Sometimes the ones that smile most are the ones who are secretly hurting. It's human nature to want to hide your struggles from your loved ones, so you can appear strong. But there are ways that the sadness creeps through. Here are the warning signs of one who is silently struggling.
u/Chicksunny asked: What are signs that someone is secretly unhappy?
It's exhausting.
Not answering emails and texts is a warning sign for me. I start procrastinating about personal correspondence when I'm on my way into a bad depressive episode (and, well, sometimes even when I'm just at baseline, but baseline with clinical depression is pretty unhappy).
Classic symptoms.
Giphy- Not finding pleasure in activities they used to enjoy
- Persistent low mood
- Problems sleeping
Yes.
I think a lot of the time people who are secretly unhappy do their best to make the people they care about laugh and feel happy. As they know what it's like to feel so down and unhappy with the world they don't wish for the people they care about to feel that way.
This is me.
Tired, if they aren't sleeping well often times something is keeping them up. Also tiredness is a commonly used excuse to answer "are you ok?"
Yeah. I've started saying "tired" because people stop prying then. It's socially acceptable. It's not as acceptable to say you feel like life is completely pointless.
Smile.
GiphyThey smile at you, because they want to be nice/friendly - but as soon as you look away, the smile falls off their face.
Because they kind of put it there, rather than it rising up naturally, once its job is done, they let it go.
Edit: since this blew up, I'm going to take the opportunity to say: THERAPY. Therapy can make a big difference, even for the most seemingly-intractable problems. If your life is unhappy, if you relate to the posts in this thread, I advise you to seek a therapist's help.
Relatable.
They don't put any effort into life.
Sometimes I get bursts of motivation to just get up and start improving my life, like right now! Finish college! Hit the gym! But then I think of all the effort I'd actually have to put in to do this, and think "Is it really worth it?" or "I don't actually enjoy working out or going to class. Will this really bring me more happiness?" and just kind of go back to sleep or switching between Reddit and Youtube.
Meh.
General apathetic approach to life mostly.
Can be perfectly described as feeling: "Meh?"
"Eh."
Also relatable.
GiphyEven if this person looks very happy you can easily put them down, make them sad or cry. They become very upset when someone is even a little bit rude to them, they can be very loud and happy at one moment and quiet at another. It's my own experience, I don't know how it works with another people.
I think this is the best way for me to recognize my depression. I'm so much more sensitive to the smallest mistakes. I can sob because my shower isn't warming up. It just feels like the worst thing is everything.
EDIT: For future readers who can see this edit, a sudden inability to stay asleep most nights can also be a sign. It's something I experience as well.
I don't care.
They have nothing to talk about or don't give any opinions. It's a sign that nothing excites or interests them.
Ouch, yeah. Even "what do you want to eat?" is usually met with "I don't care," when I normally love food.
This is true.
It took me a very long time to realize that ANGER is one of my first responses to depression. I feel like we imagine those gray blobs from the commercials that are listless and distracted and sad but for me, unchecked depression expresses as ANGER. I can't believe the stupidity around me, I give no one the benefit of the doubt, I assume everything is a slight and preemptively expect slights. As you can imagine, it's utterly exhausting and TERRIBLE to be around.
Then I lost enough friends, realized I needed to change, got therapy out of my own choice for the first time (forced into it as a kid many times), changed my responses to things, got on medication, and now it takes a lot to get me angry. A lot.
Relatable.
GiphyConstantly saying "I'm just tired" or "I'm just bored" even when not tired or bored is usually a good sign.
Now, I have to go. I'm just tired and bored.
Sleeping a lot is common.
I went through what I think was a depression last year (a solid 4-6 months where I had pretty much no friends and I was unhappy with my schoolwork, etc). What stuck out to me is that normally I'm a pretty emotional person: when things go wrong I cry it out, and I feel better after. When I was going through this, I remember noticing that I didn't cry at all, even when I sort of wanted to. Something would go wrong and sometimes I'd feel angry, and sometimes I'd panic, but usually, I just wanted to go to sleep.
I also remember calling home a lot less often than normal and being frustrated that no one was around to be there with me but always choosing to be alone in my room with the door closed anyway. Life is much much better now, I've talked to counselors and I'm making more of an effort to be social (and I'm happier for it), but mostly I remember feeling like my emotions were muted and being surprised at how lonely that felt.
