Comorbid Conditions with NLD, Part 1: Depression.

First of all, sorry for the lull in posting- I was the victim of a homework sabotage! I had way too much work to do any updating, but now that I’m on spring break I’ll try to write several posts.

Second, I’ve decided to start a series of posts about comorbid conditions that I have with my NLD. One of the facts that you read most frequently about NLD is that there are many related conditions that can result from the disorder. Generally these are conditions like depression and anxiety which stem from the difficulties caused by NLD (ie depression because of social issues and rejection by peers, etc). Unfortunately, I’ve developed my share of comorbid conditions! As I’ve mentioned before, I’m diagnosed with clinical depression, and that’s what I’ll talk about here.

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I find it very hard to describe my depression, because I lived with it for so long before I did anything to fix it. It was part of my life for many years, and as a result I can’t really point to aspects of my behavior and say “oh, that’s a symptom of depression!” or “I did that because I was depressed.” Now, having said that, I personally think that I started to feel clinically depressed in 9th grade. I had a very tough time going from middle to high school, despite the fact that I didn’t change schools, because I had really loved my 8th grade classes and felt like 9th grade was paling in comparison. My school also doubles the number of students in the grade beginning in high school, so I had a lot of social upheaval.