Can depression stem from social anxiety?

[hollowone]

Specifically from some of the ways social anxiety limits your life and causes you to reflect on yourself being a failure. How many people developed depression as a result of losing hope in things making friends, getting jobs and finding partners?

How many people have gradually become reclusive over time due to losing motivation as a result lack of social success and lack of positive feedback? How many people become avoidant due to a deep-seated belief that you're unlikeable? I hear that this happens with some people.

How many people feel trapped in miserable circumstances purely because they cannot yet face taking the plunge; things pursueing new social opportunities and trying to meet new people?

[Z.]

Of course it can. Depression can stem from a lot of things. Depression is often a co-morbid illness.
For me though, my SA has nothing to do with my depression. My depression exists independently of it, and is not caused by SA.

[humphrey]

Yes the social anxiety definitely caused and continues to cause my depression.

[Ajax Amsterdam]

In my case I think my episodes of depression have indeed stemmed from my SA. For most of my life the crushing anxiety severely limited virtually every aspect of my life and left me in stagnation. The sheer frustration and feelings of helplessness and hopelessness saw me slide down into pretty dark places psychologically speaking.

The gap between what I wanted my life to be about and what it actually consisted of in reality was quite massive and I never felt it could be bridged. I'd get quite depressed as a result. That was a more chronic depression, but I've also had bouts of acute depression brought on in times of crisis. Those times of crisis have usually come about when circumstances have forced me into situations that I simply could not deal with because of extreme anxiety. When pushed to that extreme I've often been quite suicidal.

So for me, the anxiety came first and the depression came as a result of the effects of the anxiety and the life choices I made in order to avoid that anxiety. A classic case of shrinking your life down to the size of your comfort zone then staying there and going to any length to avoid coming out of that zone. When your comfort zone is extremely tight it leaves no room for manoeuvre and little room to breathe. Life degenerates into simple existence and the aim of getting up in the morning is simply to survive until you can sleep again. So, zero quality of life easily slides into despair and depression. That's how it went in my case.

[hollowone]

OK, in light of what I was predicting, it can be a two way street. I was expecting most people to have become depressed as a result of their social anxiety and the way it limits life and leaves you feeling trapped and living in fear of the situation being the same forever (this explains the 'difficulty falling asleep' part you see in most popular psychology stuff).

What about depression developing first and leading to SA? I can see how depression can give you more reasons to fear being judged negatively, regardless of what precipitates it. Once depression sets-in, regardless of whether it's precipitated by SA and it's life-limiting misery, or other things, it disables you and makes you doubt your capability. It makes you feel like you're useless because you're not motivated to do anyitng and are too knackered all the time. The fact that you're not doing much can be a source of worry, 'what can I talk about', 'what if people ask what I do in my spare time?' Which can further cause people to avoid social contact due to this fear. Depression can be both precipitated by and be a precipitating, and perpetuating factor of social anxiety.

[Pablo Huntsbach]

I think for me social anxiety led to social ineptitude, which led to a lack of meaningful social contact in my life which caused my depression.