In my life depression is the worst thing in the world. Depression takes away everything from me. It tends to destroy love, life, work, everything.
And while this is due to the symptoms of depression like, “depressed mood,” it’s also due to something not mentioned in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM, the manual that defines mental illnesses) – apathy. Apathy basically means that you don’t care about anything. And when you do a “care-ectcomy” on a life, it makes it seem not worth living at all.
What is Apathy in Depression?
Apathy is, depressingly, defined as:
- absence or suppression of passion, emotion, or excitement.
- lack of interest in or concern for things that others find moving or exciting.
And oh my, is that ever painful.
When others around you are excited, you’re not. When others around you show passion for a subject, you don’t. When something great happens, you just don’t care. It really does feel like something has been surgically removed from your soul.
Apathy – I’m going to Italy. I Don’t Care.
Tomorrow I’m going to Italy. Really. Parma – the place where parmesan and prosciutto come from. It’s supposed to be the region in Italy with the very best of food. It’s amazing. Sun, gelato, risotto, relaxation – I should be freakin’ thrilled.
I’m not, of course. I barely care. When I think about travelling to Italy, all I can think of is how it’s going to disrupt my bipolar disorder. All I can think of is how the time change is going to fuck with me and how difficult 16 hours of travel is going to be on my brain. I should be so thankful that I get to do something that others would love to do. And I’m grateful – in theory – but in emotional fact, I feel pretty much nothing about it. It just feels like an interruption and annoyance. In other words, I feel apathetic.
Apathy in Depression Hurts So Much
It hurts so much to not be able to be happy or excited about my international trip. It’s so painful to see the excitement or others and not be able to share it. It’s agony to see enjoyment dangled in front of me and not be able to grasp it. I absolutely hate it.
And perhaps worse, is that other people judge me for it. Other people want to know what the hell is wrong with me that I’m not excited. They don’t understand that it’s just depression. They don’t understand that apathy is just one of the horrific depression symptoms I have to deal with. They don’t, and seemingly can’t, see it as a symptom of a disease because they can’t conceive of a “care-ectomy.” And I don’t blame them. I would think you couldn’t remove this piece of a person’s soul either. Except, of course, for the fact that I live it.
Dealing with Depression and Apathy
The only thing I know to do about apathy is to accept it and not beat myself up about the feelings that I don’t have. It’s natural to want to feel bad about the fact that I don’t feel good in situations where I should, but I can’t do that. Because feeling bad about feeling bad just feeds on itself and makes depression worse.
So, apathy is a symptom of depression. Apathy is a symptom of a disease, just like sneezing is a symptom of a cold. I can’t control it any more than a sneeze. I will just have to hope that I’ll feel something when I get there. And accept my own limitations. Because anything else just makes it worse.
Natasha,
How am I supposed to deal with Bipolar II, even though my medication keeps me “stable” most of the time, and the grief of having lost my 27 yr old daughter to a heart illness precipitated by IVDU? There is lots of help out there for grief, but not along with BP. I am so lost and empty but filled with indescribable pain.
Hi Shannon,
I’m so sorry you’re in that situation. It must be very hard.
I would suggest trying to reach out to both grief groups and bipolar groups. You may not be able to get all your needs met in a single place, but maybe in both, you can.
Try the DBSA, MHA, and NAMI. (Just Google them.)
– Natasha Tracy
Since I’ve been married, I’ve buried 16 people I loved. -16.
I wake up stunned many mornings with and in a terrified state of mind. Fear, for no apparent reason –oh yeah- bipolar.
I never have good dreams–just frightening ones. I am in a constant state of crushing and heavy anxiety. Tight head, tight body so bad I have to remind myself to let go and breath. I’m a hypochondriac Every symptom is analyzed ad nauseum. Either I’m starving when I wake or I don’t eat a thing until around 3. Christmas time is here and I’m emotionally paralyzed. I’m missing those 16 people x’s 1000,000. My last best friend just passed in August and I’m devastated. I’m feeling so sorry for myself I could puke. I can barely function at times. Even washing my hair can take me a few hours to decide to do it. WHY??? I find myself staring for long periods-and apparently that’s disassociating- and you’re damn right I am. I get cravings for the oddest things like watermelon in the winter.
