This Blog Is Still Relevant

Last night, I did something I had never done before: I read my own blog. During the past weeks, I had been wondering whether it was worth keeping “Lugubrious Layara” online – after all, I had not published regular updates in almost three years, and it did not seem to serve a purpose anymore.

But as I worked backwards through my own timeline, from the most recent post to the earliest ones, I realized how important this blog was for myself. Not only as a chronicle, but especially as a measurement tool for how far I have come since.

And that is why I need to keep writing and updating. I probably will never be able to close the gaps, but at the very least, I can make a fresh start right here and now.

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To Hell And Back Again

After the last post, I fell into a really dark hole. For every problem solved there appeared to arise two new ones, and between a lack of energy (which was bordering on apathy) and near-despair, I had some really horrible weeks. None of the bills due June had yet been paid, and I’d really had more than enough of those troubles over the last months: we got threatened with having the gas / electricity switched off twice and had to borrow money from a friend to pay those bills. I had my bank account terminated because I accidentally went over the credit limit and (thanks to being preoccupied with the side-effects of venlafaxine) didn’t notice immediately, so I ended up being blacklisted as a “financial offender” for the next three years – it will be as good as impossible to get any kind of loan, and I had to go begging at the bank to be granted another bank account, and on top of everything else I will have to pay off almost 1250.- Euros for the old account and in penalty fees. I tried explaining my situation on the phone, but first I had to wait three weeks for a call-back since the people holding the decision power were always busy, and when they finally did get back at me, the lady berated me for it “being all my fault”.
We just about managed to pay for my husband’s German classes and get some food on the table, even though the latter was perilously close to uncertainty at two times at least. There was one day when we had all but € 9.- between the two of us, and all that was left to eat was a bit of frozen vegetables, half a jar of jam, pasta and potatoes. No bread, fruit, rice, cheese, meat, fish, butter, milk or soy drink or whatever we usually eat. Our options were plain potatoes or plain pasta, with a bit of spinach or peas. Nothing you’d traditionally serve for breakfast – and having just asked a friend to help us out with money so we wouldn’t have the gas / electricity cut off, I didn’t want to go begging again. My mother-in-law unwittingly saved us from this by sending some money, and my friend scolded me for not telling her earlier when I related the story to her… All I can say is that there’s a difference between having to ask for help once, because you got into a tight spot, and having to do it again and again, week after week or month after month. It wears you out mentally.
I believe my husband became more worried about me and my state of mind than about the money, because even though I was not entertaining thoughts of suicide, he made me promise I wouldn’t do anything to myself. Nevertheless, even getting dressed became an almost insurmountable obstacle, and I oscillated between apathy and fits of crying. I felt like I had nothing left in me: no energy, no fight, no will. And even though I had successfully fought off the denial of the application in April, nothing appeared to move forward in that regard ever since – until the beginning of June.

The money came in about three weeks ago, and despite the fact that we didn’t get approved for March (when I was still officially a university student and not available for welfare), we got monthly allowances retroactively from April 1st on. We could pay our bills, and get rid of the debts with the health insurance and the energy provider. I made a payment plan with the collection agency to pay off my old bank account in rates, paid off my sister since she had covered the contents insurance of our worldly possessions earlier this year, and gave two months’ worth of rent to my mother, as a thank you for supporting us when my parents were on a budget themselves.
Having this existential problem lifted off our shoulders has done more for my mental health than any other measure taken during the last months. For the first time in years, I go to bed without being afraid of what the next day is going to bring: even though I still get a fright when one of those “official-looking” letters comes in, I can immediately remind myself that we have the money to take care of whatever is heading our way.
The German welfare system is far from perfect and much criticized, but compared to our situation during the last year – and especially the last couple of months – we are doing peachy right now. Of course, we are not eating steak and lobster, but I can buy everything we need and some more, whereas before I would have to prioritize and calculate whether I had enough money to buy some yoghurt, for example, or whether it had to wait until the next time since it was not strictly necessary.
There was one day when I went to the neighbouring town for shopping, since the local supermarket had some offers which justified spending money on a tram ticket as we would still save compared to buying the same products in our hometown – and I made a mistake when calculating the expense. It was just a minor figure I was off, about 50 cents, but I ended up those 50 cents short for buying the tram ticket back home. I did not dare taking the tram without a valid ticket because of the € 60.- fine if I got caught, so I had no choice but walking home. It was a relatively warm day and I was dragging / carrying about 30 kg (roughly 65 pounds) of bottles and groceries in my shopping trolley and two bags. I had called my husband to meet me halfway, but by the time we got home, I was completely exhausted.
That is only one story out of many about how destitute we were. I walked around in jeans ripped from wear and tear for over a month, because I could not find a pair cheap enough in my size. When I finally found one, it had a bad, unflattering cut and I didn’t like the colour, but at least the prize was very low and the fabric not torn, so I bought it anyway. After just a few short weeks, the pull tab of the zipper broke – cheap material, I guess – so I had to put a safety-pin through the eye of the slider for using the zipper: the result was that every time I went to the toilet or got (un-)dressed, the safety-pin popped open and stung me in the finger. At that point, I made such a pitiful figure that my mother and sister gave me a part of my birthday present, two pairs of jeans, about ten days early.

