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laziness vs. depression

ygolo

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How can you tell the difference between someone with dysthymia(or other mood disorder) and someone who is just truly lazy?
 

redacted

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is there such a thing as someone who is just truly lazy?

it's always depression IMO.
 

Seanan

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How can you tell the difference between someone with dysthymia(or other mood disorder) and someone who is just truly lazy?

Having had a bout of clinical depression, I would say a noticable change in thinking. Depression thoughts are extremely negative, circular and hopeless.

Yes, one can be just plain lazy. If you throw on a game instead of taking care of business, you're procrastinating or lazy (different.) If depression is the problem, you wouldn't even be interested in playing a game.
 

redacted

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If you throw on a game instead of taking care of business, you're procrastinating or lazy (different.) If depression is the problem, you wouldn't even be interested in playing a game.

if you play a game instead of doing work, either the work isn't important (which wouldn't be laziness) OR it is important and you choose not to do it. if you aren't doing things that are important, you're sabotaging yourself. if you're sabotaging yourself, you're self-destructive.

if you have 2 options A and B, and A will make you happier in the long term than B, you should choose A. if you choose B, that's not laziness...that's depression.
 

Totenkindly

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Well, I think people sometimes use games to deal with depression. (others drink, some watch TV, others eat.) Many addictions are attempts at self-medication to avoid dealing with depression... or because the depression seems unresolvable.

Lazy: You're perfectly healthy and spirited, you just would rather do fun stuff than do your work. You just don't feel like doing your work.

Depressed: Even when you do your work and try your best, you feel like crap. You don't feel like doing much. And when you play games, you're often STILL feeling an undercurrent of boredom/depression/unhappiness.
 

redacted

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Lazy: You're perfectly healthy and spirited, you just would rather do fun stuff than do your work. You just don't feel like doing your work.

if you get all of your work done on time, though, it doesn't matter. i wouldn't even call it lazy.

if you don't get it all done on time BECAUSE you do "fun stuff" rather than work, that means, at least subconsciously, that you CHOSE the course of action that would be worse for you. which isn't lazy, it's self destructive.

i don't believe in laziness.
 

Thursday

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well........
now that we have defined it, or at least colored the outlines
how would you all suggest that one break the said spell of depression ?
 

Seanan

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well........
now that we have defined it, or at least colored the outlines
how would you all suggest that one break the said spell of depression ?

If its mild and you're not into the circular thinking or hopelessness, then cognitive readjustment works well. Whatever you are seeing in the negative, find the opposing positive thought. If you're too far into depression to find it, ask someone to help with that.
 

elfinchilde

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in response to the OP:

because the lazy person would be happy; while the depressed person would be anergic.

they say depression is anger without the enthusiasm. There is negation there.

laziness, meanwhile, is just a general satisfaction with who and what you are right now, and no impetus to change anything.

edit: good post, seanan. Speaking as a depressive myself, it's about breaking the negative loop in your mind. either replace the thoughts, or force yourself to zone them out. It's mental control. Tough though, because it requires you to be conscious of which thoughts are depressing you, what your triggers are, and then to take active steps to replace them. it's like fighting what was genetically keyed into you. exhausting at times.
 

Ender

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Lazyness = I can't be bothered.
Depression = Why bother?

Bother.. such a strange word when it's written. Seems almost wrong as a word some how.
 

quietgirl

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I've had problems with depression and I'm currently dealing with my boyfriend's bout of depression. Point blank, depressives are negative. In their head, nothing works out so why try? Normally, you stop feeling "good" emotions - even down to feeling happiness with someone you are truly happy with. In my case, I start to feel kind of numb. In my boyfriend's case, he starts to find fault with everything and gives up easily under the notion that it's not going to work out anyway. We both, unfortunately, get the lack of motivation - his currently is infesting in a ugly way with his job & it's manifested in me by putting off going back to school. Depressives can also exhibit hypocritical or uncharacteristic behaviors - Both my boyfriend and I will have the tendency to not make plans, break plans, use undefinitive words when depressed & it's completely the opposite of how we are when not depressed.