Good relationship advice.
Look for signs like:
A lack of interest. Not wanting to be seen with you i.e. go out and do things with you. A lack of romance previously had. A lack of effort and or sweet little things for no reason (especially if done previously). A lack of intimacy (not to be confused with sex). Change in mood and or behavior.
Relationships are work. The more you work at them, make a genuine effort and water your own lawn the greener the grass grows. Be unselfish, be sweet, be cheesy. It's worth the effort and even if it's with the wrong person it's good practice for the right one.
Good luck and I hope this helps someone.
Also very common.
GiphyComing from someone that deals with depression and anxiety, my memory isn't as strong whenever I start feeling unhappy. That's usually one of the first signs that's a giveaway to any of my friends. As soon as I stop remembering the little things and eventually the bigger things, it's a dead giveaway.
Mood.
Complaining about trivial, unimportant things in their everyday lives. And sometimes you don't even notice you're doing it until someone finally says,"Wow, it seems like you hate everything."
When I see a close friend of mine start to isolate themselves and care less about their appearance or personal hygiene, I worry.
Strangers online shared what they've witnessed at the workplace when Redditor ImaginaryBank9587 asked:
"How did that one coworker get fired?"
These former employees would do anything for a meal deal.
Egg Thief
"We had an employee cafeteria at a Fortune 500 company. You'd get your food at a counter and bring it, in one of those white foam clamshell containers, to the register where you'd just tell the cashier what you got. This one fellow regularly ordered 3-egg scrambles and told the cashier he had just one egg. He got caught once and told never to do it again. He did it again, and lost a $100k+ job for stealing eggs."
– Yossarian147
Costly Stand-Off
"Similar thing happened at my work, Fortune 500 company, VP of some department, company cafeteria but it was a salad. Would order a salad in line, the kind that they charge by weight and would loiter around until the cashier line got busy and then slip out the exit."
"Cafe worker noticed, told her boss …her boss told corporate security, they start watching for him and due to the guy’s position they watch for a few weeks. 2-3x’s a week he does this for close to a month. Finally they decide ok now it’s ironclad and we can fire him so they walk him out."
"Turns out he thought charging for salad was a ripoff and decided he wasn’t playing the game with the cafe. Well over 300k a year and lost it over a 5.00 salad."
– Due-Pineapple6831
The camera sees all.
Clumsy Ninja
"He was stealing Klondie Bars from the company freezer."
"One of the managers brought in a hidden camera to catch the thief. We all knew the camera was there so he crawled over to the freezer all ninja style to stay under the camera's field of vision."
"It would have worked, except, when he stood back up he tried to do it all fancy, and fell backward back into the camera's view."
– pirateteaparty
He May Have Fooled The GPS Tracker
"Dude would drive to the site, park his work van, then have his GF pick him up and take off for 8 hours, come back and pick up the van, thereby cleverly fooling the GPS tracker in the vehicle..."
"But not the camera pointing directly at the spot where he parked, got picked up, and dropped off. Cost the company a substantial contract. And himself a job."
– Dylsnick
Keep an eye on your baby wherever you go.
Free Baby
"She picked up a customer's baby without permission and walked off with her, the customer was beside herself thinking she'd been kidnapped. Co-worker didn't think she had done anything wrong because she's also a mother...."
– miss_demean0r
Up For Grabs
"My girlfriend had a coworker who did something similar, customer came in with a baby and she just grabbed the baby out of mum's arms and starts rocking it as this was a normal thing in her culture and her fellow co-workers freaked out about it but the mum was actually totally fine with it for some reason. She did not get fired though, they actually gave her a full time contract soon after which was a rare thing where she worked."
– Bubblez4
The Cart Pusher
"We had a cart pusher at target who did the same thing. He def have some mental disabilities, but I wasn’t privy to that info. I just know there were very few tasks he could do and he wasn’t very verbal."
"He was instructed to return carts, so he picked the child up from the child seat in the cart and held it out for the mom to grab after she finished loading the trunk. Mom was mortified, came in to raise hell at guest services. He wasn’t fired, but he also wasn’t allowed to push carts anymore."