I use 5 or 6 down pillows when I sleep. WHO does this ? (to me these things are crazy) I over analyze everything I do, or anyone I know. I’m drowning in self inspection –always asking myself if the last thing I did was crazier than the first. Everything bothers me. I misplace or lose everything. When I’m home I want to go away. When I’m away, I want to go home. When I visit the cemetery I’m bed ridden for a week.
Hi. I’m a shopaholic. My name is Stevie. I have well over 100 pairs of slacks/jeans/leggings. I can’t even bear to count the coats.
I’m manic right now and the mania is wasting my time. I need to decorate the tree so I sit on line and tell myself I’ll do it later. No I won’t. I’ll end up doing it at midnight. It’s when I get the urge to vacuum.
I won’t answer the phone. I won’t be forced into talking to anyone. I chew my Valiums for quicker relief. I’ve learned to enjoy the flavor. I feel absolutely phucking crazy most of the time and waste my time trying to mask it.
Have a nice day.
I get apathy. I have been their…a few times. And it’s indeed deadening. But what i am struggling with at the moment actually does seem worse to me. Feeling too much…that is, empathy overtake !!!! With me and the rest of the world.
What on earth do you do when NOTHING can control your crying. Yes I am in a very deep depression but there is nowhere to hide. When I am sort of fine I always talk about my safe broom cupboard into which I can go at will and if need be close the door. But with this crying I cannot open the door at all anymore. Because all I do is cry and cry and cry. How much and for how long can a person cry ???
I would not be able to go to Italy at all ,or anywhere else in the world because I would just be crying.
Olivia, I feel for you. I am so depressed, combined with my bi-polar mania, that death would be a welcome respite. I have lost family and pets that I cared so much for, and my life has become a shambles. I want to be with those I have lost now!
I have had experience with both emotional depression and apathetic depression. I can say apathetic depression, for me anyways, is far worse. For those around me, and my overall state of being. It is not overwhelming, to the point of wanting an escape route, and then coming to the realization that you have hit rock bottom. No, it is wanting an escape from life when you already feel dead, and suicide would be the freedom. It is going through the motions of life, soaking nothing in.
I feel apathy, but it’s a different sort of apathy. I don’t feel bad, or focus on the negatives, I just don’t see a point in anything I do. I don’t even know if I’m depressed, and, true to form, I don’t think I really care either.
I can relate to just about every one of these posts. I remember being younger, and having such an enthusiastic attitude towards life. I finished most of the goals I set for myself and now I need new goals. But the old enthusiasm is gone. I take meds for Bipolar depression but the apsthy that accompanies these meds make it worse. There was a time in my life when I wished I didn’t care. Now that I really don’t care about much, I miss having all of my emotions. I want them back. Any feedback would be so appreciated. Everyone on this blog seems to really understand. Thank you for reading.
I am 22 and have had severe depression for the last 14 years of my life. I feel like I’ve tried it all: religion, changing religion, doctors, medicine, holistic health, sleep regimens, drugs, no drugs, changing friends, changing jobs, changing locations, exercise… Nothing has eased my suffering as of yet. I’m trying not to lose hope in this but as of late my apathy is more overwhelming than anything else. My biggest struggle is with the thoughts of “Why bother?” “I just don’t care anymore.” “It doesn’t matter anymore.” I try to make the conscious decision to make myself believe otherwise but I don’t know how to convince myself anymore. And the apathy doesn’t help because I want to believe I can think differently but at the same time my depression is telling me “Who cares?”
These feelings come from nothing and take over everything. As of late things are a lot worse inside my head than I lead on, but in all seriousness my apathy says that nobody really cares anyways so why should I?
