Story of my academic career in a nutshell. Though it wasn’t exactly social anxiety getting in the way…
Happened to me in my last two years of undergrad. Though in my case I didn’t even know it was depression till after I’d worked my way out of it.
Guys. Don’t do that. Don’t wait to work your own way out of it. Even if you’re not suicidal (I never was, I just wanted to not have to deal with anything; avoidance was the name of my game). I put large swathes of my life on hold in order to struggle with it—and I didn’t even realize, somehow, though in retrospect it seems so OBVIOUS.
Oh, but it made such a heaping mess; I had an extra year’s worth of student loans because I had to repeat classes, and I blew off two years of education when I could’ve used it to actually DO something, and it affected my ability to pursue a career for YEARS because I just didn’t have a record that’d make me desirable to an employer. And it messed me up psychologically in a way that I spent years cleaning up. Bad mental habits, coping mechanisms gone awry, humiliation and guilt about my own choices and actions. Relationships that went south because I was just too embarrassed to meet their eyes.
I wish that I’d realized what I was dealing with at the time, because I would’ve hit the campus counseling services like a freaking tornado. If you’re a student, you’re sitting pretty, because most colleges and universities offer free counseling services to students. I don’t know whether they could’ve helped me out of my depression or not, but they could’ve helped me THROUGH it—could’ve helped me develop skills to manage it and avoid the worst of the mess it made. Could’ve helped me understand what I was going through so that I could make informed choices instead of flailing around.
I know that especially for people with social anxiety, it’s nervewracking and exhausting to think about opening yourself up and getting help that way, which is even more stressful when you’re suffering a condition that makes EVERYTHING nervewracking and exhausting. But just remember that everybody who walks through those doors is going through a similar experience. Everybody you talk to, this is their JOB, to deal with people having problems. You’re not especially weird or different to them. You’re not a burden to them, because frankly helping you is what they get paid for. If they didn’t like it, they’d be in a different job.
I want to say a bit more about this, I think, because I know for a lot of people it’s such a stigma. And not just from the outside. Depression often attacks in a way where it doesn’t FEEL like something that’s been imposed on you. Often it quietly saps away your emotional strength, and can leave you wondering why you can’t be brave enough, strong enough, organized enough to just get on with things. Many people are left feeling embarrassed, weak, like there’s something wrong with them for having depression or anxiety happen to them. Like they’ve failed somehow. Many people believe that they’re simply being inexcusably ‘lazy.’
Bullshit to all that, I say.
First of all, it can never be repeated often enough: it’s an illness. It’s like the flu, or cancer, or a concussion. Depression isn’t just a bad mood. It’s rooted in physical and chemical processes in your body. Some people just naturally have them out of whack. For other people—like me, so far as I know—it can be triggered by environmental stressors. (In the space of three months, I broke up with the only long-term boyfriend I’ve ever had; I was fired from my job; a friend died in a car crash; and I was fucked over by a professor who decided that my getting stranded out of town due to my car breaking down at the funeral was not sufficient reason to miss a week of class, even though I called her personally to explain as soon as I realized. She told me to drop her class or she’d flunk me, in the first month of the semester, and since I’d already dropped a class I was left wondering how I was going to manage enough credits to maintain full-time enrollment status). I was upset, anxious, grieving, angry, and taken all together, it flipped a switch and I spent the next two years climbing slowly out of that hole.
I didn’t know, because I didn’t feel super-sad, or even apathetic. Mostly I just felt wiped out, and overwhelmed. Even minor decisions seemed like freaking emotional mountains I had to scale. I spent a lot of time just wanting to be left alone to read, or play video games, or do other things that didn’t make any demands on me.
And that’s the other thing. I’m not ashamed of my depression. At the time, I wondered what the hell was wrong with me that I couldn’t seem to get my act together. I knew I was avoiding important things, but I thought I was just being a lazy wuss. THEN I felt ashamed of myself. But in retrospect, knowing what it was, I’m not ashamed because I know it wasn’t my fault. I wasn’t doing it on purpose. I wasn’t merely lacking in self-discipline or willpower. It was never a shortcoming in me.
I don’t even regret my depression. I mean, if I could go back and change things, I wouldn’t choose to make it so that it didn’t happen. It was hard on me, but by god those two years taught me so much. In many ways I came out stronger, with more empathy, with a new understanding of something that’s let me connect with and support other people going through hard times. It taught me a lot about ME, and about what I’m capable of enduring.
I DO regret that I didn’t recognize it and seek help. It didn’t have to be AS hard on me as it was. I didn’t need to be as alone as I was. And it didn’t have to leave me with such a mess in my life, so much wasted time.