– thisisntmyOGaccount
Alcohol and work don't mix.
Workplace Blackout
"Showed up drunk on the job, passed out on a chair in the lobby, then pissed his pants."
– SheZowRaisedByWolves
Sad Story
"At a prior company, we had a programmer who was brilliant. He actually built their computer systems from scratch and was able to update and maintain them. Only problem was, he was a total alcoholic. He was married and his wife did a damn good job getting him to work each day and keeping him reasonably coherent during business hours, probably because he was earning over $300K/year and it was worth her effort."
"Well, I guess she finally had enough of conducting his life and divorced him. He went OFF THE RAILS, like the company sent cops to his house for a wellness check. He was fine, just really drunk. The company paid for him to go to go rehab about three times, they were that invested in him. Each time, he'd stay sober for a bit, but then would be back to his old tricks in a couple of months."
"Eventually, the company hit its breaking point. I think the final straw was when he was in the parking lot, drunk, passed out in his car."
"He was fired and ended up passing from a massive heart attack about six months later, no doubt due to his addiction."
"Very sad story all around as he actually was great guy and an incredible programmer."
– Bleuet73
When I was a young performer in shows at a certain theme park, me and my coworkers got away with a lot of harmless but unprofessional behavior backstage that involved roughhousing and stupid antics out of view of visiting guests.
But when it came to showtime, we were always professional and helped create magical memories for our audiences.
The only time someone was fired was when a coworker tried to sneak a prop–in this case, a wig of a very popular princess–out of the park. Whenever we would "clock out" the security gate, they would always check our belongings for this very reason.
I guess my friend forgot about that part.
The next day, he didn't show up to work and none of us had a clue as to why. The company is so secretive when it comes to stuff like this.
We all eventually found out, and none of this played out dramatically. But one thing was made very clear.
You don't steal a mermaid's wig from this company and think you can get away with it.
"Outdoorsmen of Reddit: What is the most terrifying experience you’ve encountered in the woods?"
In The Company Of Wolves
"Walking in the pitch black out to a deer stand."
"So dark you couldn't see your hand in front of your face."
"Heard some circling around me of something large, it was trotting along."
"No big deal, figured it was a deer."
"Then it stopped and let out the most bone chilling howl I have ever heard."
"So loud it was like it was inside of me."
"A few wolves howled back in the distance and it ran off."
"Needed new underwear."- jubstep45
Who's That Cackling?
"I was backwoods camping in Canada with my ex."
"Deep forest, we'd been out there a day or two and hadn't seen anyone."
"That evening we were in the tent playing cards and heard something in the bushes, making a giant racket."
"It was getting steadily closer."
"It got to the area we were in and stopped."
"We debated what to do but finally opened the tent, both completely freaked out, and found... chickens."
"Three chickens, en route home to an organic farm we didn't know was nearby."- Worldly_Salamander_
GiphyIs That Water I Hear?
"An after dark flash flood that roared through camp."
"Twelve of us...five of them were sleeping in the canyon bottom."
"It's amazing nobody died."
"That was 32 years ago and I still sleep lightly and always pack clean underpants."- BrunoGerace
Stranger By The Lake
"When I was about fifteen yrs old me and some of my friends decided to go camping at a nearby lake."
"It was a 3-4 hr hike, and the nearest house was Maybe 3 hr away."
"We brought some homemade wine and drank the whole night and ate poorly grilled hot dogs."
"Life was good."
"We all shared the tent so it was crowded as f*ck in the tent but we all fell asleep around 2 am."
"At 4 I wake up because i can feel someone running their hand down my forearm."
"Not that unlikely that someone brushes up against me since there wasn't any space to move around in the crowded tent."
"But this is the arm that is facing the tent."
"So someone touched me from the outside of the tent."
"I sit up and gets instantly horrified to see that all my friends are sound asleep in the tent with me."
"I put on my deepest voice and shout 'whoever the f*ck you are you need to leave'."
"And a manly low voice answers me 'you should pack up your stuff and leave', not threatening or aggressive."
"Just calmly and in a dead kinda way."
"By now all my friends are awake and are just looking at me."
"No words just pure horror in their eyes."
"I say: 'Okay, we will go, but you need to leave'."
