How Welfare Saved My Sanity

One of the biggest contributing factors towards my mental health improvement was getting on welfare. Or rather, not having to worry about how we’d be paying all those bills and the rent. There’s a lot to be said for financial stability, even if it is only the state-defined minimum. No more letters threatening to turn off the gas or electricity, no more anxiety attacks when checking the mailbox.

The public image of welfare-recipients in Germany is just as bad as it is elsewhere, but I learned long ago to tune such things out. Most of those who are judgemental don’t really know what they are talking about – and they certainly don’t know my husband or me.

And it looks like our “leeching off the system” is coming to end. My husband landed a respectable full-time job a few weeks ago which should see us completely independent of state support by the end of the year. I had paid off my old bank account within a year and thus by summer my name should get deleted off the “financial offender” list and my credit rating be ok again.

What the occupational future holds for me, I don’t know. Right now, my husband is the breadwinner, and I do all the paperwork that comes with his job. I don’t plan any further than six to nine months ahead anymore – none of the long-term plans and goals I held in the past came to fruition. I’ll deal with that topic once I actually become capable of holding down a (part-time) job.

I will forever be grateful to be living in a country where a welfare-system even exists. It wasn’t always easy – you sign away a lot of privacy and become the employment agency’s little bitch in exchange – but that is a thousand times better than what we went through before.

The relationship with my mother has gotten a lot better once it was not strained by financial dependency anymore, too. There are different factors playing into this other than money, since her hospital stay very much became a game changer that altered the way we interact, but there is no denying that money used to be a contributing factor to the tension between us.

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Follow-Up With The Psychiatrist

This morning I saw the psychiatrist again. We discussed the side-effects and agreed that I would continue taking venlafaxine / effexor, as it appears to have some mildly mood-stabilizing effects on me by now, and that I’m going to stay on this dosage until my next appointment at the end of May. Since it’s been only two weeks on 75 mg so far, it might take more time to make the side-effects go away completely: my main complaint was that I felt even more tired than before, but since citalopram had that same effect, switching to another drug does not seem worth it as chances are that I react this way to all antidepressants.

The psychiatrist asked me how I felt on a scale of 1 – 10, with 10 being absolutely awesome, and I rated myself a 3, even though I had to think about it quite a bit. That rating was more influenced by my physical complaints, and by feeling exhausted and stressed out about the welfare process; otherwise I would have given myself a 4. The goal for now is to make me reach 5 – 6 on this scale, and he asked me what had to change for me to feel that way, which I answered with: “I’d need more energy to actually manage my daily responsibilities sufficiently to feel that way.”

I told him about the recent problems with the job centre and the energy provider, and he was so nice to give me the medication I need until my next appointment out of the stock at his practice, so that I would be relieved from the self-pay contribution necessary at the pharmacy. (One of the benefits of welfare is that it eliminates the self-pay contribution for medication, but right now that obviously doesn’t apply yet.)
He also gave me an incapacity certificate valid until the end of May for the job centre, and I will see him again right before this one runs out. That is important both for proving that I am actually unable to work, and so the job centre can’t put me into an apprenticeship programme – if you cannot prove you are incapacitated, they can take away your benefits if you don’t comply with their orders, or they won’t even let you get on welfare in the first place.

I’m Going To Quit University

Instead, I will enroll at the only state-maintained German distance teaching extramural university, starting next autumn. The idea was actually proposed to me by my mother and sister, because my sister is considering doing the same, and they thought it might make studying easier for me. I also discussed this with my husband, and slept over it, so while this was a relatively sudden decision, it’s not a rash one.

Arguments in favour of the change:

• You study online and out of books. Apart from the written tests, there are only two weekends during the entire Bachelor’s programme where you have to attend a seminar in person – and one of the study centres where you can do so is easily accessible to me, even without a car. Since I waste about 75 % of my energy in class on fighting off depression and only the remaining 25 % on taking notes or studying, I believe I will actually be able to study more effectively that way. You receive the materials and literature lists via mail, and you send in your homework and term papers online. There also are video streams of lectures and special software programmes for learning. At any time, you can contact qualified docents if you need additional help, and should you need to see someone face to face, you can also visit the study centres.
• It’s cheaper than a regular uni. Money is always a factor for me. And you pay for the classes you take only, not a fixed sum regardless of whether you actually take any classes at all. So, if shit hits the fan and I have to take a sabbatical (which I hope never happens, but we are talking eventualities here) again, I don’t have to pay just for staying enrolled in the programme.
• It’s more time flexible. I can adjust the learning to my personal schedule, because nobody cares whether I study something on Tuesday morning or Thursday afternoon or Sunday night, as long as I send in my homework punctually.
• Academically, it’s worth just as much as a degree from a regular uni.