Laziness? I'd define it more as not feeling like going into work after a night of drinking or not finishing your tasks because there's something better to do. Not going into work because you've given up on life or not finishing your tasks because you're so distracted by negative thoughts is depression.
 

suzyk

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Lazy? I would say that in order to get depressed when you are in a totally normal household/family, you would have to get really bored. That, and symptoms can occur at a pretty early age for Dysthymia, I was diagnosed with a very mild case of it. If you don't get active you are lazy, I agree, you could get dysthymia if you stay at home for long periods of time and don't do anything. In that sense, if you're lazy and utterly bored, it can lead you to being hopeless about anything, and you'll think life is pointless and good for nothing. Which can lead to depression/dysthymia when you are young and don't know what to do about it. I won't say that it always has to do with laziness, but you should at least take the initiative to get out and do something with your life. It could be something as simple as working on your grades.
 

Randomnity

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Lazy? I would say that in order to get depressed when you are in a totally normal household/family, you would have to get really bored. That, and symptoms can occur at a pretty early age for Dysthymia, I was diagnosed with a very mild case of it. If you don't get active you are lazy, I agree, you could get dysthymia if you stay at home for long periods of time and don't do anything. In that sense, if you're lazy and utterly bored, it can lead you to being hopeless about anything, and you'll think life is pointless and good for nothing. Which can lead to depression/dysthymia when you are young and don't know what to do about it. I won't say that it always has to do with laziness, but you should at least take the initiative to get out and do something with your life. It could be something as simple as working on your grades.
Dude, whatever you're talking about, it's sure not depression or dysthymia. Emo-ness and angst, maybe.

Depression isn't caused by either boredom or a shitty family, although I'm sure either of those could be triggers for it.
 

suzyk

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Dude, whatever you're talking about, it's sure not depression or dysthymia.

Depression isn't caused by either boredom or a shitty family, although I'm sure either of those could be triggers for it.

I didn't mean that depression is caused by those. Boredom could be the trigger to some sorts of depression.

Wikipedia said:
Boredom can be a symptom of clinical depression. Boredom can be a form of learned helplessness, a phenomenon closely related to depression. Some philosophies of parenting propose that if children are raised in an environment devoid of stimuli, and are not allowed or encouraged to interact with their environment, they will fail to develop the mental capacities to do so.

If your parents always leave you home alone to do nothing at all, that could lead to some form of depression later in your life.
 

GZA

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I don't think it's that much of an either or type thing. I think there are a lot of factors going into laziness (just as their are for depression), and its more of a reaction/result than an action/disorder in itself.

I am lazy about some things. I'm sure everyone is, actually. As we all know, laziness results from disinterest, lack of motivation. Shit, motivation is complicated, too, theres a lot of things influencing it. When people don't do things because they don't want to, it can be because of disinterest, too much challenge (turned off by the difficulty... you arn't going to try to hard to do rocket science if you don't know how), not enough challenge (why bother if I know I can do it?), if you value/appreciate the work, or possibly just the nature of the activity, how it is organized (if something is set up poorly or in a way that is significantly uncomfortable for you as a person). Some laziness could be fixed by just sort of... recalibrating the task. For example, I had a science project last year that I didn't want to do. To get myself interested, I decided I would present it in an outrageous unique way by making it into a Twilight Zone-esque simulation asking the audience to imagine the world as my project needed. I made sure to find a lot of interesting pictures and comics, too. I might have spent slightly more effort on the presentation aspect than the information aspect, but it got me more involved and I did well.

I really think laziness can happen to hardworking people a lot, they just need to find a way to make it engaging, make it something they can commit to. I know that in my current issues with laziness (mostly related to english class) I would love to actually put effort in and work hard but find it difficult because I'm not very interested.

And I can really see how laziness could trigger depression... I get sad knowing I'm letting people down with my poor performance in school, and especially I'm letting myself down cause I know I could kick ass. I can see how that could, in some people, go to an extreme and consume their lives. Its sad.