"Hurry up"
"When we get out of the tent this man, who is f*cking huge btw has taken the little row boat that was laying at the bank and gotten into it and is just sitting in the middel of the lake and watching us pack up our stuff and trying to get the f*ck away asap."
"We had to walk around the lake at our way back and he was just sitting there watching us."
"We never went back."
"This was 17 years ago in a rural Scandinavian country."
"We have a 'free to roam law' so we where not trespassing."
"We knew our way around the small town we grew up, everybody knows everybody."
"There have been no people missing and or found dead."
"Never."
"There hasn't been a murder in generations."
"We told our parents who at first tried to calm us down and they said that we where probably overreacting."
"But the way he caressed my arm before he told us to go was not normal."
"When we told them everything and What he said to us we where told to never go back."
"After covid we all met up and the subject came up and we tried to do some digging."
"There are no houses or cabins anywhere near."
"The lake is way too small to fish in."
"When he was sitting dead center in his little boat there was Maybe 60 feet to land on all sides."
"No one has ever seen this man before or after."- Withthisaccountican
Water Band GIF by TennisGiphyLose Lose Situation
"As a Boy Scout, we found a bunch of scorpions in our Adirondack."
"We ran outside screaming our heads off, and then lightening struck a tree like 20 yards away."
"We turned on our heels and ran straight back to the scorpions."- captainkatalis
A Bit Too Much Holiday Spirit
"Many years ago, when I was about 14, I was hiking deep in the woods behind my house with some friends."
"We were miles away from home- further than any of us had ever gone before."
"And we came up to the edge of a clearing and a little further down the tree line, we saw a lump of clothes underneath an old deer stand."
"We got a little closer and we could make out legs and arms and boots."
"They were wet from rain and had been there for a while."
"Obviously, our first thought was that it was a hunter who had an accident and fallen out of his stand and was dead."
"We were freaked out and it took us a little bit to get up the nerve to get a better look."
"It wasn't until we were practically on top of it that we realized that it was a dummy."
"We had wandered all the way up to the edge of a big Christmas Tree farm's property and the dummy was part of their decorations from a haunted hayride thing they did."
"They must have forgotten about it when closing up for the year."
"We had a good laugh but we were all scared sh*tless for a few minutes."- Ocksu2
season 1 premiere GIF by Jersey Shore Family VacationGiphyThe Bear Necessities
"I work in the bush and sometimes spend months out there."
"Most terrifying was seeing a bear start to circle me right as the helicopter pilot radioed me to say he couldn't get to my location because of the weather."
"Luckily I had a shotgun with me, and eventually the pilot got down to me, but yeah, sitting there in the sleet while watching that grizzly slowly and sneakily try to cut around my position in the fading light was absolutely terrifying."
"The whole time I was trying to come up with possible ways to keep from being outflanked and to keep visual contact with it in case I had to shoot it."
"This was in the late fall, so the bear probably hadn't put on enough fat for the year and was looking to supplement it."
"Spooky stuff!"- Psychological_Put395
Not A Terribly Uncommon Discovery In The Woods...
"I was backpacking with my dog and about 12 miles from the road and trailhead."
"So pretty far from people though popular enough that other hikers might be around."
"Though we saw no-one all day."
"About 2 a.m. my dog started this really low deep growl and wakes me up."
"Turn on my headlamp and see his teeth showing and he's right on top of me."
"I hear heavy footsteps (black bear / moose?) near the tent."
"I leash my dog so he doesn't tear thru the tent and the footsteps move further away, but keep circling my tent."
"All of my food and toiletries are hung in a tree in a bear bag - nothing in the tent to draw a bear's attention."
"I clap my hands - something is still slowly circling - not something a moose would do, and a bear might if he wanted food - but I've got nothing and a really big dog with me."
"I decide to step out of the tent with the leash in one hand and bear spray in the other - yelling 'hey bear'."
"The footsteps stop - dog's nose is in the air telling me to look right - but nothing in my headlamp that I can see."
"Didn't hear anything run off, but it's quiet."
"I give it 5 minutes or so, get back in the tent, and it starts up again - slowly circling maybe 50 feet from me."
"Maybe an hour later, I hear the footsteps wander off into the woods."
