Depression is a very common effect of childhood abuse and trauma. It’s also a well-known and common mental illness that affects over 250 million people.
You likely know about the common signs of depression such as feelings of emptiness, hopelessness, sadness, and suicidality. But there are more nuances to depression than the common list of symptoms we tend to hear about.
And though there are varying levels of depression, it is still something that many people who were raised by abusive parents struggle with on a daily basis. For me, dealing with depression as a child, teenager, and adult were all different experiences. So even for myself during different phases of my life, depression still manifested itself in different ways.
As a child, I was known as an attention seeker and “crybaby”. As a teenager, depression mostly manifested as anger, irritation, and rebellion. And now as an adult, while I mask it better, it’s more of the “textbook” representation of persistent depression, also known as dysthymia. You can read more about my experiences with depression.
Learning about other possible signs of depression can help abuse survivors better understand their mental health so they can create a plan to address those symptoms.
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1. Executive dysfunction
Executive function is a set of skills that allows you to pay attention, remember information, and multitask. It is the range of cognitive, behavioral, and emotional difficulties that often occur as a result of another disorder, in this case, depression.
Many people with depression may struggle with executive dysfunction. They may have difficulties planning, organizing, strategizing, concentrating, and managing time.
They may also have short attention spans – often spacing out and having trouble comprehending what other people are saying, what they’re reading or watching, or what they’re currently doing.
These individuals may also have trouble making decisions, big or small. And after finally making a decision, they may second-guess it.
However, it’s important to note that executive dysfunction doesn’t affect every depressed individual in the same way. One person may struggle more with forgetfulness while another one may struggle more with concentration.
2. Psychomotor impairment
Psychomotor impairment refers to the disruption of the connections between mental and muscle functions. It affects regular day-to-day activities and functions like the way you move and talk.
Depression can become severe enough to physically interfere with motor functions, making tasks exponentially more exhausting and tedious.
Things you can do without thinking like showering, dressing, or brushing may now require attention and effort. Depressed people can be easily exhausted even from the smallest of tasks.
When speaking, someone with depression may forget certain words, stutter, stammer, speak slowly, or have trouble getting the words out even though they know what they want to say.
3. Unexplained physical pain
Someone struggling with depression might experience muscle pain, joint pain, headaches, stomachaches, and nausea without any apparent reason.
4. Anhedonia
Another hidden sign of depression is anhedonia, the inability to feel pleasure.
People with depression may no longer find joy or pleasure in anything, even activities they used to enjoy. It could even cause the opposite where doing things they used to enjoy can bring them dread or irritation.
5. Apathy & Numbness
When people think of depression, they usually think about sadness. But often, depression can take on the form of apathy, where the individual has no interest, concerns, or feelings in anything or anyone whatsoever. They might not even want to do simple things like eating, bathing, reading, or talking to people.
Due to their lack of interest in pretty much anything, they may not be up to date on the latest trends, current events, and news.
Numbness is similar to apathy. It mostly refers to one’s emotions whereas apathy refers more to one’s behavior or state of being. Emotional numbness is when the individual doesn’t feel any particular emotions or sensations.
This can cause a sense of isolation or emotional disconnect from the rest of the world. At times, numbness can actually be more unbearable than sadness.
6. Lack of energy and motivation
Most depressed people usually lack the energy and motivation to do things, even simple tasks, which may come across as laziness to themselves or other people. They are also often tired, even after long periods of rest.
7. Reluctance to try new things
People with depression may be very reluctant to try new things, even something that’s considered minor like watching a new TV show, playing a new game, or reading a new book. As a result, they are also very resistant to change, good or bad, because it means doing something new or different from what they’re used to.
8. Dissociation
Dissociation is disconnecting from one’s thoughts, feelings, memories, sensory experience, or sense of self. It can range from a mild emotional detachment from surroundings to a more severe disconnection from physical and emotional experiences.
During dissociation, it’s as if you’re looking at yourself from a third-person view. It also comes with a feeling of surrealism, like you’re not grounded in reality anymore. Dissociation might occur in people with depression due to overwhelming numbness.
9. Carelessness & Neglect
Someone slipping into depression may start becoming careless or neglectful about things they used to care about, whether it’s sentimental items, healthy habits, or even personal values.
The individual may start neglecting their treasured possessions and treat them carelessly or give them away.
Healthy habits such as diet, physical activity, and hygiene may become unhealthy or nonexistent. They may not shower, brush, shave, change clothes, or clean regularly like they used to. Basically, any forms of self-care or essential chores may be done poorly or completely ignored.
Most people live according to a set of values that they believe in. However, someone struggling with depression may neglect those values. For example, if someone values respect, depression may cause them to become ruder towards others.