Maybe that gives a little insight into why I have not been blogging. At some point, I just got too exhausted – all my mental energy went into making sure we would get on state support. And I wanted to escape from the daily struggles, not reflect on them.

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!

Come A Little Bit Closer

The news about the TV appearance were not the only unusual part of the last session. Two years of therapy mean that eventually, the appointments start to resemble one another; the discussions are important, but you know the routine and after a couple of weeks you recall brief scenes rather than the whole meeting.
Over the course of spring and summer, the hospital wing where my therapist sits got renovated and he had to move out of his office temporarily. He’s been back in the old location since September, but had decided to furnish the room differently: the set-up of desk, armchairs, file cabinets and the exam table is mirrored now. All of this was reason enough to break the routine and to make me feel uncomfortable at first. I got so used to always having the same perspective in that room that the familiarity of sitting in that armchair gave me a sense of security. Before that background, the last session took place.

Practicing alternative behaviours is a huge part of our routine: my problem is that I tend to do nothing at all and just remain silent when I should speak up instead, and so my therapist lets me reenact scenes we discussed, but where I behave the way I should have for getting a more desirable outcome. He lets me repeat phrases until I get the words and intonation just right, and then some more to “hammer” them in.
This is by far my least favourite part of therapy as it goes completely against my instincts of hiding myself away. When the acting was still new to me, I would occasionally break out in giggle fits due to the embarrassment, but that wouldn’t let me off the hook. My therapist would just sit there with a smile on his face, wait until I calmed down, and ask me to try again. Of course, I could just refuse and sit in my chair for the rest of the appointment, but that’s not what I go to therapy for… So, the best way to handle this for me is to get it over with as quickly as possible – the more I concentrate and the sooner I get it right, the fewer repeats we’ll go through.
Last time, however, my therapist decided to take it a step further: he had me stand up from the chair. I repeated my little speech two or three times, then he said:
“Come a little closer, please.”
I made a small step towards him.
“And even closer, please.”
Eventually, the distance had shrunk so much that I could have reached out and put my hand on his shoulder; since my therapist was still sitting in his chair, I had to look down on him – a position which makes me feel extremely uncomfortable, and he knows it. I had to repeat my sentences again, then he asked:
“What did you just think?”
“I was thinking about my arms, about how I have been clasping my hands at this really weird, crampy angle.”
“Your arms looked just fine. Why don’t you try a different position?”
I tried to relax my limbs and folded my fingers in front of me, but since I had also inched back a little in the process, I had to step closer again.
“How does that feel?”
“Ok. Better than the crampy clasp.”
“Try something else – why don’t you just leave your arms hanging?”
I did, but immediately felt like they ceased being a part of my body and turned into two dead appendices rather. I stretched and flexed my fingers nervously, hid my hands behind my back and then let them hang down again immediately.
“How does that make you feel?”
“Nervous. Extremely uncomfortable.”
“But you look more relaxed and more approachable. If you fold your arms, you are creating a barrier. And to me, these positions are comfortable. I don’t feel threatened by you at all.”
In the past, we had talked about how this particular constellation – he sitting, me standing up – made me feel like I was being this huge mass ready to bulldoze him. Like a gross, obese entity crushing him under my excessively large body. I am (by now) completely aware that a lot of the negative self-image and negative thoughts exist in my mind only, and that they are very much over the top, but that does not make them go away.
“How do you feel now?”
“Still nervous.”
“Look at my face. What do I look like?”
“Neutral. Relaxed.”
“How can you tell?”
“There are no signs of stress in your face. No creased forehead, relaxed eyes and mouth.”
“It’s good that you can see this!”
We talked a few moments about how I hardly ever relaxed when sleeping either, that I often woke up with my hands clenched into fists, and the muscle pain I had from that.
“How do you feel now?”
“A little better. Still uncomfortable, but not as much anymore.”
“Good! It’s very important that you experience this!”

