Depressed and NOT know it

After 5 days in hospital testing for epilepsy the doctor told me I was depressed and didn’t know it.  Mind you they had kept me awake for most of those 5 days.  I had about 10 hours of sleep total.  I was miserable and hated what I was going through and angry because I went in knowing I didn’t have epilepsy.  (BIG communication break down between me and the doctor.)  This was the only time in my adult life I remember having a full blown screaming temper tantrum.  And it was video taped as part of the test.  Looking back 15 years I really should apologize.  You see he was right when he said I was depressed and didn’t know it.  There were several break downs in understanding.  #1 I defined depression as suicidal, loss of interest, sad feelings, crying which if you check any web page are some of the symptoms of depression.  Take note here - SOME of the symptoms.  I didn’t have them.  Before counseling I could count on one hand how many times I had cried in 30 years and exactly why I was crying each time.  I am intensely curious about anything and everything.  (You could read this as annoyingly so.)  I felt happy a good share of the time.  How could anyone be depressed and not know it?

Missing information on my part, I never heard of dissociation or what it meant.  From Wikipedia you get this fairly harmless sounding description:
Dissociative disorders[1] are defined as conditions that involve disruptions or breakdowns of memory, awareness, identity and/or perception.  
From reading this description I don’t feel any more informed.  I finally went to counseling when I was suicidal and I did recognize the symptoms of depression.  But that was 7 years after the hospital test.  So what happened?  Why didn’t I know I was depressed before?  Well, I did have disruptions in my memory.  Those disruptions were large enough that I could fit days, weeks, and occasionally months or years into those gaps.  When I started counseling, I didn’t mention the tests run at the hospital or that what I did remember about my childhood wasn’t very pleasant.  I skipped all of that and told the KavinCoach I didn’t know how to communicate.  Another thing you can dissociate from is your emotions.  I could switch to a state of mind where I felt nothing at all, no sadness, no anger, no frustration, no fear, no pain, no happiness, no love, no joy.  We are talking zip, zero, nada.  I did not know that this was unusual.  I honestly thought anybody and everybody could simply set all feelings and emotions aside.  KavinCoach explained that dissociative behavior like many behaviors function on a continuum.  Most people in a state of severe crisis can set aside emotions to deal with an emergency, then when the emergency was over they fall apart and feel everything they put off.  For me, I was rated as dissociation at a severe level.  I was so far down the continuum that I could completely and totally suppress all emotions at any time.  

KavinCoach tried an experiment with me.  He purposely tried to get me angry by things that he was saying to me.  He watched as I became more agitated then watched as I totally shut off the anger.  He stopped mid conversation and asked, “Where did it go?”
Puzzled I replied, “Where did what go?”
“You were getting angry,” he continued, “but now you are not.”
“Yeah.”  If I was inclined to rudeness I would probably have said “Duh” right about now.  
KC “What did you do with it?”
Me “I don’t know.”  
This was the first time anyone had ever pointed out to me that my ability to shut off emotion was not the way most people reacted.  Several years of counseling I finally found where I had shut all those emotions away.  They were perfectly preserved waiting to be felt. I could honestly and truly be depressed and have no idea.  After a lot of work I now have my list of clues when I am depressed.  Angry enough to want to yell but I suppress it. (Depressing emotion.)  Sleeping less than 5 hours of sleep per night.  Agitated but nothing I can specifically attribute the feeling or I could be too calm almost vegatative.  Inability to concentrate on a task.  Jump from task to task not completing any of them.  You won’t find many of these on your average depression list.  But I am not average when it comes to depressing my emotions.  I can depress emotions so completely I don’t know I am feeling them.  I can be depressed and NOT know it.  I still owe that doctor an apology.