I’ve been having quite a stressful period of exams recently and at one point I started feeling a mixture of burnt out and depressed. I immediately stopped preparing for the exams, and to ease the thought that I would need to manage 2 more years of this (this is what triggered the depression), I started making plans to switch to an easier degree.
Usually when I feel depressed I know exactly why (my mind tunnel visions on the big picture problem and blocks out the present), and once I address the cause I begin to feel hopeful again. But this time, although doing these things eased the immediate feeling of burnout, I have carried on feeling depressed. I am usually a humorous person so I tried to watch my favourite comedy to rekindle my playfulness but I felt completely numb to the jokes and nuance in it that I usually appreciate. Same when I tried to socialize.
I’ve removed the cause so I don’t understand why I’m still depressed and what else I need to do to make my mind operate normally again. Could it be from other unadressed things in my life that have been in the background? Does anyone have any ideas?
When you start asking yourself “why am I sad” without having a good answer and still just being sad, that’s a good sign that you should seek professional help.
Depression often does not have a cause, in that fixing a problem won’t make the depression go away. I think one of the things often characterising depression is that it is unexplained sadness. Seek help.
Hmm, ok I’ll consider it. Whenever I’ve had it before it went away after I solved the problem. And I’ve only had it for a week atm. But I will if it carries on like this.