How can I figure out if I’m depressed or just lazy?

What is depression?

There are many ways to define depression.  The DSM and ICD take descriptive approaches, outlining a set of symptom criteria that coincide with depressive episodes.  Psychodynamic therapists formulations explain it in theoretical terms, summarized simply as “anger turned inward.”  Behaviorists posited that depression results from a lack of reinforcement, whether positive or negative, in one’s environment.  And patriarch of positive psychology, Martin Seligman, created depression in a laboratory using dogs by applying behavioral principles. He called named is lab-induced depression “learned helplessness.”

I’ll do my best here to make my own definition combining the merits of all three definitions.

Let’s start with the core components.  They are:

• Depression is an emotional and physiological state.
• Depression emotionally feels like resignation, giving up, hopelessness and despair.
• On top of the experience of giving up, depression also registers emotionally as guilt over not being good enough and/or having failed to live up to what’s expected of him/her.  Guilt results from self-consciousness, self-critique, and what many simplify as “anger turned inwards.” 
• Physiologically, depression is a shutting down, or conservation of energy triggered by an inability to solve an emotional, developmental, or adaptational problem.  This means a lack of energy, changes in appetite, sleep, and productivity.
• Depressions occur around major life transitions or events.  Losses of loved ones, relationship problems, problems finding success, confronting past traumas, etc.

While these component parts paint the picture, allow me to summarize the following way:

When we are depressed, it’s not that we are overwhelmed with intense emotion.  In many cases, depression is an aversive experience of numbness.  Depression is the nuclear option of the organism.  All of the emotion, all of the energy, all of the hope that the individual has for gaining traction, making an impact on the environment and/or progressing in life seems to be received by the world with indifference.  When our efforts and psychological energy appear to make no difference on our life outcomes (lack of reinforcement), our bodies and minds shut down.  We refer to this as depression.

What is laziness?

The first thing to appreciate about laziness is that it is a pejorative word with moralistic undertones.  That is to say, we use the word casually to describe a tendency to choose inactivity rather than proactivity or industriousness.  

Laziness implies a deficiency in character or temperament, but it should not be mistaken as a psychological explanation.  I’ll repeat that:

Laziness is not a psychological explanation of behavior.

Laziness could mean a number of things. A lack of interest or engagement with your life.  Dissociation from painful emotions or experiences.  It could be a sign of developmental traumas or delays.  It could simply mean you are in fact depressed!

Many more reasons for “laziness” can and do exist.  But, it may be unhelpful to ask in a binary way, am I lazy OR depressed.  Since, you can quite easily be lazy because you’re depressed.

Speculation on the origins of laziness as a concept

I suspect laziness is a construct that arose out of the need to guilt or shame members who tended to be social loafers.  At a macro scale, it’s important for most societies and cultures to celebrate the producers and make an example of the loafers.  

It’s useful on a large scale to extol the virtue of industriousness.  However, at the individual level, shaming the non-contributors can be dangerous.  If you recognize yourself as one of the underachievers or underperformers, it’s not enough to see yourself as “bad” or “failing” if you wish to feel differently.

Self-critique mostly does not lead to motivation.  In fact it more often leads to depression.  Perhaps you don’t know what your talents are.  Perhaps you don’t know where you are best suited to contribute.  Perhaps you need to learn some remedial skills–either emotional or practical–before you can access your abilities.

More will be said about this later when we come to the fable of The Ants and the Grasshopper.

So what’s the answer? Am I lazy or depressed?

Here is a series of questions I’d encourage anyone who is curious about whether they should dismiss themselves as lazy.

• When and how do you experience yourself as lazy?
• Do you always experience yourself as lazy or only on certain days, times of the day, periods of your life, during certain activities and/or in specific contexts?
• Are there areas of your life where you are excited, animated, engaged, and eager to do active work?
• Have there been periods in your history when you’ve experienced yourself as a hard worker?
• What how do you feel when you believe yourself to be lazy?
• Is the label “lazy” something you use in your internal monologue in a futile attempt to motivate yourself?
• Do you think of yourself as a good person overall?

After reflecting on these questions, look at your answers and consider the following.

• Is your laziness context dependent? 
• Is your laziness domain specific?
• Are your strengths being wasted?
• Are your deficiencies being magnified?
• Did something happen that changed how you see yourself?
• Are your expectations unreasonable about how much time for comfort and leisure you’re entitled to?
• Is laziness just one of many ways you think of yourself as deficient?

While I can’t assign a score and interpretation rubric, these questions should help you clarify whether you’re in a depressive funk or you may need to challenge yourself a bit further.  In general, depression is episodic.  You will have other times in your life where you’ve felt engaged and productive.  It’s important not to rule out that you could be depressed at the level of personality–otherwise known as dysthymia or persistent depressive disorder.  Chronic depression can go on a lifetime and some people never realize there is another possible way to go through life.