"At dawn, I take the dog, and the bear spray, and start looking for tracks."
"I find a clear path in the leaves that had been trampled, but no tracks."
"The dogs nose is on the ground, and I follow his lead - and he follows the loop around our campsite."
"We finally see a few human footprint - not shoe tracks - a regular size (not bigfoot) bare human foot."
"Plus - yup a human turd and toilet paper."
"Some a**hole was wandering around the middle of nowhere, near the tent and circling my tent for an hour or more, and left a dump for me to find."
"Hiking and backpacking is incredibly safe. I've been doing this for decades, and this is the only weird experience I've ever had."
"The hiking community is incredibly friendly."
"The trails have become more crowded since covid, and your definitely seeing more people on trails, and less trail courtesy (litter - leaving dog poop bags, pooping too close to the trail and not burying you poop)."
"Also - I was very far away from civilization. "
"Bad guys don't hike 12 miles to do harm, and I'm pretty sure they don't carry toilet paper."
"I've hiked thousand of miles without a single dangerous human interaction."
"What I think happened?"
"Much as I'd love to say it was a young sasquatch, a skin walker or a wendigo - I'm guessing it was a disoriented backpacker that left their tent to crap, and got confused."
"I was hiking a somewhat popular long loop trail, and I believe someone was probably hiking the opposite way, and stopped somewhere off trail ahead of me."
"I was backwoods camping - not at a campground."
"Regulations are that you need to be 200 feet off the trail and into the woods to set up a camp."
"So they could have been a quarter mile ahead on the trail and I wouldn't have known unless they were noisy (or smelly enough for my dog to let me know)."
"The most likely explanation is that they were heavily under the influence, got up to crap, and got lost on their way back to their tent, and found my site."
"They approach my tent and realized they were wrong, and tried to find their way back to their camp."
"Then they heard my dog, and me yelling to scare off a bear, and either thought we were a risk to them, or too lit to answer back."
"The circle around my camp was several hundred feet - and my tent wouldn't be visible for most of the loop - I was camping between several spruce trees."
"I didn't get back to sleep!"
"I couldn't get back to sleep."
"It was late Sept and sunrise was around 6 a.m."
"When we found the poop pile, I relaxed - I really didn't think there would be anyone nearby as we were in a very tough area to get to - requiring going over 2 mountain summits from my direction, and 6 other mountains in the other direction."
"The total hike was about 40 miles IIRC."
"We were going to be out for 3 nights, and 4 days."
"After I realized it was a human, my first assumption was that there was a lost hiker."
"I texted a friend that does Search and Rescue in the area t see if there were any reports of lost or overdue hikers."
"If there had been, I would have had my dog try to follow that trail to see if I could have found their campsite."
"As no one was missing, we broke camp and went on our way."
"He was the best dog ever."
"I lost him about 5 years ago."
"I knew that dog would die for me."
"Several years after this incident, I got diagnosed with cancer. **(**ETA - I've been in remission for several years and things look good)."
"This dog was so in tune with me that he knew how sh*tty I was going to feel before I did."
"He would walk with me to the bathroom, and sit right next to me as a puked my guts up."
"He'd walk me back to bed and let me rest my hand on his back if I needed a little help walking."
"Everyone has a heart dog - he was mine."
"I swear he knew I had cancer before I did."
"He used to sniff me right where my tumor was located."
"I still get teary eye'd thinking of him."
"Rest in peace big guy."- BionicGimpster
What Is It Reaction GIF by Nebraska Humane SocietyGiphyIt's What They Didn't See Or Hear...
"Absolute silence. No wind, no animals, nothing. One second there were all the sounds of nature, then nothing. Lasted for a few seconds that felt like an eternity." Reddit
There's a reason that so many fairy tales and scary stories are set deep in the woods.
For while staying alert and using your best judgment will no doubt keep you safe, the possibilities of what could happen to you are endless, and terrifying.
Redditor FlickTheSwitch167 wanted to hear about the times the truth of the world, just ruined it all, so they asked:
"What Historical fact have you learnt that ruined everything you ever thought you knew about this life?"
I feel like all of history is a lie. The more I learn, the less I'm shocked.
