Hello

I am 21 years old male from Poland. I may not be understood because my problems do not fit well into the established diagnostic criteria of mental ilnesses.

A brief introduction - I was born prematurely in 7th month, suffered from retinopathy and as a result I have impaired eyesight (had surgery as an infant). i have no history of mental health problems in my family except for paternal grandmother who had a lifelong history of severe hypochondria and probably depression (in her life she worekd for about 5 years and basically spent her entire life at home lying in bed and rarely even going outside).

So what's the issue? Everything was fine with my mind until the age of 13 when a few days after completing 6th grade I had a severe onslaught of depression mixed with anxiety that striked me literally a few minutes after waking up and the entire episode lasted for 2 months. It was literally a nightmare - severe depression mixed with anxiety (I used to feel this way a couple times as a little kid but it lasted only for a few seconds). In addition I had a weird feeling that I don't really "understand" various things like meanings of words etc. Like I said after 2 months everything went back to normal but I had an impression that the episode had left a mark on my cognition.

Fast forward to late 2010-early 2011 - two episodes like the one in 2007 within a few months of each other with basically the same symptoms - massive depression/anxiety with a feeling that I don't "understand" various things. But instead of 2 months everything lasted for over half a year until anxiety disappeared completely. But here the real problem come -the two depressive episodes have left me literally unable to feel emotions. I can recognize emotions in others and I even laugh but I simply don't have the "feel" of emotions - every moment feels literally the same. Because of that it was harder for me to study in high school (math was particularily hard) because I no longer had the ability to grasp it intuitively as I used to.

I am sure not all parts of my brain are working in a wrong way as I certainly can write in a foreign language like a native speaker (and this post is the proof) but I am looking for help neverthless.