You may want to re-read my post.
Only you can overcome this depression or lazy habit, no matter what it is or what you call it.
It takes work and time. It can be done, I have done it. You need help - therapy or drugs or both - and support from family or friends. Mostly you need to know that you can feel better, much better. If you want to that is. Look inside yourself, do you want to change? If yes then get to work. The short story is to be responsible for something other than yourself. I got a dog. I had to get out of bed to care for my dog. And find a spiritual path. Whatever form that takes for you. I hope you get to work on this
The rewards are worth it. My best wishes to you.
I’ve had a somewhat different relationship to depression (Depression) than most that have posted here so far. I’m not sure that I can contribute anything substantial to this thread, except to point out that different experiences of clinical depression also exist. So if the OP has yet to read one of these responses and feel a resonance, fear not, for there are many more types of ways to experience depression.
For me, at its worst, Depression was a palpable, encompassing feeling, on top of whatever other behavioral or cognitive elements were in play. I could pretty well visualize the dark cloud that hovered over me and penetrated deep into my being. The behavioral and cognitive elements should not be ignored, but even years of effort in those realms barely made a difference in the feeling of depression that all but overwhelmed me day after day.
Not everyone experiences depression (big D or little d) in that way, and I no longer experience it in that way (and the story of how I transformed from one state to another is not quickly told). In fact, in my current situation, I no longer claim to be depressed. This is because the feeling of being depressed is so completely absent from my present experience. It is a huge difference. Fucking HUGE. A change, a transformation so complete that I am at a loss to explain the difference between there, and here.
If you ask me, I’m pretty happy now (as long as you don’t probe too deeply). Day-to-day, I feel pretty comfortable, and, well, normal. Not especially hopeful or giddy or whatever, but certainly also not especially bad or shameful or hopeless.
But I’m “lazy” now. A lifetime of coping with severe depression has left me with a particular skillset, a particular range of approaches to dealing with day to day life, such that I currently have little ambition or drive. Depending on what sort of framing I use to look at my life, I could easily still be diagnosed with depression, or at least dysthymia, etc., but none of that feels appropriate anymore. I still avoid a lot of things that would lead to a regular responsibility. I feel like the term “lazy” would apply better than most other terminology.
However, “lazy” is an unfair characterization, to be sure. I mean, given what I’ve been through, “lazy” is an incredibly cruel and cold-hearted, unfair sort of way to describe my current situation. But “depression”, or any other clinical description, also no longer feels appropriate.
But that’s where I am at now, in my mid-forties. The OP is in a different situation, in a different era (and that’s not something to be ignored, truly). Our mothers may be astoundingly similar, but our environments cannot be as similar, and our respective decisions are another thing altogether. Only you can determine how much your mother’s opinion matters (and how much of it is at all realistic). Only you can make the decision, day-to-day, to do what it is that makes the most sense for you to be doing.
Lazy is when you enjoy doing things you want to do, but not things you don’t.
Like sitting around, watching movies, playing video games, reading, typing crap into Internet message boards? Then maybe you’re “lazy”. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that.)
Don’t like cleaning up, going to school, getting a job? Lazy again.
Don’t like doing anything? Not feel like reading a book, or watching TV, or not doing anything? Would your prefer, maybe, not to exist? Feel like there’s a cloud, or an enormous inverted pyramid pressing down on you? Are you in emotional pain that feels like physical pain? Does cutting yourself feel good, because the pain take your mind off how you feel? Do you think about killing yourself? Do you avoid people, because you don’t want to infect them? That’s depression.
Edited to add: there’s nothing wrong with being lazy. People should spend as much time in their lives doing things they want to do, not what they hate.
If I misinterpreted what you were saying, please let me know where I went wrong. I think my remarks were worth putting on the table, in any case, but I apologize if I have misguidedly directed them at you and I would be interested in knowing what you did mean by the sentence I quoted. I read your post a couple of times, so I’m not sure I’ll accurately catch your drift just by reading it again.
The difference between depression and laziness is if you are just lazy, you still do things you have to do or enjoy doing. If you are depressed, you don’t even do the things you like or have to do.
Example lazy: i don’t feel like doing x today.
Depression: i cant do x, ever, so why even try.
Rephrasing what I think you missed in her post:
- you’re told to trust your gut
- but when you’re depressed, your gut is fucked up - you’re deluding yourself, you’re telling yourself you can’t when actually you can
- therefore when you’re depressed you can’t “trust your gut”, as it’s full of shit.
My brother’s moods are completely job-dependent. When he’s a supervisor, he’s King of the Hill (never mind if it’s a truly tiny hill), he can do no wrong, he knows everything.
