1. Switching from happy to sad in a random instant. Depression can kick in and just make you not want to do anything or completely turn a 180 on your personality. Fine line between happiness and sadness, fine line indeed.

2. Boredom. Everything feels like the 6th consecutive hour of daytime television. Even the most exciting things or things you love the most feel like a total drag.

3. Being more socially awkward than usual. Because you don’t want to sound like Eyore, you try to fake being normal. Because you don’t want to seem needy, you’re more standoffish than you would usually be. You wind up just being super awkward.

4. Trying to make other people happy to compensate for how shitty you feel. You wouldn’t know that some people suffer daily with depression because they’re always joking and trying to make others happy/laugh. For me it’s a coping mechanism I guess. I can feel listless and discontent with everything, but I’ll still want to make my loved ones smile in an attempt to make them happier than I am.

5. Sleeping too little. Laughing just a bit louder and smiling just a bit wider than normal. Eating habits suddenly changing, either overeating or eating too little or suddenly losing interest or finding fault with foods they used to enjoy because everything just tastes bland.

6. Cancelling plans or saying no to social events when this is usually not the case.

7. Trying to make as little as an impression as possible, trying to always be just a background figure. If attention is given usually feels undeserved. Almost olympic levels of impostor syndrome.

8. Incapability of long-term thinking. Planning ahead, scheduling, is like rocket science for a kindergartener.

9. Irritability. People assume that having depression just means you’re sad all the time. Not true. You’re just as likely to be irrationally angry about something as you are to be sad about it.

10. Total apathy and dissociation, inability to focus on a task. Most of my time depressed was not active, I didn’t cry or get mad, I didn’t do anything. I stared at my computer or the wall and did things only when told.

11. Trouble thinking, concentrating, and remembering.

12. Loss of interest in sex.

13. Everything seeming like a dulled shade of enjoyment. Like wearing sunglasses indoors, watching tv… oh, and to expand on this, and wearing ear plugs… the colors and sounds are all muted.

14. Shoulder pain. Generally, it’s more considered body ache, but for me it’s my shoulders. Wherever you hold stress and tension in your body will get overworked.

15. Procrastinating, because everything feels like a chore.

16. A messy room. People with depression can sometimes lay in bed for days on end, and go weeks without showering. During that time, the junk really adds up, and even if they get back into the normal rhythm, they don’t care enough or feel like they have enough energy to clean up after themselves.

17. Dropping grades and skipping classes. Too many of the “bad” kids in high schools are treated like delinquents when they just have lost the motivation to accomplish anything. Too many are labeled as a burnout, and turn to marijuana to rid themselves of anxiety. Sometimes even harder drugs. I have never met a drug dealer or buyer that was happy with their life or had a good childhood.

18. Inability to get out of bed at all. I’ll wake up, then sleep, then wake up, then sleep and finally I’ll wake up and lay in bed trying to force myself not to sleep again.

19. Cycling through emotions, narcissism, anger, paranoia, health anxiety, fixation, anhedonia, intrusive thoughts, anger, mania, body dysmorphia, insomnia, panic attacks, ocd.

Most mental health is related, so things associated with other disorders like ADHD, personality disorders, psychosis, anxiety, ptsd can all present similar symptoms in depressed patients. Obviously these are all very different diagnosis, but there is more overlap than people assume.

20. This may sound odd and may just be me – but food doesn’t taste right. Some things are ok but a lot of food tastes like cardboard or is just “off”.

21. Resisting help or treatment. There’s a weird, almost paradoxical comfort in being depressed. Often, you’ll rationalize that you deserve to feel miserable. You might actively push away others who try to help, or even lash out at them. And when that person gives up, you feel a sick sort of comfort because your misery is now justified. You’re a piece of shit who deserves to be unhappy. The person who gave up must not truly care about you. These are lies your depression tells you, and you believe it because it feels true.

22. Over-giving. Not sure if this is everyone with depression or just me, but I find myself always over-giving in romantic relationships, and even with my family and friends. I guess it boils down to trying to buy the love and affection from people because I don’t feel good enough, and I subconsciously worry that if I stop giving my all, then they won’t want to be with me. A sad and pathetic example is how I just bought my boyfriend of four months new tiles for the floors of his entire condo, and a trip to Europe this summer…while he couldn’t even be bothered to get me flowers for Valentine’s Day. I know I need to stop, but giving becomes a weird addiction I suppose.