There is a line in a song that resonates with me, “Pretending they’re essentially alive.” So much of my life seems a pretense when depression and apathy are at their worst.
Here’s a weird one,can anyone relate to this? I can’t really find the category this falls in but its odd.
I’m not suicidal, I do actually have a great fondness for life – it is a beautiful and strange thing that I find great enjoyment in quite regularly. It’s just that at 43 I don’t strive for anything outside of what I do for a job – a job I do get great challenge and reward from, but lousy, lousy money. I have no ambition or desire to learn anything new, or be someone different. I like spending time with people, but I can easily do without them, in fact its preferable, were it not for my partner I think I would be a hermit. I have two kids that I love like nothing else, yet I have no ambition for them either. I want to be with them all the time, yet I find I don’t want to be involved with them, its too exhausting if I fire them up and I get bored quickly – I just want to give them an iphone and have them entertain themselves, I don’t want to prepare them for life or leave them any money, I just want to love them and all I hope is that they don’t get sick or hurt – at least not while I’m alive and have to witness it.
I do love sex and intimacy – this is something I really look forward too and I enjoy working up to it, pleasuring my partner.
All this might sound like some sort of contentment, but really for the most part I just feel tired and I don’t look forward to the future, in fact I think the future looks very un-inviting. My health doesn’t seem as great as it should be, I get let down through an overriding fatigue if I do run or sports. I can’t see myself being able to own my own home or ever make any sort of money, or create much of an impression while I’m here. I definitely noticed this shift intensified from around 38 and its bedded in more as time has passed. I just lack that innocence or naivety that seems to drive people on to do adverse things, its come about since realising and accepting I will die and also that I’m not immune to tragedy, that my children could be taken away or that any moment I might get a call to say someone I love or care about has been in an accident or been diagnosed with something horrific.
I don’t find life bleak and depressing, it can be horrific and disturbing but overall it just seems kind of tiresome and fragmented and I regularly don’t see the point in trying to manifest any kind of experience.
I’m not sure this is depression or anxiety as much as a kind of uncomfortable acceptance, I do not believe at all that there is any therapy for it, it is like an enlightenment in many ways, but I do feel anxious if I remember how I used to feel, back when I had more fun and ignorance and had more life a head of me than behind me.
Like I say I’m not suicidal at all, but equally I sort of don’t really want to live.
Hi Jon,
I can relate to much of what you said here. Apathy; I’ve been there a long time (since I was young) and it is indeed depression~of the worst kind, although I could not see it early on.
I cannot diagnose you but you can go on line and take depression tests to question more of your feelings.
I often want to just die. I pray to the birds in the sky to help me through this, but I have to do the work cause no one else will. Every day is a struggle, but you have kids, they need you, you have a purpose!!! For them, keep trying; reach out for a help. Our kids need us and we need our kids!
Hey D,
Thing is, I’ve almost come full circle, I feel totally sane, just kind of awake to the truth about living, it can never be how it is dramatised in magazines or on the tv, can never be secure and free of pain. As we get older we do realise this. The word apathy can be exchanged for the phrase ‘economic behaviour’ I think, which is a very different spin. I mean, when you recognise life is short and whether you have spiritual beliefs or not, what you do here on Earth is temporary. When I see people doing really outrageously demanding things or wanting to jump out of planes or go on holidays, I just see a lot of extra work, traffic to plough through, anxiety to overcome, expense etc and really for not very much as I see it. Maybe it is that I am easily satisfied, like I say, all I mostly need is intimacy, to bask in the bosom of my family, food, something reasonably challenging so I don’t die of boredom and a decent documentary to watch.
I’ll be honest I thought I had more depth than this! But the more I explore, the more I just want to kind of be, rather than strive.
What I don’t like is the worry that I might not be engaging with people or my own life as much as maybe I should be, its a very nuanced, strange collection of feelings that could be diagnosed easily as depression, yet I wonder if it is not actually, a complex stage on the way to acceptance.