When he’s a pure underling with no underlings of his own, the sun shines out of his supervisor’s ass. Serious yuck. Right now he’s thinking of playing a game he’s been avoiding for years; knowing dozens of people who play it was a reason to avoid it (it means he’s likely to get hooked on said game, which he doesn’t want to do), but being told “you really need to play it, you’ll like it!” by mr Sun-Out-Of-Ass apparently is necessary and sufficient reason to play. Since he’s got to follow this guy’s decisions at work, he’ll follow them out of work hours as well.
When he’s out of a job, he’s unqualified for anything. He never answers help wanted ads: any you give him, he finds a reason why he’s not qualified, he won’t know how to do it, he’s always worked with left-handed or right-handed gadgets and these people are asking for experience in ambidexterous gadgets…
His moods are real. But those qualifications and decision ability about which he feels completely different depending on his job - they are the same. What’s a delusion is how the [expletive only applicable to one’s own sibling] perceives them.
Ah, yes, I see that I got it quite wrong. I obviously thought she was disputing the existence of clinical depression, and I appreciate your taking the time to clarify things for me.
It’s sort of a Zen thing - both depressed and not depressed but not really either - not that I’m trying to make light of the situation since I have my own perspective.
Were I to make light of it I’d compare it to a diet product that’s technically not as unhealthy as the original but probably worse in a lot of other ways. All the ennui of regular depression but half the desire to kill yourself - or something like that. 
So much this. Works with mania, too, by the way. Half the battle is realizing your brainorgan is oozing chemicals that are triggering emotions inappropriate to the situation. The other half is finding the desire to do something about it.
I agree with this post.
Depression will play tricks on your mind and make you believe things about yourself that really aren’t true.
Most on here are correct, the most definitive to view depression vs. laziness is:
“Do I only enjoy and do things that I only want to do and not things that I don’t?” = lazy
vs.
“Do I not enjoy things at all, regardless?” = depression
That’s in general terms but it can sum things up in most cases I believe.
[quote=“LinusK, post:24, topic:671413”]
Lazy is when you enjoy doing things you want to do, but not things you don’t.
Like sitting around, watching movies, playing video games, reading, typing crap into Internet message boards? Then maybe you’re “lazy”. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that.)
Don’t like cleaning up, going to school, getting a job? Lazy again.
Don’t like doing anything? Not feel like reading a book, or watching TV, or not doing anything? Would your prefer, maybe, not to exist? Feel like there’s a cloud, or an enormous inverted pyramid pressing down on you? Are you in emotional pain that feels like physical pain? Does cutting yourself feel good, because the pain take your mind off how you feel? Do you think about killing yourself? Do you avoid people, because you don’t want to infect them? That’s depression.
QUOTE]
This. Exactly.
Do you ever feel any joy? I have heard of Anhedonia which is a Greek word meaning lack of joy. In other words, if someone with Anhedonia found a $100.00 bill, they would feel no joy.
A doctor has diagnosed you with depression. This illness colors your thinking about almost everything, including your own motivations and behavior.
As I understand it, bipolar disorder is a physical illness. This doesn’t mean that your thoughts and emotions have no effect. When you’re depressed it’s easy to fall into negative, self-destructive thought patterns. This makes the depression worse, which reinforces your negative thoughts. You can learn to recognize when this is happening so you can break the destructive cycle.
In other words, now might not be the best time to worry about whether you’re lazy.
Earlier this year, I was depressed, fatigued, and suffering from insomnia. I forced myself to go to work but my heart was not in it; I went because I have bills to pay.
I found out via a blood test that my thyroid was malfunctioning. I began taking an antidepressant and went through a month of unpleasant side effects until I got used to it and started feeling better, sleeping more, being more energetic, etc. The thyroid eventually rebalanced its wacky stimulating hormone levels, again shown by a blood test.
I stayed on the med only because I then developed anxiety related to carpal tunnel syndrome, for which I recently got surgery. Healing now and feeling better. I think I can wean myself off of the Lexapro now that the physiological problems have been resolved.
My point here is that there was no laziness. It was a real, physical, diagnosable issue which turned out to be treatable and temporary. It was not a moral or character failing of any kind.
Some of your symptoms sound like diet problems, soda pop, sugar milk, sugar bread and pizza are contributors to being lazy.
It takes three days for pizza dough to get out of your system vs 15 hours for most other foods causing what they call candida.
Cold, Flu and Viral Infections Forum - pizza yeast causing infection ?
I gave up pizza, because I gave up marijuana at the same time and feel a lot better. I couldn’t help but notice that together they cause mood swings.
Good luck on your future … you can beat this. Don’t give up
Laziness = not wanting to get up and do stuff
Depression = a mental health condition involving intense sadness, despair
Anxiety = feeling nervous, anxious, or afraid a lot of the time