Dissonance, I don't entirely agree with you idea that lziness is masked self destruction. I think there is truth to it, it happens with some people, but I think some laziness is replacing your obligated work with work that you find more rewarding, which isn't always self destructive. For example, not doing your work to eat doritos and watch football is probably self destructive, but if an artist skipped their obligated work to paint, it wouldn't be self destructive, it would just carry a negative consequence for the sake of learning and doing something more rewarding and productive to you.
 

AfterHours

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how would you all suggest that one break the said spell of depression ?

I've had dysthymia since I was very young and have been on antidepressants for about 3 years. From what I've read the only real long-term solution for dysthymia is talk therapy, which is extremely hard when you feel totally helpless. I tried it before going on the medicine and I really thought my depression/apathy were stronger than any will I had to get better. Now that I know it's possible to be happy, if I could go back I would work harder at therapy. Unfortunately I can't afford it now, and when I try to taper off the medicine I am completely overwhelmed by my emotions and total boredom, alternatively.

My parents always told me I was lazy, before I started seeing a therapist. I didn't want to do things that I needed to, but I also didn't want to do anything else. I guess when you're just lazy you still want to do things, just not very productive things.
 

Tallulah

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Laziness = How my mother probably sees my depression.

The truth is, if you have depression, it affects everything you do. It's a huge struggle to do the things you'd normally find easy, and to make it worse, you usually will pile guilt upon yourself for not being productive enough.

Perhaps laziness itself could bring on the sort of depression that comes from the mindset of thinking of yourself as a chronic underachiever/loser, but laziness is quite a different thing from depression. And probably in that case, the "laziness" was born of the "why bother?" feelings that come from depression.

Am I capable of being lazy? Of course. I'm an INTP. I'd always rather do nothing than something. But I'm capable of doing things, and I do them when it's important/necessary. Depression, as Jennifer said, just makes it 100times harder to do those things.

btw, dysthymia is very real, and it's harder to treat than regular depressive bouts...I'm not saying it's worse, just harder to treat. The normal drugs don't touch it (things like Prozac, Paxil, etc.). Effexor's pretty good for improving moods, but the thought patterns are still hard to get rid of. Something weird I've run into is that the Effexor improves my mood so much that I feel like I'm "cured," and I fall back into the thought patterns that caused the depression in the first place, and I expect a lot more of myself because I'm fooled into thinking I'm done being depressed.
 

ygolo

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btw, dysthymia is very real, and it's harder to treat than regular depressive bouts...I'm not saying it's worse, just harder to treat. The normal drugs don't touch it (things like Prozac, Paxil, etc.). Effexor's pretty good for improving moods, but the thought patterns are still hard to get rid of. Something weird I've run into is that the Effexor improves my mood so much that I feel like I'm "cured," and I fall back into the thought patterns that caused the depression in the first place, and I expect a lot more of myself because I'm fooled into thinking I'm done being depressed.

Wow, that sounds like me. I was diagnosed with dysthymia a couple of years ago, then with major depression a little over a year ago.

Maybe what's happening is that the major depression is actually going away and comming back, while the dysthimia never does.
 

redacted

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Dissonance, I don't entirely agree with you idea that lziness is masked self destruction. I think there is truth to it, it happens with some people, but I think some laziness is replacing your obligated work with work that you find more rewarding, which isn't always self destructive. For example, not doing your work to eat doritos and watch football is probably self destructive, but if an artist skipped their obligated work to paint, it wouldn't be self destructive, it would just carry a negative consequence for the sake of learning and doing something more rewarding and productive to you.

well if you blow off one thing for something that is more beneficial, that's not even lazy...it's just smart. it's all about long-term self-profit maximization. if you take the course of action that you believe will be best for you long term, it's by definition NOT lazy.

so if a painter skipped a bullshit class to paint, that's not laziness OR self-destruction. my point says nothing about that.
 

millerm277

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Hmm, this thread and associated links seems to be confirming my thoughts that I may have dysthymia.....
 
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