# Back to the basics of my self exploration...does this sound like depression or not?



## HotthenCold (Apr 6, 2013)

Hi there,

I'm thinking myself in circles (or toroidal vortices) so I don't know if this feeling is depression or just a hideous amount of self indulgence and laziness...

I often get stuck in ruts where I don't feel like doing anything. A more accurate way to describe the feeling is a mixture of dread and indifference. I do enough to keep my life together. I pay my rent, have a job, groceries, etc, but anything beyond that is very difficult. I find it very hard to concentrate and increasingly can't be bothered. For example I could read the most interesting headline about a subject that interests me, but once I start reading the actual article I get extremely bored and impatient and move on to something else. I type like a madman because I really just want to be finished. I barely think sentences and paragraphs through because I always feel impatient and bored and want to do something else....then I get to something else and don't want to do it either. I'm lucky enough to have a job that gives me lots of free time, but I'm alone and so I end up spending a lot of time doing nothing. I feel like I'm wasting my life but when it comes down to it I'm a mixture of hyperactive and melancholic...

Does this sound like depression or just bad habits?


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## David Baxter PhD (Apr 6, 2013)

Hotthencold, what you describe could suggest a variety of diagnoses but online diagnoses is at best unethical and foolish and we simply don't permit it here.

You need to see a face-to-face clinician with the expertise and authority to ask you some pertinent questions about your symptoms and your personal and family history and provide you with an informed diagnostic impression.


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## Banned (Apr 6, 2013)

I don't know what it sounds like but I can relate to a lot of it too.  I dont' feel like its bad habits (for me)...I just feel like it's how my moods drift and swing and my interests shift even in the moment.  I don't focus on very much for very long so it's not something I had thought much about in the past, to be honest, but yes, I too experience a lot of this.


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## David Baxter PhD (Apr 6, 2013)

Turtle said:


> I don't focus on very much for very long so it's not something I had thought much about in the past



Perhaps that's the problem. Perhaps that's the first thing that needs to change.


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## Banned (Apr 7, 2013)

I've been that way my whole life. I rarely finish anything I start. Big projects are a bad idea for me. I am notorious for starting everything and finishing nothing because I lose interest after ten minutes. I've had half painted rooms in the house, half cleaned rooms, loads of laundry half done, university started and never finished, dozens of books started and never finished, agility equipment in my garage half built, recipes half mixed in the freezer, the list could go on forever. I get sometimes big, and sometimes little ideas, and run with them, and then stop right after starting. 

At the very least I know with jobs I need to be the idea girl and not the executor of the ideas. When I was a business analyst/project coordinator I hated my job because I would sit on projects that would last for weeks and months. It was painful, and now I know why. My mind simply doesn't last that long. I need jobs where when I leave at the end of the day there is no carry-over of my work into the next day. Thankfully my three jobs are all set up like that now.


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## MHealthJo (Apr 7, 2013)

Things like this sometimes ring bells for me with my ADHD husband, or can be one of the many facets of types of depression or affective disorders, or one of many different things. Yeah as Dr Baxter says, in-person thorough consultations are the only way to not go on a red herring, to be sure to rule out other physiological stuff, or to avoid confusing or missing different conditions or situations that can look similar and have similar traits. Plus its possible to have more than one thing going on... wouldn't want to miss out on finding out the full picture.


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## Banned (Apr 7, 2013)

I've always been aware of it and just chalked it up to my quirky personality.  Never occurred to me to think anything more of it....as I've gotten older ive learned not to take things on because I know I won't finish them, so as much as possible I try to avoid it (but still fall prey to it from time to time).


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## HotthenCold (Apr 7, 2013)

Do I need to see a psychiatrist to be properly diagnosed?

I have a counsellor (who I haven't seen in a few months) and an addictions counsellor (who I see regularly) but I'm not sure if they are certified to diagnose conditions. I'll ask them and if they can't help me I'll seek their advice on where to go. Thanks all!


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## David Baxter PhD (Apr 7, 2013)

In Canada, only physicians (including psychiatrists) and licensed psychologists have the legal authority to provide a diagnosis.


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