When I was finally allowed to sit back into the armchair again, I felt fairly exhausted. We have done similar exercises before, but never that long and intense. Rationally, I know what this is all about: by exposing me to an uncomfortable situation and having me observe that the effect on my therapist is not a negative one, my self-image gets altered. Physical proximity is not a bad thing, and I am not causing negative emotions in another person by standing close to them. At the same time, I am forced to endure a situation I’d usually avoid, so that I can experience how the discomfort starts decreasing after a while.
Strangely enough, despite experiencing mostly negative emotions, thoughts, and despite how stressful this was, I felt really good after the session. In my family, nobody would ask how I felt, and if i talked about it, the standard response would be to pull myself together. In fact, that is what I used to do – so much so that I always downplayed all of that or ignored it even, and it felt good to acknowledge the existence of those emotions and having them taken seriously.

The Jubilee Post

Today, I celebrate the 100th blog post. If the counter didn’t keep track of the statistics, I most certainly would have missed the milestone, but I’m glad I didn’t. When getting started, I had no real direction to follow and was more concerned with not running out of steam early on than with developing a writer’s voice or any long-term goals for “Lugubrious Layara”: I simply talked about what was happening in my life, in therapy and in my head.
There also was (and still is) an educational facet to the blog, even though from a strictly personal, non-professional angle. I get a fairly consistent number of hits through people googling CBASP, and I’m really happy that I can provide links, information and my own opinion – when I was about to start the therapy programme, there was very little to be found online, and nothing in regards to other blogs. Even now, the situation changed only marginally. And despite knowing that there are other people being treated with CBASP all over the world, and even at the same hospital, I have never encountered any other CBASP patient, neither online nor in the real world. If I have accomplished nothing else with this blog, at the very least it added a new voice to the plethora of mental health blogs out there.

Blogging means walkig a tight rope. How much of yourself do you put out there? And how much of the people you write about? I try protecting the privacy of everyone I mention as much as possible, even if it means that my writing sometimes suffers from the vagueness. Occasionally, I don’t post because it would mean discussing the personal history of another person more than I’m comfortable with – I can decide to put my own history out there, but not my husband’s, for example.

Sometimes, I want to post, but don’t have the energy for writing. There’s a good deal of regurgitating going on when developing a new blog post – I type, erase, type again, erase again, scratch certain formulations, phrases or entire paragraphs. And there were a few incidents where I had an entire post ready for publication but never chose to put it out there – because the situation described didn’t exist anymore, or because it had taken so long to jot the story down that I had already moved on from it by the time I was done.
And then, there are the blog posts I would like to write, but that are too emotionally exhausting to go there: for example, my sister’s “borderline meltdown” the day before my wedding. Or the post about my husband’s immigration process I started writing back in September, but the 800 words on that which I got so far only covered everything prior to our marriage day and revisiting the events make me feel depressed, so the progress on that is very slow…

Despite and because of all of that, blogging is very beneficial for me. My therapist always urges me to become “more visible”, to put more of myself out there, and the blog is one way of doing so. My friends and my husband not only know of its existence, but some of them even are somewhat regular readers. This allows me to talk about my feelings and problems at length without pushing them on anybody – they can decide when to visit, and how often.
There is a similar effect to writing about depression as visiting the student classes had; it gives me a sense of not only dealing with it, but of making it a little less like I wasted all those years with the illness. At the age of 32 years, I have spent a minimum of 20 years with the condition, about ten of them severely depressed. By sharing, it does not feel like I wasted those.

