until I met my wife and got on the "hell yeah I want a family and kids" track. That kind of outlooked fundamentally changed how I approached things and having such a big goal to work towards makes previously unimprotant things important.
My testosterone levels are probably way too low due to my sedentary lifestyle.
it's all guesses here and nuggets of info there until you do the homework and get tested as far as neuro-divergence goes.
in your case i would seek help from a professional for the depression first.
Have you tried watching a trash show like love is blind? Or an anime that’s a heart string puller? I feel those kinds of shoes can get me pretty emotional at times
Edit: shoes lol. I’m leaving it
It could just be straight up depression but severe insecure attachment could be a contributing factor. Are you familiar with attachment theory? Do you know your attachment style? Can I ask which modalities of therapy you have tried?
Are you familiar with attachment theory? Do you know your attachment style?
I've heard about it before. While I've never had anyone else assess me on it, I'm pretty sure I'm avoidant.
Can I ask which modalities of therapy you have tried?
So far just talk therapy.
Avoidant attachment definitely tracks with not wanting to form relationships with others. There’s a fair amount of good info online that you could dig into and see if it resonates. This Reddit reply has 3 different quizzes to choose from.
I agree with the other reply that said it sounds like dissociation and/or depersonalization. Are those terms a therapist has discussed with you at all? Do you have a past history of trauma? (Obviously no pressure to disclose details, but a lot of what you are describing could be consistent with PTSD and/or C-PTSD, which have a lot of symptom overlap with ADHD, autism, and borderline personality disorder aka emotionally unstable personality disorder.)
IMO, talk therapy can be kind of useless for more complex mental illnesses. I feel like if you’ve been going for years and aren’t noticing improvement, that’s a sign that you might want to consider a different modality. I have been doing EMDR with somewhat mixed results but overall I’d recommend giving it a try. Some other potential modalities to try include somatic experiencing therapy and hypnotherapy. If you go on Psychology Today’s website, you can search for therapists by modalities offered and insurance accepted. It might be worth it to go outside the box a bit since you’ve tried quite a bit and are still really suffering.
Sorry you’re going through this. Mental illness sucks and we live in a sick society that makes it hard to heal or find happiness. I hope you are able to get some answers and/or find treatment that helps. 🩷
Are those terms a therapist has discussed with you at all?
I think so, but we didn't get anywhere helpful with it.
Do you have a past history of trauma?
Yes.
Thank you for your thought and care.
You’re welcome. I empathize with the struggle.
I also saw your reply that you are pretty sedentary. I know everyone says this and it’s annoying but silly little walks for your mental health do help a bit. I recently started exercising again and am devastated to report that it does actually improve my mental health 😭 I know how hard it is when you can barely get out of bed, but if you can even make yourself just do some light stretching on a mat or go for a 10 minute walk, you might notice a bit of improvement in your symptoms. It’s okay if you can’t 🩷
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