[lonel]

Hello, this is my first post, I hope you will be able to help me

I'm a female student doing an exchange in the last (second) year of my master's degree at a new university in a different city/country. My parents have been divorced since I was still a toddler. Since that time, I have seen my father only twice. During this time, I have been living with my mom until two years ago when I moved out of our house into an appartment in the city where I studied. My mother also remarried recently.

Before my parents got divorced my father was very unattentive towards me, he didn't care for me and he never paid any attention to me generally. He behaved the same way towards my mother as well. My childhood was not a happy one as it was full of arguing and physical abuse. When they got divorced, things got a bit better from that perspective but we were still arguing with my mother almost every day from a very young age until I was about 19 years old when we moved from the place where we lived at the time to a bigger place where both of us had more space and room for each other.

Around the same time we moved out to the bigger place, I also started with college. I was studying hard and finished my bachelor degree with a very good GPA. Then I continued doing my master's degree where I'm in my second year currently.

I was also a dancer since I was around 7 years old and was dancing until my 19th year. I also danced profesionally for two years during my bachelor's degree.

When I was 16 years old

Possible trigger:

I tried committing suicide for the first time. I had a major argument with my mother about some school-related things. I consumed a big amount of pills to end my life.

My mother intervened and I ended up vomiting the pills in the end. Nothing happened after this, nor me or my mom did seek counselling or any other expert advice. Both of us had been constantly arguing throughout my childhood and both of us threatened to each other that we would commit suicide.

Possible trigger:

The second time I tried committing suicide was when I got into an argument with my mother again about some college-related topic and the same thing followed – I ate a big amount of pills

and my mother drove me to the emergency where I was helped. After this episode I was prescribed Zoloft antidepressants which helped me I think, as I did feel somewhat better when using them.

Before trying to do end my life the second time, I started visiting a therapist. We mostly talked about my dancing, college, my mother, and my self-esteem.

That was the back-story, now to my current problems:

As stated above, I'm currently doing an exchange in another city with my boyfriend living in another country. We see each other around twice per month. I feel very lonely in this new city because I know very few people and don't have many physical friends over here. In the past, I have been busy with doing things (college, different activities, dancing) my whole life. In the first year of my master's degree I had a lot to do and I was extremely happy because even when I felt lonely I could distract myself with work and I didn't have time to think about how lonely I am in reality (despite I actually had friends in the first year which I could call and hang out). I need physical company of people to function normally. When I started thisexchange I had a lot of free time because I had very few courses and my internship needed a lot of time to properly take of so I had a lot of time to think about. The thing is, these feelings of loneliness and being completely alone have become paralyzing at the moment. I actually have a lot of things to do for my internship and in the past if I had this much to do I would be extremely happy because I wouldn't have to think about my loneliness anymore, but now it doesn't help. Despite having a lot to do, I'm just thinking about how lonely I am.

What do you think I should do? I don't want to feel so lonely and don't know what to do about it

[Skeezyks]

Hello lonel: Welcome to PsychCentral! PC is a great place to gain support as well as to obtain mental health related information. There are many knowledgeable & caring members here. The more you post, & reply to other members' posts, the more you'll gain from the time you spend here.

I'm sorry you are struggling. I don't know as I have any particularly great ideas for you. I would think that it might be worthwhile to start seeing a therapist again & possibly consider getting back onto some antidepressants, if you are not taking them now. Beyond that, perhaps you might see if there is a club or other types of organization you could join. Perhaps do some volunteer work, if you can find the time or even get a part-time job... anything that will bring you into contact with people. Doing something to help others is a proven way to combat depression. A support group of some sort might also be beneficial if there is something like that you could join.

From what you wrote, it sounds like you pretty-much know what is at the root of your depression. So what you need to do is to figure out some way of surrounding yourself with other people. I know that, at this point, it may be a challenge to make this happen. But it is what you need to do. If you need help to accomplish this, perhaps there is someone you're involved with in your exchange program who could assist you. If this all feels like just too much for you at this point, then this is perhaps where antidepressant medication comes in. I wish you well...

[Fuzzybear]

It sounds like you need to look for some people to spend time with. They don't have to become your best friends, but since you know that being around people is helpful to you (and that's very normal and natural to need that), I would look for some.

You may have ideas about how to do that. Your school might have suggestions. You might look for somewhere to take dance classes, if that's something you would like to do.

I don't know how far away from your country you are. Very often there will be clubs for "ex-pats" (say, Swedish people in France) who get together regularly. It's sort of a networking thing.

I had an acquaintance here in the US who was here from Turkey for a year for educational reasons and she said that meeting a group of ex-pat Turkish people helped her so much.

These Psych Central forums can be a sort of "relief valve" to express feelings and to see that other people are dealing with similar problems. I hope that you'll continue to post here if you find it helpful.

Sometimes it can take a little while for these forums to start to feel familiar.

Possible trigger:

As far as what you said about the episodes where you took pills after an argument, I have done that a couple of times myself. My mental health diagnosis is "plain vanilla" depression and anxiety, but if I have a confrontation where someone is doing or saying something that is dangerous to me either physically or psychologically and just really seems completely WRONG to me, sometimes it's like my brain just short-circuits like faulty electrical wiring.

I have never known what to call that impulse or action (if it goes so far that I do something to harm myself). It doesn't feel exactly suicidal. Maybe more like an expression of desperation at what seems like impossible wrongness in my world?

Anyway, my best defense against getting to that point is to work at keeping my daily life stable. Regular sleeping hours, healthy food, no skipping meals, and going for walks help me to feel more psychologically stable.

I'm glad that you have found these Psych Central forums.