Depression hurts

From a reader:

I've loved reading your blog. I stumbled across it 6 months ago and now I read it every week. It really is fascinating to me, even though I know I'm not a sociopath. I'm empathetic to a pathetic degree most days. I feel deeply, remorse is my middle name and I can't manipulate people very well.  

However, I've found an interesting side-effect of my depression is a distinct lack of feeling. Most people that I've known when they say they feel depressed they feel melancholy for no reason. I'm not in that category at all. 

When I get depressed, I feel numb, as in nearly nothing at all. It becomes harder for me to tolerate people, so I put on this mask to pretend that I'm alright. I keep it firmly in place, saying all the right things and making all the right facial expressions, but really I'm just trying to bide my time until my emotions "come back on," as it were. 

I know that my depression can be the dangerous kind. When I get too deep, as in too far away from my emotions, I start contemplating things with a more distant mind from morality. I've thought more than once that I could definitely murder someone in cold blood and not feel a thing. People closest to me notice the difference and say I get "colder." I act more selfish, in the sense that I'm putting myself before others which goes against my normal behavior. A close friend also mentioned that I am more honest, but in a mean way, that my filter kind of somehow dies with my emotions. 

When I was a teenager, I used to fall into depression more often than I do now. I would make a game out of it, sometimes kind of willing myself to stay numb for weeks because I knew it would give me an edge during certain periods of my life. But the game nearly made me kill myself once, so I never did it again.   

I'm strangely lucky that my depression is a minor form usually brought about by stress, so if I'm careful I can manage to keep my emotions. However, when I lose them, it's strangely liberating. I've often wondered if maybe there's going to come a day when I go numb and never get my emotions back. I know logically that's not how it works, but it's a strange dream/nightmare I've had since I was about fifteen or so. 

Every time I read about sociopaths and you share your experiences, I wonder if maybe I could've been one given the right trigger at some point in my childhood, or that I might become one if given the right circumstances. It's interesting and a little scary to contemplate, but your articles make me feel at ease with the idea more and more. 

I also think you're really brave for coming out and talking for sociopaths. I've met one self-aware sociopath a long time ago who told me that he didn't want to get killed for being what he was, but he knew if people found out about him they'd destroy him. I wish there was a bigger conversation about sociopathy, ASPD, and so on. I think that actually empaths and sociopaths could benefit from talking about it, since in the end we are all human but nobody is technically "normal." 

Please keep writing and keep the conversation going. I look forward to reading more soon. 

M.E. This is actually pretty interesting. Over the past year or so I have been sort of trying to do the opposite, to really try to amplify my feelings by concentrating on them and really indulging the "feel" of them -- like an emotional hearing aide. So I am more aware of my own emotions, even if I'm still don't necessarily experience other people's emotions via empathy. But if I get sick or otherwise overloaded, I also shut down the emotions and feel numb for a while. And I agree, it feels really great. My therapist doesn't allow me to stay there for long, he says it's counterproductive to what we're trying to ultimately accomplish, but it certainly is very useful for almost anything of practical importance, at least in my life.

Do you feel like your depression is actual depression? Or is it a byproduct of some other issue, like stress or prolonged frustration, boredom, etc.?

Reader:

My depression has been diagnosed, so it's real, but it gets worse under certain periods of stress. Even good stress, like weddings and traveling, can hit me so hard and knock me into a numb state. I'm always aware it's there, though, like a nagging itch under my skin.

I understand that a lot of people suffer from depression and just depression and the depression is not a side effect of other issues or feelings, but I do wonder how often diagnosing someone with depression is like diagnosing someone with a runny nose (symptom), without really looking at the cause. 

And in terms of sociopaths, which of these depressions could they feel? The meaningless depression? The chemical depression? Other types