10. Risky and reckless behavior
Someone with depression may often engage in risky and reckless behavior like substance abuse, smoking, drunk driving, wild partying, or spontaneous, irresponsible adventures. This is usually a form of escapism or coping method for their depression.
11. Irritability and angry outbursts
Irritability, angry outbursts, frustration, agitation, and short tempers are especially common in teenagers and men struggling with depression. Angry outbursts might occur for even minor matters. It’s like any little thing can tick them off. A lot of people with seemingly anger issues may just be depressed.
12. Low frustration and stress tolerance
One small problem or inconvenience can bring a depressed person extreme frustration and stress. And the frustration or stress can lead to tears or even a mental breakdown.
13. Lack of patience
Someone with depression might have a lack of patience, which can be associated with short tempers, angry outbursts, and low frustration and stress tolerance. They might have little to no patience with things like casual conversations, advertisements, or even waiting for the microwave to heat something.
14. Obsession with escapism
Escapism is the tendency to seek distraction and relief from reality, typically through activities involving entertainment or imagination (such as maladaptive daydreaming mentioned below).
People struggling with depression might have an increased desire or even obsession with escapism. For example, most of their activities might consist of binge-watching TV, spending a crazy amount of time playing video games, or constantly browsing social media.
They may feel this need to constantly be distracted so they don’t have to be alone with their negative thoughts or feelings.
15. Maladaptive Daydreaming
A hidden sign of depression that’s pretty unknown but I’ve personally experienced is maladaptive daydreaming. Maladaptive daydreaming refers to extremely vivid daydreams that distract a person from their real life. These daydreams may have their own characters, settings, plots, and other detailed, story-like features.
Daydreams may be triggered by real-life events and cause the person to have difficulty completing their real-life tasks. Experts are unsure of what causes maladaptive daydreaming. However, as someone who spent my teenage years doing mostly this, I would say it was a huge form of escapism for me. The reality was too hard to bear that living in my own made-up world made living more bearable.
You can read a little about my experiences with maladaptive daydreaming.
16. Passive suicidal ideation
Passive suicidal ideation, unlike suicidal ideation, is thinking about dying or having a desire to be dead without actively making a specific plan to carry it out.
For me, passive suicidal ideation was very common in my teenage and young adult years. I often visualized myself dying in different scenarios. For instance, if I was standing on a bridge, I visualized or “wished” someone would push me off of it. Or if there was an incoming car, I visualized or “wished” it would somehow lose control and hit me.
17. Reclusion
Depressed individuals might consistently avoid social interaction or going out to events. They may generally spend long periods alone because any sort of interaction or activity comes across as exhausting. They might also lack a sense of community and may not belong or feel like they belong to any specific group or social circle.
18. Trouble maintaining relationships
Someone struggling with depression may avoid reaching out to people or ignore phone calls or texts. Other people may see it as the person neglecting or not caring about the relationship when really, they’re just too tired and depressed to deal with it.
Some individuals may intentionally or inadvertently push people away or shut them out. Some might even purposefully say hurtful things to others just so people would avoid interacting with them.
On the other hand, some individuals may not necessarily refuse invitations or talk, but just might never initiate it themselves, which also strains their relationships.
19. Cheerful facade
Some people can hide their depression really well if they want to. They might hide it behind a cheerful demeanor because they don’t want to draw attention to themselves. Or they might not want people to worry about them.
20. Hiding behind jokes
People with depression may hide it behind a jokey, humorous façade to compensate for their feelings of sadness, emptiness, and worthlessness. They may laugh and make jokes about every little thing.
This is true for many comedians where comedy is their way of coping with depression. Someone with depression might also crack a lot of jokes about themselves. What others see as a form of maybe healthy self-deprecation might be self-hate and feelings of worthlessness disguised as a joke.
21. Refusal to talk about themselves
Individuals with depression may avoid subjects about themselves. If you ask them “How are you?”, they may divert it by asking “How are you?” instead. They may come across as secretive or vague about their personal life or themselves.
22. Lack of contribution to conversations
When conversing with a depressed person, they may have minimal to no contribution to the conversation. They might have a monotone a low voice, responding using only short or one-word phrases. Serious subjects might also make them uncomfortable that they might try to divert it or make light of the topic.
23. Overly talkative
On the other end of the spectrum, some depressed individuals can be overly talkative. This can be due to the fact that they don’t like awkward silences because they’re scared to be alone with their thoughts.
24. Self-sabotage & Negative Self-Talk
Someone with depression may often engage in self-sabotage and set themselves up for failure. They might create cycles that could worsen the depression such as constantly beating themselves up over little things to the point they spiral back into their negative thinking and self-talk.
