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5 Sneaky Work Habits That Fuel Depression · Dr. Rosen Reveals- Real Medicine. Clear answers

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Most people know a toxic boss or a terrible job can affect your mental health.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_00: The harder habits to spot are the ones that look completely normal and sometimes even get rewarded.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: They can make you look more productive, dependable, like you can handle a lot while quietly pushing you towards depression.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Dr.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_00: Heather Rosen-Turley.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_00: I'm a board certified family physician, and I want to count down five habits I pay attention to when somebody tells me they feel more down, flat, irritable, or disconnected than they used to be.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: A couple of these will probably make immediate sense.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_00: But number one is the one I think high-functioning people miss the longest because on the surface it sounds completely reasonable.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: Number five, you never really take a break.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: You have meetings all morning, so lunch happens at your desk while you answer email.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_00: Then something comes up in the afternoon and before you know it, you've gone the entire day without really stopping.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_00: That may seem productive, especially if you're getting a lot done, but your brain is not designed to stay in work mode.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: A break does not mean disappearing for an hour.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes it's simply just getting away from the screen, eating an actual meal, walking for 10 minutes, or having a conversation that has absolutely nothing to do with work.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_00: The problem is that high-performing people can start seeing anything that does not produce something as wasted time.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: So all of those little pauses disappear, then by late afternoon you are mentally exhausted, more impatient than usual, and wondering why the easiest task suddenly feels irritating.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_00: Now that does not mean skipping lunch causes depression.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: But if every workday is built around ignoring what your body and your brain need until you finally leave, then that can become much of a bigger pattern.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes what you are doing during those eight or nine hours matters just as much as when you stop.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: Number four, you spend almost the entire day inside and sitting down.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: Think about how easy this is.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: You drive to work, walk into the office, sit most of the day, drive home, and realize you barely saw daylight.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: If you work remotely, you may even see less.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_00: That starts to matter because movement, daylight, sleep, energy, and mood, they're all connected.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not saying you need to start training for a marathon during your lunch break, but I do want you moving.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_00: Go outside for a walk.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: Take the stairs, get away from the desk when you can.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_00: Regular physical activity is one of the things we know that can support mental health.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: And also, pay attention to vitamin D because vitamin D deficiency is very common.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: If somebody comes to me saying they're exhausted, their mood is down, and they spend almost no time outside, vitamin D is something I may consider checking, depending on the rest of their picture.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: Now that does not mean that vitamin D is an antidepressant.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: It means that I do not like telling somebody to simply work on their mindset if there may be something physical contributing to how lousy they feel.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: And if there is another work habit that can make this whole situation work because it lets you temporarily cover up how tired you actually are.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: Number three, you keep overriding your body.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_00: This often starts with caffeine.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: Again, I am not anti-coffee, but there is a difference between enjoying coffee and needing more and more of it just to get yourself through the workday.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you slept badly, so you start the day with extra caffeine.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_00: Then you hit another wall in the afternoon, so you have more.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: Now you get home exhausted and still wired enough that your sleep is not as good as it used to be.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_00: And then the next morning you realize you need even more help to get going.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_00: Add in the skipped meals, eating whatever is easiest because you're busy and sitting most of the day, and eventually you're asking your brain to perform under pretty lousy conditions.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_00: You still may be getting everything done.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_00: That is what makes this so sneaky.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: People assume, I'm functioning, so I must be okay.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: But functioning and feeling well are not the same thing.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_00: And I've spent years in both the mental health and the addiction medicine, and I pay attention when somebody starts needing one thing to get themselves up and another thing to bring themselves down.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes it's caffeine all day and alcohol at night.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: Some people start leaning more heavily on medications or other substances just to change how they feel.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_00: Something that begins as, this just helps me to get through the week can gradually become another problem.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: You have to manage.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_00: And if your mood has been changing along with your energy or sleep, that is when I want you to look at the whole picture rather than assuming you simply need a vacation.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_00: If you've begun feeling more depressed, anxious, exhausted, or unlike yourself and want some to look at both the mental and physical side of what's happening to you, you can use the link below to get in touch with my clinic because the next habit is one people often do every single night without even realizing their workday never actually ended.