Hey Anita

I’m good. I’ve been in counselling for a couple months now. I don’t feel like I’ve been in counselling long enough for it to have made a huge difference but i think it will go in that direction soon enough. It’s nice to have someone who listens to you and actually believe that you are trying hard. That don’t think failing subjects etc is a result of being lazy and believe you when you say you can’t control these mood slumps. I cut my study and work load by half and have allocated myself 2 full days to rest so i’m hoping this new routine will reduce the chance i will slump. I have also set some programs in place for me and made contact with some study help programs so that when i slump i will have someone to go to to help with my studies.

My study term has just started again after weeks of no study (because i avoided everything and had to drop out). So i’m hoping i have put enough support networks in place this time that when i slump i can go to those and hopefully come out of the term without failing my studies.

My Doctor and Counsellor recommended i see a psychiatrist  so i have an appointment booked for the end of august so i will just see what they say. I’m not interested in medication but maybe they will provide a bit more clarity on what slumping regularly means.

I think overall im going in a better directions. The last big slump which was around the time i first posted on tiny buddha i remember being able to reason with myself even in the hardest moments. I eventually was able to acknowledge that those thoughts and feelings i was having were symptoms of depression, they were not my thoughts. Depression feels very personal because it affects your thoughts. Thoughts always feel like they must be true, it’s your inner voice and we are taught to trust that inner voice. Now i understand that i can’t trust all those thoughts and feeling that come into my head. I don’t need to always engage in them. So i think in comparison to 5 years ago i am in a much better place. I think i just have to keep moving forwards and recognise the little improvements i make. My goal is no longer to be happy anymore, my goal is just to improve. Who knows where i will end up with that!

Maybe you can tell that the tone of this message in more hopeful, well that is because i’m am not in a slump atm! But i know now that mood swings, however they present themselves can swing you from one state to an entire different mood in the next. Some people may experience emotions in a more linear way, some people’s emotions can swing drastically. For those people you may feel very extreme in one moment and completely different in the next. So next time i slump i might feel like completely giving up, i may feel completely different to the way i feel now. But i know that eventually i will return back to feeling normal again. In the meantime i’m just going to try to make my circumstances align as much as possible with what i need so that i have the best chance of succeeding. But honestly if i fail again, it will hurt but i can now see that trying hard to make your life better does work. Reaching out for support does help. doing all those little psychology activities and reflective exercises has payed off because i have definitely improved in the last five years.

so there you go, that’s a little bit about me.

Dear anita

thankyou, I had never heard of Recurrent brief depression before. I read some articles about it since you commented and do definitely relate to some of the symptoms listed. The next step would probably to go see someone about it. It’s so strange though, RBD doesn’t come up on many websites pages about depression. It seems not to be very common.

Dear TeaK

A couple things happened when I was 12 I guess. I became really disinterested/disengaged with school. I guess I experienced a couple ‘rejections’ so to speak but all in all, I had a good group of friends.  I did get mocked/made fun of a lot by some family members. This increased during high school  so it definitely contributed to my insecurities. I feel like that empty and grey feeling that immerged when i was 12 kind of popped out of nowhere. I was told that puberty can affect your hormones and your mood, but if so i don’t know why i’m still experiencing this feeling at 21.

Even though I got mocked at home, I feel like everything started to go downhill with the onset of this empty feeling when I was 12. It was kind of always there in the background and made it harder to grow resilient and bounce back from problems. So the more mistakes and failures I made the worst I felt. It was a bit of an avalanche effect. I slowly forgot what it felt like to be passionate or hopeful towards things.

I feel different today because i did a lot of reflecting and steering my life in a direction I’m happy with. 60 percent of the time its ok. Unfortunately the rest of the time is in these slow and emotionally draining slumps that happens somewhat regularly. it Really feels like out of my control. Often nothing much has set it off, or something very small.