Many people with depression often have a harsh inner critic that dictates who they are and why they’re unlovable, unaccepted, and never good enough.
25. Avoidance of tasks no matter what
Some people with depression might find certain tasks so dreadful that they would completely go out of their way just to avoid doing them. They might do this even if avoiding said task requires more effort and suffering than simply doing the task to begin with.
26. Low libido and lack of interest in sex
Low libido and disinterest in sex are not usually talked about because it’s NSFW. But it’s a very real issue that people with depression might struggle with. And I’m not referring to naturally low-libido or asexual individuals.
A disinterest or lack of pleasure from sex only becomes a problem when an individual who used to find pleasure in sex no longer does. This could put a strain on their confidence, self-esteem, body image, and relationships.
Depression can also cause erectile dysfunction in males, something else not often talked about. This can further reinforce their self-doubt, insecurities, and depression.
27. Defeatist and hypercritical
People with depression might have a defeatist and hypercritical attitude. They may be quick to give up before trying, refuse invitations, shoot down suggestions, turn down opportunities, disapprove of plans, and find flaws in everything even if there aren’t any.
As you can see, this is also a form of self-sabotage that can reinforce their feelings of worthlessness, hopelessness, and that no one likes them.
28. Lack of purpose and future
One common thing depression does is create this sort of short-sightedness. A lot of people struggling with depression can’t see past the end of the day. They might have trouble picturing the future. And when they do, it’s usually a future with no future.
A lot of individuals with depression have no desires, no goals, no dreams, and no sense of purpose. Even if they have desires and dreams, they’re usually not considered realistically achievable to them.
Unsurprisingly, many people with depression are pessimistic. They may tend to focus on the negatives of life, such as only seeing the worst of anyone or anything, expecting the worst outcome of a given situation, and having no hope or confidence in the future or themselves.
29. Self-hate
Some people with depression are self-loathing to the point they might not understand how other people don’t hate them, too. Self-love or even self-acceptance can be such a foreign concept to them that they don’t know how others can ever do it.
Again, this can be a form of self-sabotage where they make themselves unlovable and unable to receive love, thus reinforcing their belief that they are indeed unlovable and worthless.
30. Selflessness
Someone struggling with depression might prioritize other people’s well-being, interests, preferences, and success above their own even if it’s something that makes them uncomfortable or that they personally dislike.
This may be due in part to their lack of a sense of self, lack of self-love, and wanting to make up for feeling like a burden. They may be people-pleasers and never want to inconvenience others because they might feel that their existence is a problem and a burden.
31. Life on autopilot
For some people with depression, it may feel like life is on autopilot. It’s like they don’t have a sense of time. The days may run themselves and it could be as if life is just passing them by. They’re usually not really mentally or emotionally present to experience it.
32. Fear of getting better or feeling good
Getting better or feeling good can be horrifying to some depressed individuals. They might not be used to it and might be scared to feel any form of pleasure or happiness because they know that it’ll be taken away at some point. As a result, they may even intentionally avoid this feeling or circumstances that could give this feeling.
33. Aware of the depression
A lot more people than we think are very aware of how their mind is warped by their depression. They are aware that life isn’t that bad. But the issue is that they just can’t help but feel that way.
Conclusion
Depression manifests itself in many different possibilities that this list of possible signs couldn’t possibly cover. How depression affects one person might be different in someone else. For example, one individual might constantly reject social interaction while another might go out every day as a way to distract themselves.
Also, a possible sign of depression in one person might not be a sign in another. Someone who doesn’t like going out might not necessarily be depressed; they may just be very introverted and prefer to be at home.
So remember, whether or not you fulfill or not fulfill things on this list does not necessarily mean you have or don’t have depression. The best way to know for sure is to reach out to a certified therapist who can give you a proper diagnosis.
Free Resources
If you don’t have access to mental healthcare or don’t know where to start, here are some free online resources to check out.
- American Psychological Association – Psychology Help Center
- Anxiety and Depression Association of America
- Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance
- Freedom of Fear
- Half of Us
- Psychology Today – Find a Therapist
- Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration
And here are some books about managing depression.
Sign up for a free trial of Kindle Unlimited to read some of these titles for free or at a discount. Or sign up for a free trial with Audible and claim an audiobook for free, which is yours to keep even when you cancel.
- Your Happiness Toolkit: 16 Strategies for Overcoming Depression, and Building a Joyful, Fulfilling Life
- Feeling Great: The Revolutionary New Treatment for Depression and Anxiety
- Maybe You Should Talk To Someone: A Therapist, HER Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed
- Learned Hopefulness: The Power of Positivity to Overcome Depression by Dan Tomasulo
- This Is Depression: A Comprehensive, Compassionate Guide for Anyone Who Wants to Understand Depression