Anyone else with aspergers become "depressed" (but not sad)?

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My depression is related to abuse as well. I used to get it regularly on the anniversary of an attack, and I still get it when someone I respect goes on about how sexual abuse isn't a problem, or the victims are liars, etc. 'Secondary wounding' they call that. And while my triggers are related to more extreme events, I think low grade, ongoing, supposedly "mild" abuse (verbal abuse, non-physical bullying) is just as damaging in the long run, and predisposes a person to depression.

I do not usually go of into revenge fantasies, however. I just see myself as worthless and think the world and my family would be better off if I was dead.



I go through long periods where I'm emotionally neutral, which I much prefer to being depressed, sad, angry or scared. The depressed state is at least intellectually negative even when I am not actively feeling negative emotions. When I'm depressed, I'm not just not feeling emotions; I can't think clearly and I go into bad thought spirals on how horrible I am.

I once had a depression leave me so abruptly I literally looked up, thinking I'd see something rising away from me, because the impression of a weight being lifted was so strong. I have always assumed that feeling of freedom and relief must be something like joy, but it wasn't a positive emotion so much as the absence of negative emotion, but that's as close as I've gotten except for laughing at something that amuses me. When I'm not depressed, I do have a sense of humor and can laugh at stories and goofy cats and things, but at least according to this definition, that's not actually happiness.



Personally, the only time I started thinking "life is good," reality promptly swatted me down like a fly with the most emotionally painful abuse of my life, so part of me suspects happiness is considerably over rated anyhow. Feeling neutral is preferable.