Exhibit B: A (Not So) Hopeless Case

Exactly a week ago I appeared in front of a group of 19 psychology students as an example for chronic depression, but was (still am) so swamped with homework that I didn’t have the opportunity to write it down yet.

I went to the hospital straight from university, so I was a good half hour too early and had plenty of opportunity to get nervous. It was a part of the hospital building I did not know too well either, so I did not dare going to the restroom out of the irrational fear I would miss my therapist. Fortunately, we had about ten minutes to spare when he came to pick me up…
We spoke a few minutes outside – about how I was doing in general, and about being nervous and how curiosity got the better of me. We also discussed which personal information my therapist was allowed to disclose (he was very discreet, though, and spoke only of my “significant others” instead of naming a person, and he did not talk about anything personal). I gave him free range on whether he wanted to wear his white coat or not and on whether we’d sit at a table or not, so my therapist decided to recreate the therapy setting – no white coat and no table.

As mentioned, the group was rather small, creating a somewhat intimate setting – as far as that is possible given the circumstances. My therapist acted as a moderator, introducing me and my diagnosis, and I smiled a hello into the round. They had already learned about the characteristics of depression before and seen an in-patient earlier that day, who had also volunteered to talk about her depression. The in-patient, however, had been an example for biological reasons behind depression: a disturbed transmitter chemistry and psychiatric treatment with cipralex. I had come in as a representation of environmental and character-related factors, with the biological components playing only minor roles.
I started off recounting how I got misdiagnosed by my former general physicians, how I suffered from panic attacks in summer 2010, got on citalopram but could not shake the depression, and finally got in contact with the hospital. My therapist elaborated on the importance of behaviour in medical caregivers – had my first contact not been such a positive one, I might never have followed through with everything that followed.
There was a sheet with the results of all the clinical tests I did during the first 48 weeks of therapy – BDI-II, IDS-SR, MADRS and possibly some more I forgot, plus the results of the “therapy cards”. My therapist was not supposed to know the results until recently, because they evaluated the level of trust between him and me, but from the beginning of their evaluation (from therapy week 4 on), they had shown I trusted him. All the other tests showed the same pattern: a very high score in the beginning, then a steep decline over the course of a few weeks only, and a long phase of slowly fading out. Towards the end, my scores went up a little again, when I decided to go back to university.
We spoke about how important it is to trust the therapist and I listed some of the irrational fears the therapy setting could have evoked – fear of being ridiculed, getting yelled at, not being taken seriously, or cancellation of therapy as a punishment for increasing depression symptoms, for example.

I did surprisingly well during the presentation. My biggest fear had been to just freeze or being unable to get proper words and sentences out of my mouth, but I spoke with a loud and clear voice, looking at all the faces around me and also taking in their reactions. Everyone looked friendly, some even smiled encouragingly, and I found it easier to open up than expected. Of course, we did not discuss anything private, but considering that in university I have not told anyone anything that is even remotely close to the truth, it was a pretty huge step for me. Part of what kept me calm was that I knew no matter the outcome, the people would learn something from my appearance. If I could talk about it all, they’d learn from my report, and if I froze up completely, they’d get a demonstration of what depression can cause.

Today, I had a regular therapy appointment, and my therapist said he could tell the very moment I relaxed during the presentation just from observing my body language. He gave me quite a lot of praise and also thanked me for doing this: “Half a year ago, I wouldn’t have asked you. Not that you couldn’t have done it back then, but the risk would have been too high.”
There are several reasons why he asked me: for one, I’ve been long enough in therapy to know the process very well, to have recovered enough for being able to reflect, and something he has been stressing a lot over the last weeks is the fact that I went back to university. Last month, he told me about a colleague’s patient who had a similar diagnosis as I do, and she actually quit her job – whereas I went back to a place that terrifies me quite often. On about four days per week, it gets so far that I think I can’t take it anymore. I fantasize about quitting. But, there’s no realistic alternative, and so I struggle from week to week. My therapist knows this – he gets to hear plenty about that, of course. University was one of the catalysts which propelled me further into depression, so he thinks that it is of utmost importance now that I confront those situations and master them. He never influenced my decision on whether I should go back or not, but clearly approved of it afterwards.