Arguments against the change:

• I’ll not have a semester ticket for public transportation anymore. But: With the money I’m saving every semester on fees, I can buy a good number of tram tickets if needed…
• It sets me back to square one. But: I only took 6 hours per week last semester, and the next one would have been the same – I might actually be able to take more classes than that and thus eventually make up for “lost” time.
• They have a limited offer of subjects you can study only. And geosciences is not one of them. That is, in the end, the only heavy argument against it, in my opinion – and the reason why I never thought about making this step before. It would mean changing my major again. But: You can study psychology with them, and that is something I would be really interested in.

In the end, I believe the scale tips in favour of going ahead and doing this, because there are also arguments which fall outside of the pro-and-con-scheme listed above. The days of fantasizing about becoming a world-famous archaeologist are long over, and I don’t see myself crawling through the Andes or Alps, looking for rare minerals, either. What I want above everything else is to finally have some kind of degree and become employable; I’ll happily work as a secretary or a boring office job afterwards. The pipe dreams of glory are firmly buried.

And there are some obstacles in my current university course which did not occur to me when I had to make a quick decision in August 2011, and which I pushed into a remote corner of my mind afterwards: field trips abroad. I can’t do them – it would be ok if I got my own private hotel room at the end of the day, but going abroad and sharing a cabin with people who are essentially strangers for two weeks horrifies me to no end. I have worked really hard on my social phobia, but that is a problem I don’t think can be “treated out of my system”. On top of that, you also have to pay for those trips and all the equipment needed for it in addition to the semester fee, which runs up sums of several hundreds of euros every time, and I just cannot afford that.
Finally, seeing how the current semester ends on Sunday, I could actually apply for welfare myself instead of hoping some cryptic system where I take over from my husband works out – I haven’t been able to pay for the next semester yet, so all it needs is a phone call that I won’t be returning and I’m out.

Maybe it makes me look fickle in the eyes of some, but over the course of the last three semesters I realized that most of my problems with uni stem from the system itself, and I genuinely believe that my mental health would profit both from taking a break until October and even more so from getting out of that system. I love learning and writing papers and all of that, and I want to focus on this instead of how to effectively hold back tears in a classroom.

More Financial Woes

The last two days, we had a financial crisis to weather: I had exceeded the credit limit of my bank account and was two months behind with the payments of the electricity & gas bill, and had two letters in the mail which threatened me with termination of the bank account and gas supply respectively if I didn’t pay off the debts immediately. The bank account wasn’t a major obstacle since a smaller sum only was required to bump it back into the credit range, but the electricity & gas bill posed a huge problem – no matter how we juggled the figures, we did not have enough money to pay it off. I tried to arrange a payment in rates, but while the idea got green-lighted by the company representative I spoke to on the phone, the finances department never called me back to discuss the details. So in the end I had to ask a friend to help us out – which she graciously did, and actually had offered to do first.
I don’t like mixing friendships and finances, but when forced to choose between having the heating turned off and asking for help, I will swallow my scruples and pride. As bad as it is that I have to ask for help and as much as I have cursed my situation and the depression which led me into it, one positive aspect of it is that I can be certain that my friends are not fair-weather-friends only, but genuinely care.
It also reminded me of something my therapist once told me – that one cannot be successful in this world without a support net of other people, and that you cannot recover without asking others for help.

The good news are that my therapist’s statement is in the mail and should arrive within the next two days, which means that on Monday I can officially start the application process for welfare. So hopefully the financial problems will be alleviated a little soon.

One huge problem on top of the monetary hassle was that I had to manage the organisation of all the “negotiations” while suffering through the venlafaxine side-effects: yesterday I made my phone calls in the morning, before taking the antidepressant, with the result that I was well past my usual breakfast time when finally being done with them, and already had withdrawal symptoms. Today I had to wait for a company representative to come over, which was scheduled for 11 AM. So I was up and dressed the entire time when during the past week I would tide over the most intense side-effects in bed, meaning that I completely spaced out on the sofa because of the brain zaps. I was so dizzy that I could hardly see straight. Eventually my husband persuaded me to take a nap, which was just as well, because the guy showed up at 2.30 PM only.

Generally I am doing better, though: my appetite is getting up and while meat still is a no-go, I actually had a proper dinner tonight (spaghetti with tomato sauce), the first in a week!

The Status Quo: March 2013

1.) Long dark winter: Germany experiences an average of 160 hours of sunshine in the period defined as the meteorological winter – December, January, February. This year, we stayed well below the statistical mean with only 96 hours of sunshine in those three months, and I certainly felt it. Day after day of dreary grey; snow and rain and drizzle and sleet. I can cope with periods of bad weather, but this winter does not seem to end.
All of a sudden, there was a spring intermezzo last week. The sun came out and we had a few nice days in a row – only to go back to freezing temperatures and snow.