23. Carelessness. You don’t care about what happens anymore to yourself. You can go fuck yourself up and you won’t care because you don’t feel like you are worth protecting/keeping safe anymore.

24. Not keeping up with your hygiene. Whether it’s not showering, brushing your teeth, or even combing your hair.

25. Taking one seemingly normal every day task and have it turn into a gigantic insurmountable ordeal. Like taking a shower. Doing laundry. Calling someone.

26. Being paranoid that all my loved ones hate me, feeling like I’m a burden on their lives because I talk to them about my issues. I know they love me, I know they would drop everything for me because they do. But I still find myself distancing myself when I get bad enough because I want them to be happy and when I’m depressed I feel like a burden.

27. Letting the dishes or laundry pile up until you have nothing to eat on or nothing to wear; but that doesn’t matter because you can just eat garbage take out and wear the same pajamas everyday and still not be bothered to keep your home clean

28. Co-dependence. You want to be alone, but to get anything done you have to ask people to help you. Only you don’t actually ASK them, you just say what you don’t have or can’t do, and hope they volunteer to help based on what you said, because asking them directly would make you feel guilty.

29. Starving yourself without noticing.

30. Not sleeping well – sleeping too much / too little. Waking up at odd times during the night. That sort of thing.

If you stop dreaming at all (I.e. not even nightmares) my doc said that’s when you really need to see someone.

31. Forgetting everything. Whether it’s appointments in the future, school stuff or what I did yesterday. It’s like vanished.

32. Looking forward to absolutely nothing. As in…there is just about nothing that excites you and you struggle to get out of bed without dreading what lingering thoughts might pop into your head arbitrarily.

33. Isolation.

34. The re-starting or commencing of “bad habits” such as smoking, drinking, eating junk.

35. I quit cleaning. I quit caring about the fact there’s 16 bags of trash around me. I completely zone out of real life and just go through motions.

36. Being angry at people for literally breathing.

37. The lack of interest or disassociation while your hanging out with people.

38. The constant, overwhelming mental fatigue. Not necessarily physical fatigue but the feeling of chains around you, some kind of pressure keeping everything back.

39. Sudden cheerfulness. If that happens out of the blue after a long spell of depression, the person is likely going to commit suicide and is cheerful for the relief it’ll bring. Especially if it’s accompanied by giving stuff away. Be vigilant if your depressed loved one is suddenly super cheerful.

40. Masturbating non stop. Like countless times in a day till you’re dry to the bone.

41. Loss of interest in the things you love to do.

42. It feels like your brain is on “low power mode”, anyone who has depression will know what I’m talking about. It’s as if your brain isn’t living life to its fullest intensity, no matter how bad you try to make it to.

43. Weight loss or weight gain.

44. The fucking cloudiness you have over all of your thoughts.

45. The “Impossible Task.” A seemingly simple chore that is just blocked in my mind from performing. Usually involves phone calls. I will need to call to make an appointment or just return a business call. If I actually could do it, it would take five minutes. But I procrastinate and do anything to avoid it, usually making the issue worse.

For example, I have maybe five dishes and a bunch of silverware in my sink. They’ve been there a ridiculously long time. There is nothing preventing me from doing them; it makes no logical sense to leave them. But I will cover them with a dish cloth so I don’t have to see them and use paper plates instead. I will do yard work (which I hate), clean the toilet, alphabetize my media…all to avoid those fucking dishes.

And the task just looms bigger and bigger and gets harder to do.

46. Finding different ways to cause yourself pain without making visible marks.

47. Social withdrawal. You can’t carry conversations unless provoked. One word sentences become normal. A lot of people think it’s just being in a “bad mood” but it’s really because you want to be left alone to wallow in your own misery.

48. Being the jokester of the friend group. I know I compensated for being sad all the time with cracking jokes and seeming over happy all the time

49. Memory problems. People think depression is just being sad but it’s actually debilitating.

50. Poor gum health and poor gut health.