One reason why he asked me might have been that the outlook for me without CBASP would have been pretty bad: “Early-onset chronic depression with life-long co-morbidity of panic disorder.” He called it a “horrible, horrible diagnosis” which without this special therapy programme would be pretty much treatment-resistent. CBASP actually works on both a personal and an environmental level, whereas other schools of psychotherapy concentrate on one aspect onely: classic Freudian psychoanalysis operates on the personal level only, classic cognitive psychotherapy on the environmental level. Neither of them would have been sufficient for me.
They didn’t even put me through pre-treatment self-evaluation as they usually do, because they thought it would trigger my flight instinct and drive me away. Yet, despite the very bad odds, here I was – more or less functioning now, and definitely able to talk to a bunch of strangers without running away.

At the very end of the presentation, everyone clapped and I blushed and looked down to the floor, until my therapist told me: “Look up and take it in. This situation will be over soon, so this is your only chance at grasping of how well it went. You need to take this memory home with you.”

Old Routines

It’s amazing how we spent the better part of a year in different countries, yet settled back into the old routine so fast that it feels like my boyfriend’s never been away. It doesn’t feel like he’s been here for only 48 hours either, so there are moments when the ten months which passed in between morph into a slightly surreal memory which might as well have been an intense dream. He accompanied me to therapy too yesterday – one more reason to feel catapulted right back to last year’s winter, because he was my regular companion on those trips to the hospital.

After having to cancel on me twice in a row, yesterday’s appointment was only 20 minutes long and not counted as a proper session. The situation at the hospital is rather chaotic at the moment, worse rather than better compared to the last weeks. My therapist usually is very neatly groomed, but this time I noticed that he was not properly shaved, probably because of a lack of time.
My boyfriend and I were waiting in the visitor lounge, talking, when my therapist walked by – he knows this is where I am waiting until it is time to go to his office, and he wanted to tell me that he would be a few minutes late. It made me happy to see my therapist and boyfriend exchange a few sentences – they become a little less abstract to each other this way.
I have a new appointment for early February, the first regular one in over two months: the session in December counted as an informational meeting only. Due to the restricted time frame we had yesterday, we only discussed which kinds of behaviour had a positive influence on my depression indices: the BDI-II score is down to 14 from previously 20. It was only just enough to give a rough overview, but for me it was more important to have the personal contact with my therapist, however brief that may have been. Very early into the meeting, when I was just sitting down, he said: “You are looking well!” And I believed him; he doesn’t make insincere compliments, and I felt happy enough to believe it possible that I was looking good too. Not to forget that the last time I saw him, I was so mentally and physically exhausted that it showed on the outside – so that was a valuable feedback for me that I was back on the right path.

Looking Back At 2011

The year is coming to an end and it’s time to take inventory. Over the last twelve months, I have time and again observed anniversaries and compared my life to what it used to be, but it’s because of New Year’s Eve that I feel like I’ve truly come full circle.
A year ago, I was just experiencing the very first days together with my boyfriend, I had just started therapy (but was still in the anamnesis phase, not yet learning coping / healing techniques), was still in the last throes of quitting citalopram. I had an incredibly bad year behind me, full of anxiety and panic attacks, physical and emotional pain, cognitive deficits and side-effects. 2010 was left behind tired and exhausted, but with a tiny spark of hope.

