About two weeks ago I was diagnosed with severe depression. Apparently, I have had severe depression since I was about 12. I am in my early 40's now and never realised that that was what that was.
I used to say I was dead from the neck down. I would study how other people responded to situations because mostly I was numb...I was secretly terrified I was some sort of sociopath. Turns out it was just severe depression.
They even threw in a healthy dose of social anxiety. What I mistook for being a weird kind of extroverted introvert was just bouts of severe depression mixed with social anxiety. Well! Who knew?
As soon as I began to do some research into the symptoms of these two mental health issues, everything fell into place for me.
Things I had or hadn't felt, things I had or hadn't done - all of it suddenly made sense. After all these years. The weight of worrying about what the hell is wrong with me is lifted. I know. I am depressed and anxious...and it doesn't look anything like you would expect.
I am not one to take medicine unless absolutely necessary so I though I would try St Johns Wort and see if that would help the mood swings, the lethargy, the sadness. Other than having extremely vivid dreams I didn't think it was doing anything until my son piped up today that I have been weird all week. He couldn't put his finger on it and he wasn't sure yet whether it was good weird or bad weird (he is a peculator of thoughts and feelings and needs to have them simmering for a bit before filtering them through) but something is different apparently.
I will take that as a win.