Aflame...
awesome rock on GIFGiphy"More of a fun one, but lighters predate strike matches by a couple of centuries. They originated from repurposed flintlock pistols that ignited tinder shoved in the barrel that was set aflame by the trigger mechanism."
Kataphractoi
Ice Ice Baby...
"Ancient Antarctica was actually a rainforest, a lush and verdant paradise, filled with flora and fauna. Despite the interesting fact that there was a whole continent of animals who lived on this planet that we’ll never know about - as their remains are locked beneath miles of ice."
"It blew my mind that Antarctica only fully froze over about 35 million years ago, despite breaking from its supercontinent ~ 180 million years ago."
"That means Antarctica supported independent life for ~ 145 million years, which ruined any sense I have for time and perspective. We really are specks on this planet."
oohaaahz
GONE
"There was a Spanish explorer that first visited the Inca empire and saw lots of prosperous cities and a great civilization, and told his peers about it when he returned home. But when other folks went to visit the said cities they found nothing but jungle and thought the explorer lied about his story."
"The fact that blew my mind is that nowadays we discovered that his story was true and the people he encountered died from diseases brought into the new world. And the cities and civilization they build were consumed by jungle in the span of a few years."
Manu82134
Modern Day
"Can't remember the exact quote but it went something like, If the entirety of human (Homo) history was condensed into a 500-page book, modern anatomical humans wouldn't show up until page 450, and homosapiens wouldn't build empires until page 490, the atomic bomb and the foundation of Rome would be on the final page and only a paragraph apart."
"And yet in all of this, the vast amount of technological advancements from the discovery of the atom to the modern day would fit in the last few sentences, of the last paragraph of the last page. And people wonder why we are reckless, we're still effectively great apes but with shiny toys."
JitterySuperCoffee
Tastes and Colors
All Stars Reaction GIF by LifetimeGiphy"Ruined in an interesting, not bad way: ancient Greek and Roman polychrome. The Parthenon temple looked a bit like Disneyland."
ipakookapi
"Same goes for European churches. Statues were painted in flashy colors. The ones outside got washed blanc but there are still some inside that still have their color. By today's standard, it would be considered tacky and bad taste."
chinchenping
One does want a hint of color. Right?
Part of that World
Happy The Little Mermaid GIF by Disney PrincessGiphy"Prehistoric, but still: Given that humans tend to concentrate along coastlines, and that sea levels have risen a bunch in the last 200 000 years, it is likely that our conception of human prehistory is fantastically distorted due to most of it being lost under the sea."
HaggeHagglin
Pennies and Pennies
"Victorian era London was a terrible place to be alive as a member of the working class. If I recall correctly. You could pay a penny to sit indoors on a bench but no sleeping! Two Pennies and you could swing your arms over a rope and sleep standing up or if you made hella money that day you could pay 4 Pennies and sleep in a coffin. The water is undrinkable and children expected working hours were 12 to 18 a day starting at 4 yrs old. By those standards, a lot of us would look like royalty to them."
UnicornBrainsRPointy
Horrendous Horrors
"Learning about the depth and breadth of slavery in human history was a real eye-opener. We have really detailed documents from more modern history to show WHY that idea is so heinous, but it's always been a significant part of cultures all around the world serving as anything from a social construct to the very currency of war and with autonomy ranging from that of livestock to that of a low caste."
"Evidence of slavery predates written records and is even included in the code of Hammurabi where it was already an established institution and we still haven't stamped it out today, April 10th, 2023, where slavery affects an estimated 46 million people (that's more than the total population of California, and approximately the population of Spain). It's crazy how awful humans have always been to one another and that we still can't seem to hold each other accountable for basic human rights, despite indelible proof."
FridayInc
Far Far Away
"When I learned that NASA had discovered over 100 billion GALAXIES and saw the image to put into perspective that our entire solar system is only about the size of a coin compared to our galaxy which in relation would be the size of the United States. We are so incredibly small within the universe."
cheeseburghers
A Strange Loop
Over It Ugh GIFGiphy"If you look at the history of mankind, you quickly see that nobody ever learned from our history."
Plastik-Mann
"History shows again and again how nature points out the folly of man."
Kvesh
If history has taught us anything, it's that we're doomed.
But let's keep learning.