Brother!!! Agree 100%, Jon! Well said!
I read your posy Jon and I felt as if i were reading my own in many ways. Now you know you’re truly not alone like this and hope it adds some comfort ..if i were to add anything closest to a positive thought it would be enjoy your gratitude for life and keep up as much as you re able to .
To see excitement in other and not be able to share it is bad but it’s worse when your family is mourning the death of a member and you want to feel sad with them but just can’t.
Thanks, this article really helps me to understand this demon. Now, I am trying to get angry in order to get my energy, the problem with depression is lethargy, you just don’t want to get up in the morning and in order to cure it you must do something to get your mind off it. First is, you must get angry why you can be this weak and must seek for revenge. Second, I gave up belief in traditional religion and came up with my own to cope with depression. Third is, motivating myself to be alive and active for my goal, I know what or who causes it and I will seek my revenge.
Natasha, I hope that the travel time takes it’s toll out on your body, instead of the apathy and depression, and that you sleep and wake up to a different world, emotions, and better mood! It can happen. It has done to me a couple of times :) Have loads of fun, and forget about real life for a while.
Reading this brought back so many awful memories. Memories of my childhood and episodes as an adult trying to function while working and raising kids. Wow…. I remember felling numb, thick, completely dead. It was like I was watching the world go by and I was just a spectator looking down on people moving around. It’s been awhile since I felt like this, but I remember it like it was yesterday. I would keep telling myself each day “this too shall pass.” It will for you, and Italy will help. When I felt like you, everything people would say to me would piss me off so I will refrain from any positivity.haha You know the drill and you can do it. :)
Yep, we’ve been to the same “party”! I particularly related to that feeling of disconnect from the activities of everyone around, and that can leave behind a scar – it can leave one actually disconnected because links were never made, or were lost, during those times when one felt disconnected! So, I am left with no real friends to share time with, have to rebuild something of a social life from zilch (but it’s not easy picking up friends in a bar or club when you’re already alone! I’m not complaining here though – I’ve got used to my own company and I’ve learnt to like myself, too – so, all is reasonably ok in this respect. But that isolation is helped by the fact that I do have the company of my young teenage sons who are an entertaining age and still dependent on me. However, that means a powerful reason for me to keep going will be lost as soon as they grow up more and become independent. Without that distraction it will be harder to cope *when* the old BP cycle turns …
I mean by that I also recognise what you say about the bad times eventually passing. Yes, they do – it’s a racing certainty. Bet your shirt or skirt on it! However, with *my* BP the bad times generally come back again! It’s a cycle: Attack, remission, attack, remission, attack, remission.
Having the boys helped me keep going during the attacks. It *will* be harder for me to cope when the boys have gone. However, I’ve survived 30-40 years of this (with a few close calls!), so I’m reasonably well equipped to fight back when the next attack comes, albeit without that special resason to keep going, in spite of the pain, and the medication does seem to have helped copntrol the mood swings, too.
But those medicines … they do their own damage, don’t they! They’ve got me with weight gain, Type 2 diabetes, and now, with peripheral edema. Of course, it’s hard to accept the medicine when I’m feeling otherwise well, with the BP largely in remission; but when we’re in the middle of a really bad mixed episode, we’d take any kind of poison to take that pain away! I suppose that’s the compromise one must learn to accept, a process I’ve not yet completed – medication can be poisonous and possible cut short our lives, but it can – if we’re lucky – give us something of a life that is worth living. Sometomes!