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_00: Number two, you take your work home in your head.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: You may leave the office at five, but work comes with you.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_00: You replay that meeting while you make dinner.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_00: Think about that email you need to send tomorrow or lie in bed withering whether your boss was irritated by something you said.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_00: So your body went home, but mentally you never left.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_00: That matters because your life outside of work is supposed to contain some of the things that protect you from becoming completely consumed by work.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_00: Your relationships, things you enjoy, time when nobody needs anything from you.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_00: But when work takes over that space too, those parts of life start shrinking.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you stop wanting to go out because you're just too exhausted.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_00: You do not enjoy the things you normally enjoy as much.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_00: The weekend starts becoming two days, you used to recover enough to go back to work.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_00: Depression does not always look like somebody crying all day.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_00: For some people, it looks like feeling flat.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_00: You keep functioning, you keep doing what is expected of you, but there's less enjoyment in your life, and everything feels like it just takes more effort than it used to.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_00: If you're also somebody who replays every workplace conversation for hours after it happens, I have another video specifically on how to stop doing that.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: But before you decide work is definitely the reason you feel this way, there is one habit I think high-functioning people make more than any other.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: And it can delay getting the right help for months or even years.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_00: Number one, you keep calling everything work stress.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_00: This one sounds completely reasonable because work may actually be stressful.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: You may have deadlines piling up, a difficult boss, too much responsibility, or job that is lowly started taking more of you than it used to.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: So when your sleep gets worse, your mood drops, your concentration changes, and you start feeling more irritable or disconnected, it is very easy to explain all of it with one sentence, oh, work is just crazy right now.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_00: The problem is that months can go by while you keep telling yourself the same thing.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: That is where being a medical doctor changes the conversation for me.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_00: I absolutely want to know what is happening at work, but I also want to know whether anything else has changed.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_00: Around the same time, maybe your sleep shifted first, maybe there are thyroid issues worth checking.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_00: For women in their 40s and 50s, maybe perimenopause or menopause is part of the picture.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_00: A medication may have changed, a deficiency may be contributing to the fatigue or alcohol may have gradually become the way you shut your brain off every night.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_00: None of that means work is not affecting you.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_00: It means depression and physical health issues exist at the same time, and one can make the other harder to deal with.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: You can have a genuinely stressful job and also have terrible sleep.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_00: You can be depressed and also be deficient in something.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_00: You can be going through hormonal changes while trying to keep up with a workload that used to feel manageable.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: That is why I do not like stopping at, oh, you're stressed.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_00: I want the whole picture, especially because high-functioning people can stay productive a surprisingly long time while their mental health is getting worse.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_00: Underneath the surface, you may still show up, meet deadlines, and look completely fine to everybody else around you while knowing that something feels very different when you are by yourself.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_00: The habits are easy to miss because most of them do not look dramatic while they are happening.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_00: But if enough of them pile up for long enough, eventually the question must become whether you are having a rough stretch at work or whether something more is going on.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_00: When is it more than a bad stretch at work?
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_00: Everybody has difficult weeks.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_00: You can be exhausted after a terrible deadline or irritated with your job for a while while having clinical depression.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_00: What gents by attention is when the change lasts and starts spreading into the rest of your life.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_00: If you have been feeling down or unusually irritable, have less interest in the things that you normally enjoy, or notice meaningful changes in your sleep, appetite, energy, or ability to concentrate that are sticking around, I would not just keep waiting for the work to calm down.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_00: Talk to somebody.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_00: And I would want that conversation to include both your mental health and your physical health.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe there's a work habit that needs to change.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe depression itself needs a treatment.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe something physical is adding to the problem.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_00: Quite often there is more than one thing happening at once.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_00: The important part is figuring out before feeling miserable becomes so normal that you stop noticing how much your life has changed.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_00: If your mood, energy, or ability to handle stress has changed and you want someone to look at the whole picture, you can use the link below to get in touch with my clinic.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_00: And if work follows you home because you replay every little conversation long after it ends, watch my video on how to stop overthinking every conversation at work.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_00: I'll see you there.