Dace wrote:
> . . .and most tellingly of all, inversion of energy levels.
> Instead of losing energy as the day wears on, you're more liable to gain
> energy. All day you feel terrible, and then suddenly you start getting
> energized as bedtime approaches (and this has nothing to do with whether
> you're a morning or night person).
I've learned something now. Ted is right. I never recognized this symptom because by the time I was diagnosed as suffering depression age was beginning to dampen down the difference -- and in looking back to the preceding forty years this habit did not pop into clarity. But for many decades I explained this by assuming I was a "night person." Ted's explanation makes far better retroactive sense to me.And I might add that one symptom I mentioned, the lead ball in the lower chest, has never for me accompanied anxiety/dread/blues when those emotions were in response to actual situations. The lead ball is strictly a characteristic of clinical depression.
Incidentally, there is one variety of depression, called dysthymia, in which the symptoms are less intense than in major depression but which is absolutely continuous, no breaks whatever, year after year after year. Unless almost by accident such sufferers get diagnosed they are apt to assume that that is how everyone feels all the time, for they have no standard of comparison. It is a deadly illness.
Carrol