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You're used to handling life pretty well. Work is sometimes a hassle, but you've got things under control. Maybe things are sometimes rocky in the relationship area, but that's just a fact of life for everyone occasionally. Nothing horrible has happened in your life. Actually, everything is okay. Not much different than usual…except you're having a hard time getting out of bed in the morning. On your days off, you mostly just want to sleep. Or maybe you're not sleeping much. Nothing really excites you anymore. You don't enjoy anything much.
Are highly cognitive, logical individuals more prone to depression?
This dark, unmotivated mood is not like you. While you may have had your share of down days, you're not generally pessimistic. But lately everything is gray.
Nothing has really changed that much, but you've started feeling less and less like yourself. You start thinking a lot about really dark things, like about dying and how useless life is. Maybe the people around you are asking "What's wrong?" And that's a problem because even though you don't feel right, you can't say exactly what's wrong.
This is not who you usually are. In fact, you tend to be a take charge person. Maybe things didn't get done if you haven't taken care of them. Probably the people around you tend to rely on you. A lot. Expected you to handle things, fix things…and you have.
Only now, you can't seem to make yourself right. You keep telling yourself to get over it!! But you can't make yourself get things done the way you used to…and you can't really care.
You know about "clinical depression" and how it can have a chemical component. Some relative may have had a problem with depression. You've heard that this can run in families. Maybe you've tried, or are currently taking, anti-depressant drugs. For awhile, these can seem to alleviate some of the darkness. Not usually for long, however. Our bodies seem to adjust to the meds, requiring a constant tinkering with the dosage or shifting between different kinds of medications.
There is, however, another aspect of depression that you might want to explore. Highly-cognitive people--defined as those who prefer the rational over the emotional--don't usually display their emotions on their faces. They don't always know exactly what they feel and can actually be prone to depression. From this perspective, what you're struggling with is an under-developed emotional awareness. A muscle that's not been used much. Like handedness, individuals usually have a preference as to whether they see life situations from a logical or an emotional perspective.
There is nothing right or wrong about either perspective--although people tend to think their own way of dealing with emotional situations is best! There are, however, functional aspects to both.
Everyone thinks and everyone feels, but highly-cognitive people have utilized their logic more than their emotion. They tend to feel emotion is irrational and unreliable. Emotions do seem to shift with the wind sometimes and this "instability" seems a poor position from which to function.
In tuning out emotions, however, you run a big risk. It's like turning down the sound on the radio. When you turn down hurt and grief and fear, you've muted joy and happiness, too.
Emotion isn't as unreliable as it may seem. While inherently "irrational"(not endowed with reason), emotion generally carries with it, a peculiar kind of information. Whether you're in a job situation or facing relationship issues, you need to know if the individual you're dealing with is struggling. You need to know if you're struggling with aspects of the situation. Emotion. You need to pay attention to it.
Logical individuals tend to be afraid of too much emotion, thinking it will carry them away. When feelings are too long repressed they do tend to shoot out of nowhere and make you do and say stupid things! Instead of resolving to never again allow yourself to let your feelings get the better of you, you need to get to know the monster in your own closet. If you do, you'll find that it isn't as uncontrolled and disturbing as you've imagined.
Feelings that are acknowledged and understood don't spring up and ambush you. Developing an awareness of emotions is recognized more and more as an intelligent move. Ever heard of Emotional Intelligence? Try it on. Feelings can work for you.
Rather than struggle with unending gray in your world, you can find yourself feeling like you again. Depression isn't a sign of weakness, it can be a signal that you need to develop a part of yourself. The emotional part.