“Because feeling bad about feeling bad just feeds on itself and makes depression worse” thank you for writing what I feel. I recently found your blog through FB and appreciate that you often write what I feel. Over the past six years after a week long hospital stay I have learned to be more accepting of myself. The negative thoughts are still there but I can shut them out more often. I try to create positive self-talk….challenging in the moment, but sometimes it helps. I’ve learned to control the manic phase to reduce the depression, but at times I miss that energetic, up all night, hyper-sexual, fun, fun, fun state, but the depression that follows is devastating. Balance through medications is a necessary trade-off I remarried three years ago and my husband is loving and supportive, but for the non-bipolar person I think it is very difficult to understand the impact of the disease. When I’m depressed I have a very high need to be understood and that is when it is most difficult for him to understand why I am depressed. He is being logical about something that has no logic. Depression isn’t sad…it’s way beyond that…he never says “just get over it” but I’m sure at times he want to.
You are most fortunate to have a partner like him! I wish I was so lucky! Never let him go! :)
I can’t imagine how hard it is to have a bipolar decease but I hope your trip in Italy will help you forget the pain and somehow enjoy your trip and also the place.
I could have written this article myself–word for word. Currently and mostly- I feel nothing. Maybe loss. Loss of what I’ve lost, who I was, who I am now- and I feel it every single day of my life. I’ve drown again and again and be revived needlessly, only to swirl around the drain in the murky lake of self pity. I just don’t release the sorrow, and countless years of apathy since I’ve become ill.
I hang on to it like a mother holding on to her dead child.
When I’ve gone away on trips, I have felt exactly the same way you do. I’m numb to all of it– until I arrive.
Oddly I become a different person, -like I’m well again, I feel sane again. When I see the other parts of the world, it’s like I’m hypnotized into being or feeling alive once more. Air smells different–cleaner. I realized for those moments, days, weeks, that I’m there, that life is really beautiful. I see things I’ve only read or heard about, and I’m awe struck.
The feelings there are so intense that I never want to go back home. It’s like a prescription for wellness, a stay from death row, house arrest- instead of a permanent incarceration.
I don’t see that chair I sat in and cried all night all when my first brother died, or the same chair that offers me the identical memories when my second brother died,
I don’t see the hospital I must drive by where my mother died, with me next to her, holding her lifeless and aged form, as her warmth left her. I don’t see me sobbing, sobbing, and sobbing.
I don’t see my dead sister in that same hospital, laying on that metal table covered with a white sheet, dead on arrival–a car accident.
I don’t have to drive by the nursing home where my beloved baby brother lived, that was responsible for his early death. I don’t hear my own screams again.
For those few weeks that I’m gone away–I’m alive. None of that happened to me. I’m bipolarless. Positive.
I’ve been awaken from a bad dream. There’s more to life than suffering. I can see it there.
My eyes open, my mouth breathes, my heart is weightless.
I’m as free as I used to be, or ever will be– till I’m home again.
I hope your trip is magical and mood free Natasha. I hope this with all my heart.
xoxoxoxo
Stevie, it sounds like your symptoms are similar to mine; PTSD
I wish that was all I had Linda; then there might be a way out or around it. Most days I feel nothing but hunger, a full bladder and the aches of pending rain in my bones.
If I had just one sibling left like the last one I buried, then I’d have someone to say “remember when” to? But I’m sibling-less now. If you’re out there yelling at your sister or brother today; don’t. Because when they’re gone it’s the end of your earliest beginning and your past combined. It’s a miserable place to be no matter what’s going on with each other.
He had bad kidney problems and stayed in a nursing/rehab home, and if I were in his stead, I would have not only wanted to go; I’m sure I myself would have ended it. Funny thing was, he was happier than I, or so it seemed. I tell myself “How could he be so lighthearted”? So funny, so caring and grateful and able to express it? Such a sweetheart guy! Did he really have a mental illness? Yes, it was there and overtook him at 21.
One day I recall telling him for whatever reason, that I saw a psychiatrist every month or so myself. He looked at me so quizzically and said “I thought you were only healthy one.” I felt so bad I told him! I wanted him to see me as strong as I appeared and up until then- he did. My admittance of being ill just may have brought us closer as we grew older together, but not old enough for me. I wanted him to be there for me, forever. I wanted a brother or sister to love me, to stay around so I had a sibling left to love and spoil; one left so I didn’t feel so alone in my life or in my insanity.
