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.
You're likely neurodivergent. Which caused burnout. Which caused depression. Which caused alexythymia.
If you have ADHD, great! There's a pill for that. Either way, seeing a psych for depression treatment would probably help you.
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.
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
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.
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.
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
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
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!
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
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.
How do you get this “depression” thing, because it sounds awesome
