difference between

Depression and anxiety often go hand in hand. If you have both and are still symptomatic, how do you sort out which is causing what symptom?

For example, sometimes I just don't want to try and push myself into doing new things. Depression or anxiety?

Sometimes it's hard to tell which monster is rearing it's ugly head and consequently, difficult to know how to deal with it (besides medication).

I've come to conclude that where there is one (depression), there is the other (anxiety). For dealing with it, I've found it helpful to consider depression as coming from thinking too much about the past, and anxiety and thinking too much about the future. Hope that it helpful for you...

For me, not wanting to do things comes from both depression and anxiety. I feel like my depression is about the present mainly, and anxiety is about the present and future. Or maybe not, hard to say. All I know is my anxiety didn't start to get bad until the depression reared its ugly head.

Yeah, I can't tell whether I don't do things because I am depressed or anxious. They really do seem to go hand in hand.

For me, it doesn't matter so much what is causing it. My 'treatment' is the same: making myself get out there and do stuff (easier said than done, sometimes!).

They definitely go hand in hand. Anxiety is new to me. Never had it at all in all these years of depression. Then five years ago it started coming on and got totally unbearable in the last two and a half years. I have no idea why. Probably has to do with my life circumstances. I had to beg my pdoc for a year to give me something that would work. Finally he gave me Klonopin, low dose, but it has totally knocked out the anxiety. I know all the risks with benzo's but I just could not handle the anxiety and paranoia.

I think anxiety and depression are symptoms of a much deeper underlying cause and that is really what should be treated by all the different ways there are to treat it. It sure can be difficult figuring out what that underlying cause is. I my case I think it is mostly genetic and biological, but environmental causes and triggers play a big role too.

They really try to treat the symptoms of the anxiety and depression itself in a lot of ways. In my case maybe it is all they can do. Even with me and total biology there are other ways to treat it besides just meds. They certainly haven't come up with the magic pill yet to fix it.

So I think going after the underlying causes which are the same for both the anxiety and depression is the best strategy. What you do to do that kind of eludes me because I have done and tried so many things. I guess we have to go with what is currently known to work. But for me damn it none of them seem to work.

I should say however my current new meds are working great. I just have no clue how long it will last.