[ishopeatsea]

Q: I'm a high school student about to enter into my last year of school. I suffer from social anxiety and have experienced depression of various intensities for a number of years, among other issues. Many of the symptoms of these combined issues have a great impact on my ability to study, such as the development of avoidant coping mechanisms like procrastination, inability to work in the company of others, or difficulty asking for help. Since school is incredibly stressful to me, I feel that I don't have the energy to seek help for my mental issues and keep up with my schooling at the same time, so I devised a plan by which I would totally ignore all of my feelings until my final exams are over, in order to concentrate fully on my work and achieve the results I know I am capable of, then take a gap year in which, with the intense stress of school finally over, I could fully dedicate myself to improving my mental health in whatever way I felt I had to. Unfortunately, feelings cannot simply be ignored without consequences, and I am afraid that by trying*to do one after the other I am only making it much harder to do either. So, my question is this: is this plan likely to do me serious harm?

[guilloche]

Hi ishopeatsea...

I'm sorry that you're having such a hard time right now. I wish I had some great advice for you... but I'm not sure that I do.

It's not really considered good to just ignore your feelings and soldier on with things, as I'm sure you understand. Usually, we have the feelings that we do for good reason. They're meant to help guide us towards better decisions, or so I've heard .

As to whether it will cause you *harm*, I don't think anyone can say without understanding what you're going through.

That said, I wonder if you're aware that therapy can cover a LOT of different things. Sometimes, in therapy, people work on things that are deep and painful, which can make dealing with school/life difficult. Other times, they might work on easier subjects... such as learning skills to get through the day. Some times therapists can be supportive and help you feel like your load is lighter.

It depends on the therapist, and on what you want to accomplish while you're there. You have a great deal of say in terms of what you talk about and what you choose to work on.

So, I wonder if there's a way for you to talk to a counselor at your school, and maybe get some support in a way that feels helpful, and like it makes your last year of school easier rather than more difficult? You could be very upfront, explain to them that things are difficult and that you don't want therapy to make school more difficult for you, and see if they feel like they can be helpful?

Do you think it might be worth one visit, to check them out (assuming you have a therapist or counselor at your school) and see if they might be be able to offer something that might make things a little easier?

It's just a thought. As I said, I don't have any great answers... mental health is hard for everyone, and it often feels like there's *never* a good time to really stop and deal with it.

I wish you the best of luck, and I hope you're able to get the help you deserve!

[ishopeatsea]

Yeah, I... I don't know. I might go talk to the school counselor, if only to give em a sort of 'heads up'. I don't know. Thanks for replying.

[Perna]

I don't think your plan would cause any damage but I don't know that your body/Self will necessarily go along with your head plan, as you seem to already suspect might be a problem.

If I were you, I would design a stress/anxiety "course" for myself, maybe using a journal and workbooks, and just add it to your school work as another course, work an hour a day on it, etc. You could have assignments like greeting someone you don't know or smiling at someone in the hall and giving a little wave, etc., something a little difficult for you but not impossible. You could start a list of helpful/positive quotations, one a day, have projects like creating "games" to play with yourself (I once made a list of tasks I wanted to do, 20-30 (some duplicates, practice makes perfect), but which were scary/difficult in some way and put them on small slips of paper and folded them so I couldn't see what they were (think fortune cookie :-) and put one each in a plastic snack bag with a multi-vitamin and then drew one first thing in the morning, had the vitamin and then sometime during the day did the task.). Focusing on a task as a task instead of worrying about how I felt was very helpful and getting the tasks done gave me a better sense of self esteem and a bit of an "I can do this" momentum thing.

Anxiety is worry about the future and we cannot know the future. So, if we are going to think up what might happen why not think up positive ones instead of negative instead? If you can't think that someone you are waiting for who is late has stopped to buy you a present, that being too far-fetched then think up something funny or outrageous like animals from the zoo have gotten out and snarled traffic and they are having trouble catching them. People who are anxious like we are, if you think about it, have an excellent imagination! People who don't think up a million things that could go wrong, aren't going to be able to be very anxious, are they? LOL So use that wonderful imagination you have, embrace it (and remind yourself that is what is in play, not "reality" of what is wrong) and the anxiety will relax some and allow you to focus better on what you are doing or what is actually happening. Yes, you could flunk the test but you could also think up a really interesting sentence or idea while you are writing that essay answer that gets you excited about learning more and you forget to be anxious.