Many times, a change of job, change of context, change of relationship, or a move into therapy can do wonders.  Your laziness could very well be a poor fit between you and your environment.

And certainly, if you feel generally like you are a worthless, deficient person who is lazy among many other bad things, then you are probably depressed.

Laziness as a personality trait

While it’s beyond the scope of this response to explain and critique widely-used personality inventories, instruments like the NEO-PI, do in fact have a scale related to laziness.  The trait is industriousness, and one can be high or low in industriousness.   Low levels of industriousness are the equivalent of someone who is high on the laziness trait.

Here’s the thing about traits.  First of all, traits are merely descriptors.  In other words, they are not explanations.  It’s true that traits tend to be stable over time–that is the trait tends to be present to roughly the same degree when it is measured at multiple points in time. 

But this shouldn’t really surprise us.  Many of the ways we think about ourselves don’t change all that much–especially if many of the circumstances of our lives have not changed or we have not had the opportunity to systematically evaluate/re-evaluate who we are–especially in the context of psychotherapy.

One could argue that traits are stable over time because they are rooted in biology expressed through temperament.  However, I think there are good reasons to doubt pure biological explanations of personality.  My reasons for doubting this have much to do with anecdotal experiences I’ve had observing in patients the complex interaction between natural tendencies and life experiences.  It would be hard to do what I do and not see everywhere how people, inclusive of their personalities, are shaped by culture, people, places, and experiences.

Secondly, traits are self-reported.  The foundation of trait measures like the NEO-PI are questionnaires with simple rating scales.  Don’t get me wrong, this does not mean they should be dismissed.  Instruments like the NEO-PI are very useful ways of aggregating attitudes we hold about ourselves and can often summarize views we hold about ourselves in both compelling and shocking ways.  

Again, it’s far too complicated to discuss here, but self-report has numerous shortcomings and biases that should limit how far we infer from findings based on this method of data collection.  Projective tests, like the TAT and Rorschach test, can be quite useful supplements, but of course, have their own problems.

The Ants and the Grasshopper

I’ve discussed laziness as a morally freighted word.  Where better to observe how the virtues of hard work and the moral failure of laziness get taught than in a fable–a kind of story told with the aim of teaching a moral?

The story goes as follows:

“THE ANTS were spending a fine winter’s day drying grain collected in the summertime. A Grasshopper, perishing with famine, passed by and earnestly begged for a little food. The Ants inquired of him, “Why did you not treasure up food during the summer?” He replied, “I had not leisure enough. I passed the days in singing.” They then said in derision: “If you were foolish enough to sing all the summer, you must dance supperless to bed in the winter.”

Aesop’s Fables

What I love about this fable is the agricultural theme and how values of work and productivity correspond with the need to store food for the winter.  The harsher the winter, the greater the need to be like the ants and not the grasshopper.  One inference that we could make is that stereotypes of cultures closer to the equator as “lazy” may follow from the need to be more disciplined and forward thinking when winter looms around the corner.  It’s interesting to note that depression and suicide tend to be much more frequent in cultures with longer, darker, harsher winters.  Could it be the absence of light that leads to physiologically induced depressions? Sure.  Could it also be that cultures that have adapted to harsh winters are more demanding and less forgiving of individual needs? Yes.

As it is with most either/or formulations, the answer is probably both.  But I would give more weight to the latter.  Hard work and self-sacrifice applied on a societal scale lead to great civilizations.  But individual wellbeing can get crushed in the process.

In the developed world, where centuries of self-sacrifice have led to material abundance, musicians like the grasshopper can compose and play year-round.  And, these days the world needs both musicians and farmers alike.  We celebrate musicians who “work hard” and produce many fine songs and compositions.  

In this way, I find it easier to think of laziness vs hardworking as being a function of adaptation.  Find a place in the world where being a grasshopper who dances and sings for fun can be celebrated as doing valuable work.  Psychotherapy exists because larger, more complex societies demand hard work and self-sacrifice.  The individual can still find his or her place, but it’s not easy.  In fact, it may be the hardest thing a person has to do.

In my practice, I never accept self-deprecating confessions of “I’m just lazy.”  Why not? Because every “lazy” adult was once a child.  Spend enough time around young children–the closest reference point we have to our most natural state of being– and seldom will the adjective “lazy” come to mind as a descriptor.  No child is lazy when it comes to play.  Children either feel safe and free to play, or they feel frightened and inhibited in play.  All work is built on play.  

Everyone has the energy and capacity to contribute.  However, not everyone is suited to contribute in the same way.  If you find your skills, your unique attributes, and your enthusiasm never emerge in your day-to-day life, you may become resigned and demoralized.  

In other words, you very well could be depressed.

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