When Competence Masks High-Functioning Depression |
High-functioning depression has been increasingly entering mental health discussions in recent years, but it has not yet entered the diagnostic guidelines as a legitimate diagnosis. The term describes a chronic, low-grade dysphoria that does not prevent functioning in obvious ways but makes life feel hollow and mechanical.
You might notice the changes only subtly at first. Joy has become muted, and you need to make an effort just to get a little excited. Your body feels heavier, and routines that once felt easy now feel hard. Perhaps you are sleeping significantly more than before, or conversely, lying awake with racing thoughts has become so severe and unrelenting that you find yourself getting desperate just to find any rest at all.
We can think of the mechanism of high-functioning depression this way: At some point in your life, perhaps due to complex trauma or because the mental burden on you had become overwhelming, your psyche created an internal split. Indeed, some degree of compartmentalization or developing an outward-facing persona to cope with worldly demands is actually a rather common coping mechanism. But when a coping mechanism meant for short-term use in a stressful situation is held for too long or too rigidly, it could harden into a fixed way of being, a dysfunctional pattern that no longer protects you and instead carries its own detrimental impact.
In high-functioning depression, what develops is a division between your........