*TW for mention of suicidal thoughts*

So, I have been in therapy for four years now. I think it's helped me a lot in terms of my relationships and being kinder and less judgmental towards myself. However, I still have recurring issues which haven't really gone away. I have never been diagnosed with depression and my therapist doesn't seem to think I have it. But I still don't have another explanation for some of what I deal with.

I don't think I would appear depressed to my therapist or to most people because I usually do fine as long as I'm in a social situation or I'm occupied with doing something. It gets much worse whenever I have a lot of unstructured time, like when I am on break for school. It's also worse in the winter, in summer when it's way too hot, and in the evening after it gets dark.

I started doing a mood log because I felt like my therapist was only seeing my happy side, and when I showed it to her, I had logged twice as many "negative" as "positive" mood days. It was even a little biased toward the positive since I logged in the early evening and my mood would worsen after that. But my therapist was like "well for some people one bad thing happening in a day will make them think the whole day was bad." She's usually not that clueless so it was weird for her to say that. It's not that anything bad happens, it's just that I'm fine when I'm out doing stuff and then suddenly when I'm alone I start feeling bad and thinking dark thoughts.

I've had episodes of this ever since I was a teenager. I always manage to function in spite of it but it's certainly not fun. My main symptom seems to be that I have an existential crisis because everything feels totally meaningless. I get to where I have little motivation to do things (although I usually force myself to anyway since I know it helps) and sometimes I'm so utterly bored with everything it almost hurts. I also get where I feel inexplicably sad or cry for no reason or I just crawl into bed and stare at the ceiling. Sometimes I feel tired or heavy or I oversleep but it's not a ton, maybe I sleep ten hours a night for a while. Sometimes I think about suicide or wanting to be dead, and there are times when I think about that every day for a week or more on end. I have never attempted but I've gotten as far as trying to figure out how I would do it.

I'm familiar with the diagnostic criteria for depression and I don't know that I meet them because it's not true that I feel sad or depressed most of the day on most days, since if I'm working or in class or whatever I will feel fine for that part of the day. I would say that when I'm dealing with this, I just feel depressed during most of the day that I'm *not* preoccupied with activities where I'm outside or dealing with people.

I am considering getting an opinion from a different therapist but the expense is a little daunting at the moment. Opinions are welcome, I appreciate it.