There’s so much I have to be grateful for in 2011:
– My boyfriend. We only lived together until the end of March and certainly didn’t think we’d still be on different continents on Christmas and New Year’s Eve, but even if most of the year was spent geographically apart, we’ve remained emotionally closer than ever. If anything, this forced separation has galvanized our desire for being together, and the bureaucratic process – which took far longer and was far more costly than anticipated – proved that we are serious about our commitment to each other.
He’s made me laugh (despite myself, sometimes), held me when I cried (both literally and figuratively), endured my endless therapy talk without complaining or becoming jealous of my therapist once, cared for me when I was bedridden with influenza for weeks on end. Through him, I learned to enjoy life again, learned to want something more out of life again than just the mere absence of pain. Through him, I lost the fear of giving myself to another person.
– My friends. All of them have been incredibly supportive, encouraging and generous with their feedback as well as very patient listeners. I owe lots of laughter to them and many a good idea. After having been largely unable to maintain social contacts, I am grateful that nobody held this against me and that I actually did have a social life again this year.
– My therapist and the team behind him. Everybody at the hospital I ever had contact to has been nothing but friendly and highly professional. A special mention must go to the psychologist who was my very first contact person ever there; who did the phone interviews and various formal clinical interviews with me as well as the two MRi scans, and who coordinated most of the appointments with other specialists for me. Her kindness ensured that I even made it past the initial phone interview stage without getting scared away.
Towards my therapist I have to be thankful not only because of his skilfulness and expertise, but also for his constant support beyond the requirements. In addition to the therapy sessions, we must have exchanged about a hundred emails over the course of the year. He’s helped me getting a sabbatical at uni and wrote to my health insurance. In crisis situations, his response was quick and most helpful. Most importantly, he treated me humanly when I felt most inhumanly.
– My family. That might come as a surprise, but despite all our problems and dysfunctional ways, I want to be grateful for the good times we shared.
– The progress I made. I learned to verbalize my problems, ask for help, selectively trust people, maintaining social contacts better, take care of my needs, find solutions for my problems. I can read books again and am attending university again. I found out what “normal” feels like and was euthymic for the first time since childhood. Over the course of the last year, I gave my life a completely new direction. I learned to have hope. Last but not least, I started a blog which I’ve managed to maintain for seven months already and which brought me much joy.

To my readers, all the best wishes for the new year – may it bring you much happiness and joy!

Looking Back

The first week is finally over. Those were difficult days, but compared to my last attempts (yes, the plural is correct) at studying over the past few years, I have been doing better. I have not skipped classes because I was afraid, I have gone to lectures where attendance was not mandatory, and I have managed this week on my own, without talking to my therapist about it. I’m going to see him next week for a regular session (the intervals between them are three weeks now), but I don’t want to become someone who depends on the therapist for every decision – my therapy goal is to become more independent… I’d lie if I claimed I didn’t think about what I’d tell him, but I’m glad things didn’t become so bad that I had to contact him.

Something I learned from this week is how relative success really is. For the majority of my fellow freshmen, this simply is another step in their education. They go to university, sit their exams and eventually graduate, and to them it means a lot of hard work and adapting to a new way of life and new working methods. To most of them, the biggest challenge will be an intellectual one: a certain class or project they’re going to find difficult. Other than that, they don’t struggle with being a student.
If (when) I graduate, however, the real triumph will not be in reaching a certain level of education, it will be the fact that I actually beat my anxiety and stayed in university long enough to reach graduation day.

Prior to Monday, I hadn’t attended a class in a year and a half… Exactly two years ago, in October 2009, I started my last attempt at finishing my old degree in prehistoric archaeology and got assigned a rather demanding project – holding a lecture called “A Diachronic Comparison Of Small Houses On Mineral Soil”, presenting settlement patterns and building structures throughout prehistoric times with a special focus on how those patterns might reflect socio-economic structures. It was a demanding project, both intellectually and in terms of energy invested, cost me most of the Christmas holidays and saw me working 16 hours a day on it towards the end.
I hadn’t been depression free since the age of 12, but around Christmas 2009 one of the better phases – which had allowed me going back to university in the first place – came to an end and I started slipping into depression rapidly. I still managed my presentation at the end of January (which I got the best grade for), but when I was told I had to hand in a written version of it before receiving my credits, it was too much. Every day I told myself I’d start typing it, but there was so little energy in me left and the depression got worse so quickly – I just could not do it. February 2010 was the last time I attended a class. I was depleted, burned out, empty.
It had been the last audible cough of a dying beast, but the deadly wound had been inflicted years before. In spring 2002, my aunt died from leukaemia after a short ailment and an even shorter but nonetheless dramatic decline, leaving behind two children aged 10 and 16. It was a rather sad time for the whole family, naturally, and this sadness somehow morphed into depression as the months went by, because I was also hypothyroid back then. I had no energy for studying and my job caused me social anxiety, all augmented by my malfunctioning thyroid. Even as the thyroid medication was well-adjusted, I never managed going back to university for more than a couple of weeks and a few hours per week at a time despite the best intentions.
Despite some anxiety and some tears this week, it has already been a success, because I haven’t attended so many classes in almost ten years.