Depression and special interests.

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I've heard some people say that they never lose their interests. That they may move onto other things but the old ones are always special to them or whatever.

I've completely lost interest in the ones I had as a child. I don't even remember much about them and they're certainly not something I'd ever consider interesting now.

I never really had anything to replace them. I can't even remember what changed about it.

Yes, especially if my interest is purely academic. For example, I have this awesome physics website I'm planning on making and these physics books I'm reading to help me plan what I'll put, but due to the amount of homework I get and the procrastinating that I do, I just have no time....I end up watching TV without caring what's on....simply to give me something to pass the time with.

That makes perfect sense to me too.

For me it depends on what's causing the depression... I've got an eating disorder (AN, in recovery), and if I don't eat enough and get depressed, then I don't really have enough energy for my special interests either. But if it's just a general depression from some other cause than lack of sustenance, then I'll usually become even more focused on my special interests almost to the exclusion of everything else. The brief periods where I don't have a special interest at all make me feel really depressed too though. Depressed and sort of anxious about how empty the world seems.

When I get that way I sometimes find myself completely stuck on just trying to entertain myself that I can't do anything else. Yet nothing quite satisfies. It's like treading water just to stay above the surface, and then when some unpleasant crap comes in life I'm pushed to the bottom. At least when I'm at the bottom and completely stressed out with life I can trick myself into thinking there's something to look forward to once I can get myself beyond the problem, but then when the stress is over it's always back to feeling "meh" again for no reason. And some people can't seem to understand why suicide might be a rational choice for someone who has to go through this their entire f*****g life.

The interests that require only thinking to engage in... no, I don't lose those. I do lose all interest in my hobbies, however. That always makes me so sad.

I have lost intense interests lately because of depression, and that really bothers me. I feel even more empty without my interests.

I usually feel quite flattened and empty when I "complete" a special interest. That's ironic because I originally decided to try and make sure my projects were finite and produced things that I could use - I felt that there should be an end to justify the means, and I didn't want to keep disappearing indefinitely into the lonely world of special interests. It's a strange feeling - when I'm hard at work on an interest, it's the thought of the result that spurs me on, and I don't really enjoy the work itself as far as I know. So I don't see a way out - if I get very immersed in a special interest, it's depressing because I'm aware at the time of the social damage I'm doing to myself, but it's also depressing when I complete the mission.

I think I need to ration myself so that I can try to enjoy my interests while also knowing that the rest of my life won't get forgotten. But it's so hard to tear myself away, once I'm immersed.

I go off it a bit or express it in different ways. With animals I will sometimes hold a pet and cry, but I can also get anxious and start worrying that they are ill or doubting my ability to look after them well and I have negative feelings and can get annoyed with them or want to give up keeping them, or even just don't feel like looking after them. You can almost monitor how I am feeling by whether I have taken up horseriding again or not. I'm considering part-loaning one . With food I'll buy nice things to cheer myself up but will lose the will to cook or bake.

I found that really heavy, clinical depression impairs one's efficiency greatly in following one's special interest, because it reduces your ability to concentrate and/or make any sort of effort. Everything seems hopeless in such a state.

Looking at it the other way round, I find I go into a kind of listless, slightly depressed state if I let go of a special interest having done nothing else for, say, two years. A kind of motivational disorientation sets in for a while, which is rather unpleasant.

I'm a little inconsistent. Sometimes it will make me lose interest and just sleep, other times not so much

when i have nothing on my dvr to watch i get depressed because I think about how i dont do anything all day.

Yes I have. My special interest became obsessing about my depression & what the depression was related to