I'm a 26-year-old female. I currently work as an adjunct professor and a Ph.D. student in interdisciplinary studies (Philosophy, literature, mathematics). I've always been an anxious person but I feel like this year has been a living hell. I wake up in a state of self-hatred and self-doubt. I have zero concentration and I put off work because my feelings of self-doubt are so consuming.

I think it may have started out as "imposter syndrome", you know, feeling as though I got into my Ph.D. program and received my position as a professor out of luck. Sometimes I feel like I don't deserve my positions and that I received them by mistake or that I'm fooling everyone into thinking I'm intelligent when really I'm below average.

These feelings quickly turned into the worst kind of self-deprecation. I often convince myself that I'm way below average in intelligence, lazy, too stupid, a failure, etc. I convince myself that I'll lose my job or be kicked out of my program any minute now (you know, once people discover that I've misrepresented myself). I worry all the time, I cry all the time, I start work and then I have to use all my energy and willpower to finish because I feel like I'm too stupid for it to be any good. I routinely use words like "failure", "ugly", "stupid", "retarded", "crazy", and "useless" to describe myself internally. My moods are a bit erratic in that I'll be content one moment and either crying or angry the next. I dread being social now and I would rather just be alone with my books. Sometimes I don't even have the energy to physically speak, it's just all so tiring. Every day I have thoughts of being a bad person.

So, I wonder if I should seek help despite my lack of health coverage. I wonder if I'm even deserving of help. Perhaps I'm not even depressed but just keenly aware of my own faults and failings. I just don't want to be someone who seeks help for depression when she isn't depressed but is instead just realistic about her abilities and intelligence levels.