SIGNS OF DEPRESSION: FAILURE – AT WORK AND IN RELATIONSHIPS
Depression cuts into a person’s ability to function so that some of the failure that they perceive does have a basis in reality Mental processes slow down and it is difficult to concentrate, to focus or to get things done. Work inevitably suffers; chores remain undone; things get botched up, leaving you with feelings of failure and inadequacy, many of which may be exaggerated but some of which may be true. It is easy to forget how competent you have been at other times and how much you have accomplished before. All these things seem insignificant when you are depressed. Dr Kay Redfield Jamison, in her wonderful memoir An Unquiet Mind, describes the difficulties in thinking she experienced during one of her depressions as follows:
Everything – every thought, word, movement – was an effort. Everything that once was sparkling now was flat. I seemed to myself to be dull, boring, inadequate, thick brained, unlit, unresponsive, chill skinned, bloodless, and sparrow drab. I doubted, completely, my ability to do anything well. It seemed as though my mind had slowed down and burned out to the point of being virtually useless. The wretched, convoluted, and pathetically confused mass of gray worked only well enough to torment me with a litany of my inadequacies and shortcomings in character, and to taunt me with the total, the desperate, hopelessness of it all.
This description of severe depression conveys many aspects of a depressed person’s thinking. In the years that followed the depression described above, Dr Jamison went on to succeed enormously as a psychologist, researcher and writer, but such a future is unthinkable when you are in the depths of a depression. It is important to realize how misleading the conclusions reached in a state of depression can be. Nevertheless, when you are depressed, the difficulty in thinking and functioning is real and has its consequences. Failure that occurs in the context of some of the symptoms of depression described here should therefore be considered a tell-tale sign of depression in its own right.
Failure occurs in the workplace, but also in personal dealings. Relationships require a capacity to attend to another person and an ability to feel engaged with that person, both of which are sorely impaired in depression. Others may well feel put off, and withdraw in response to the reclusiveness of a depressed person.
If you find you have been failing at work or in your personal relationships in a way that has not always been typical for you, and this has been going on for more than a few weeks, consider the possibility that you may be clinically depressed.
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