Perfectly Hidden Depression and Classic Depression: The Dramatic Difference

How is perfectly hidden depression different than classic depression?

 

Let’s start by looking at classic depression.

Often, if you’re moderately depressed, you don’t realize how slowly the lights have gone down on the joy or satisfaction with your life. But you do realize on some level how much you’re struggling with negativity, irritability, or sadness. “I’m just not myself.” You’re isolating from others to protect yourself and even those you love, and feel as if your energy is imploding inward.

This kind of depression can worsen with time, and deepen into a more severe depression that entrenches itself into who you are and how you think. If that happens, it can rob you of the ability to see opportunity, realize options, or focus on others.

At that point, perhaps you can barely function. You take your kids to school, but you go back to bed when you go home. Or you go to work, but can’t focus, so you offer excuses why you’re not meeting a deadline. You’re feeling more and more lost.

Maybe you’ve even had thoughts that death would be welcome, or that taking your own life could be the answer.

And then someone, a friend, a doctor, a therapist, tells you, “I think you’re depressed.” And dependent on your beliefs about mental health and mental illness, you can accept that-  almost with relief – and seek treatment.

The good news is that you can get better. With exercise, therapy, medication, mindfulness, newer treatments like Ketamine or Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS), and of course hard work, you can take the first of many small steps toward moving through your depression. As Andrew Solomon wrote, ” The opposite of depression isn’t happiness, it’s vitality.”

So, how is perfectly hidden depression different?

Perfectly hidden depression (PHD) is a term I coined to describe a syndrome, or a set of characteristics and behaviors, that enable you to detach from your emotional pain. That doesn’t mean your pain isn’t there, or that it’s not having an effect. But you’ve learned to automatically and perhaps even unconsciously keep emotional pain camouflaged by achievement, success and an outwardly perfect-seeming life.

Maybe you grew up in a home being abused or with a parent with an addiction. All of that was secret so you kept that secret due to fear. Maybe the parental expectation that you were measured against was one of “you need to look perfect.”

And so you did.

What causes a child to adopt this protective way of being can vary widely.

But now, that very process has imprisoned you as an adult. You turn to the next task – to an expectation that you must surpass or exceed, to prove your worth. And you must never let anyone “see” the real struggle within.

So what does PHD look like? You’re performing to the best of your ability all the time, every day. You push yourself to the limit, putting others before yourself, even believing that any focus on yourself is somehow selfish. You’re living very deliberately, getting things done, accomplishing the seemingly impossible…all while ignoring the memories of how you were deeply hurt in your childhood.

You avoid revealing too much about yourself, laughing off your fatigue. You don a mask of happiness every day, and you may have even be fooling yourself that the mask is the real you. Others admire you. “You have an awesome family!” You hear, and, “I could only dream of living your life.”  The only choice that feels safe? Maintaining that image.

And you can become terrified of discovery.

When depression is “seen” and when it isn’t…

If you identify with with classic depression, you may struggle to admit it, or fear you’ll be stigmatized if you do. Yet others notice, others see the change in you. You see the change in you. In fact, this change being “seen” or “noticed” is a basic part of classic depression’s diagnosis. And hopefully, you’ll seek help.

But if you identify with PHD (here’s a questionnaire if you’re wondering if you might), no one is concerned about you. You’re alone in whatever awareness you have that something is deeply wrong. And again, you can fear that your vulnerability might be discovered.

Let’s change that.

Know that perfectly hidden depression is real. It is its own type of depression that will not fit classic diagnostic criteria. Yet, it’s just as real as its classic cousin. And… it can be just as lethal.

Because being invisible hurts.

 

 

By the way… 

Send me a message about what your own mom was like!! You can record by clicking below and ask your question or make a comment. You’ll have 90 seconds to do so and that time goes quickly. By recording, you’re giving SelfWork (and me) permission to use your voice on the podcast. I’ll look forward to hearing from you!