There isn’t a sun that sets, or a star that stops it’s blaze, that I don’t miss him with all of my heart and my fragmented mind. I know he sees me from wherever heaven is, and is pulling for me to live out my days with the strength, fortitude and courage that he did. I hope he knows how very much I loved him. I always told him. Always.
I have to remember that. It will forever keep me going; where ever that is, until I myself am gone. xxxxxxx
Yes depression, depression sometimes we fool ourselves into staying depressed…as its safer to say no shoot ourselves in the foot than go for that walk. It is sometimes an addiction, a choice, a habit….why enjoy lets mope..Do the mope ..lets drag everyone down…to our grumpy mope hahahaha..this is where and when I was getting better.
Deep depression soared through my brain, I couldnt get over it..was on pills and stuff..it came to an end, naturally and I started getting the opposite moods euphoric, hypo manic hypersexual hyper energy…..now am no longer getting depressed, have other problems that will be dealt with, during counselling. I appreciate the effort it takes to come though depression but you do, you will and yes one has to want to make the changes….
Wow. Thank you for telling us like it is. Let us know about your trip along the way. I do hope you find a little peace and happiness along the way. You deserve this trip and a little peace and happiness for a change. I wish you a safe and happy journey. You’re special.
Apathy is the cherry on top of a delicious mood paradoxical desert. You don’t care if you feel good, on the other hand you can adopt the errant step child – you don’t care if you feel bad. Some of my most creative moments have been in the absence of negative sensations, also moments of self destruction are more eminent, and the escape from near fatal thrills seductively common. The bipolar person’s life is a see-saw reality a real teeter-totter of consequences. Like I said to the drive-in bank teller from the seat of my sports car, “Want to go for a ride?”
how is this any different that anhedonia? is there a difference?
Natasha, my heart goes out to you. I can totally relate to your feeling of apathy. Thank you for sharing your struggle and for giving voice to how I feel when my depression flares up. You are not alone. May you have a safe trip to Italy. Keeping my fingers crossed that your apathy might lessen once you are settled in Italy.
I so often feel the same. And often I fake excitement about something I know I should be excited not to have people asking what’s wrong with me. Easy way out.
I’ve just found your blog and what you write it is so often true for me.
Thanks!
You describe this horrible state that I have lived multiple times better than I can imagine. As harryf200 says, it’s painful to read, but at the same time it makes me feel understood, which people with bipolar often don’t get.
Thank you for all you writings.
course, then there is that state of mind of which you feel absolutely NOTHING… no hate, no annoyance, no concern, no agitation, no sadness, no joy, no elation… absolutely NOTHING
only.. you do feel something because in order to recognize that you are missing emotion… you have to FEEL the loss
still… that state of being, to me anyway, is the worst than just not feeling thrilled over something everyone deems thrilling
and it’s true… you spend so much mental energy beating yourself up, making yourself feel guilt, listening to all the internal and auditory external voices (if you have both)… you worsen the depression to the point of talking yourself into……………….
You express that very well. *Too* well for comfort!! Been there, got the t-shirt, and I never want to go back into that state again. Survived it, and probably could do again, BUT the mental agony of that experience, and knowing what comes after it – for me, it would not be worth the effort.
I hope the apathy lifts so you can enjoy the trip. And I hope the travel doesn’t meds up the bipolar too much!
I’m too depressed to be verbose I just need to tell you I adore you and am so glad you are in my life. Blessings (and safe travels)
Well, it could be worse – at least you’re feeling enough to hate, when you hate feeling apathetic. In the very worst care-otomy state, you don’t love or hate.
“Because feeling bad about feeling bad just feeds on itself and makes depression worse.”
So true. If happiness comes, it comes when we forget ourselves, when we lose ourselves in something, but that doesn’t happen when we are loaded down with “shoulds”. Beating ourselves up about what we don’t feel takes a lot of energy which might otherwise be the enthusiasm we lack.