2.) The welfare process still makes no progress: The only thing missing is my therapist’s statement, so I could go back and officially apply. The psychologist couldn’t tell how long it’s going to take; when I asked her, she said, “it’s difficult”. I feel awful for even having to bother him (and her) about this, but unless someone’s going to donate me money to tide over the months until he can work again, what am I supposed to do? I wish I didn’t have to ask for that and could just let him recover…

3.) I still miss having a car: The supermarket closest to home is about ten minutes away by foot, but is too expensive for me to shop there regularly. The one I used to like best and frequented the most is about 30 – 40 minutes away by foot – one trip. So just the physical act of getting there and back takes at least an hour. Not to mention the physical limitations of how much I can carry; a few times I had to call my husband to meet me halfway because I had underestimated the combined weight of all articles. Sometimes I take the shopping trolley, but that is tedious and brings its own problems, like when the tram was so full that I couldn’t enter it with the trolley, leaving me with no choice but to wait for the next tram in the cold.
Last week, I borrowed my sister’s old bike for shopping (I don’t have one of my own anymore since selling it for making some money), but discovered that while I could get to my destination in about half the time, it really did not make much of a difference regarding how much I could bring home. Also, for at least ten years prior to this, I had ridden a bike exclusively when on vacations at the North Sea – in a car-free environment. I got so scared on my way to the supermarket that I rode on the sidewalk for about half the distance… On top of everything else, the bike is actually too small for me, so that I cannot stretch my legs properly, and I found the whole process actually more exhausting than walking the distance.

4.) The insomnia is under control: I still have problems falling asleep, but at least it’s restful slumber once I dozed off. No more waking up every hour.

Welfare & No Therapy

Yesterday I mentioned going on welfare, and that I had been in the process of writing a blog post about it when the news of my therapist’s illness made some of that draft obsolete. Here follows the part which still is relevant:

Financial troubles have been a steady companion for a long time: I cannot work a job on top of uni, and my husband wants to work, but is currently handicapped by a lack of language skills (even though he is making a lot of progress since he started integration class). We have been living off my husband’s savings, support from family members, and once we also had to borrow money from a friend. Our life is rather frugal: 80% of what I buy is on offer or from the “reduced box” – groceries which are about to expire soon and hence reduced in price. We do not go out or buy anything that is not absolutely necessary.
A while ago, my therapist came up with the idea of me going on social welfare, which would roughly equal the salary of a student job. I could not object based on pride as I am not in the position to turn up my nose at any kind of support available. But I kept putting off visiting the department of social services because frankly I was afraid of doing so. For starters, I have a bit of bad history with administration and it is a very anxiety-laden topic for me. But also, the idea of having a place to turn to in even harder times was so comforting that it was difficult letting go the promise of relief at the expense of possible rejection. It is a pretty stupid concept and I would advise everyone to just get it over with as quickly as possibly if being told this story. Inside my own head, however, things are not always straightforward.
Fortunately, I finally managed to drag myself there, with the result that the state support my therapist suggested is not even available for me. As a student, I fall into a different category of welfare which I have to apply for at the employment agency instead, so the journey continues for a while.

To repeat from yesterday’s post, I need a statement from my therapist that I am not capable of working a job; usually, it would be the employment agency’s own doctors who have to come to this conclusion as a result of their examinations, but with mental health problems, that is hardly possible.
Going on state support was not a decision I made easily, or even voluntarily, but it’s the only practical solution left. It would be great if someone gave my husband a job instead with which he made enough so that we could exist from that income, but that’s unlikely in the current situation. All I know is, if I have to work, that is the certain end of my university career – I tried before, and the result was that I prioritized my job over classes, because “without the money I can’t stay enrolled in uni either”, and I had not enough energy for both. And I do not have it in me to make a third start from scratch, should this second attempt fail. It is all or nothing in regards to uni now.

Life goes on, with or without me. With or without therapy. No matter how unfortunate it is that my therapist got ill just now, when I would have liked to be able to write to him about the whole welfare business, I need to try without him the best I can.
My last therapy session was in early December; the one scheduled for January didn’t happen, and it was a bit of a warning sign already when it took three weeks before my therapist could tell me when he’d have the next opening – we were supposed to meet at the end of March again. He’s been chronically overworked for at least a year: last spring / summer it was pretty much the same, when I’d have a session in April, then an emergency appointment in June, and then nothing until September. My blog is full with comments on staff shortage at the hospital. What’s sad is that on the last day we emailed, he told me he was currently working in a new colleague and that he hoped that we could have “at least one session per month” from April on.

I guess this post is rather all over the place, but all of this has become one huge “cluster” to me anyway.