Depression is a severe medical illness that can negatively affect your overall health. Here are five hidden symptoms of depression everyone should know about.
Depression can be the lingering feelings of emptiness
Depression isn’t always feeling sad or having a depressed mood. Instead, it is a “build-up” of the lingering feelings of emptiness or numbness that can affect you almost constantly.
A symptom of depression can be as simple as the inability to sit still, pacing, or slowed movements and speech.
Depression also goes hand-in-hand with other symptoms like anhedonia – the loss of interest in activities you normally enjoy doing.
Gut health and depression often go hand-in-hand
If you don’t know already, but gut health is a crucial player in your mental health. A good microbiome can relieve symptoms of depression and anxiety and make even it worse at the same time.
Depression also causes a series of other things such as stomach discomfort, nausea, and cramps, that can manifest into IBD or IBS.
There’s anger and irritability too
There’s also anger and irritability with depression. For instance, when someone is depressed, they might also be more angry and irritable than usual.
Things like being impatient with others, ranting out over relatively minor issues, or being angry at yourself could be signs of depression too.
Fatigue and low energy can signal lingering depression too
Any mental health issues, including something as severe as depression, can leave you ready to drop anytime.
For instance, almost 90% of people with depression experience fatigue very commonly, as research on clinical neuroscience suggests.
And when fatigue related to depression strikes you, it won’t go away with sleeping and resting. It can make routine activities physically challenging, in addition to causing issues with concentration, processing information, and connecting with your friends and family.
Faking happiness
Forcing yourself to be happy is a warning sign of depression. This is why it is so possible to disguise a depressed person as a happy person because depression doesn’t have a look.
Someone with depression can put a “happy” face in public and still seem lively, cracking jokes and seeming like they’re doing great. But at the same time, completely crashing when alone.
