[SophiaG]

Ever since I have started college I have felt depressed. Notably as the semester goes on. Every semester I start out fine, doing my homework and everything, until midterms. Then I shut down, and become really depressed and despondent, unable to do my work.

It's made me hate college, more than that, loathe it and has made me feel like it is sucking the life out of me. It's made me hate myself to the point where I have severe suicidal ideations every semester like clockwork. I isolate myself, and this past semester i wouldnt brush my teeth or shower for a full week at times.

It doesn't feel like major depression, which seems to come and go as it pleases, Major Depression seems more...biologically based.

What the **** is this that happens to me? It's really quite severe. Just give me your opinion. I know i need counseling, i just feel like I am drowning in something I cannot beat. I've been in counseling before, it doesn't seem to help. I'm just drowning in something that is tearing me to pieces.

Opinions would be welcome.

[Ipod1]

I experience the same thing. Starting off the semester nice and confident and then boom. Overwhelmed, then stress that I'm overwhelmed, etc. how come it doesn't seem like major depression? Because that's exactly what you're describing.. Are you away at college in a dorm or are you still living at home? Maybe it's just because it's hard to adjust to all the new people and you're out of your comfort zone. But that'd only be if you were away. It sounds like depression to me. But I'm not a doctor. How come it doesn't seem like depression?

[SophiaG]

I'm reading The Depression Atlas, and the author has major depression. It began after his grandmother (or mother?) died, but pops up intermittently since then. I don't know. A lot of the stuff he (the author) is writing about I cannot relate to.

He wrote that he was afraid of a lambchop, and that a hospital visit set off his depresion again.

:/ i dunno.

is there a counseling center at school? stop in & ask them...sometimes the fear of all the work & exams can set off things..i know if i have a big thing coming up i get paralyzed sometimes..

ask them..see what they think..maybe they can offer suggestions...doesn't hurt, shouldn't cost , might help

good luck.

[Ipod1]

Depression can be cause by many many things. It doesn't have to be cause by one big event but it can. Mine for instance is many things over the course of my life that built up and caught up with me.

[SophiaG]

My therapist said it was situational depression.

[Open Eyes]

I am wondering if it might involve a few things. You begin with a good outlook and as the days shorten? and the schedule hastens? perhaps it is simply more than you can take in as you are conveying here. Perhaps as you begin to HAVE to process and pick up the pace of using the frontal part of your brain, while you can do that, you become very fatigued. What may be happening is your anxiety levels increase and when that occurs you react with mental exhaustion and your SI idealation is simply because as your expressing here, you experience very deep anger and displeasure in yourself.

It may be better for you to educate yourself in a much more low key way. Instead of experiencing the whole work load to a point where you cannot function, a lighter work load may be something you CAN handle. There is no point in going down the road to further your education if every time you do, you end up not truely progressing at all.

Think of it this way. If someone told you that you had to run around a football field 10 time every day for months without taking the time to assure that you were brought up to that level of activity gradually where you could sustain that program, you would physically break down at some point with physical strain and exhaustion. However if you only had to do small portions of that field gradually working in more distance, you would easily get to a point in time where you wouldn't harm yourself and you could go the distance.

A vigorice educational routine is not for everyone you know. It is not a lack of intellect, it is simply that everyone is different, not everyone can handle that environment. You may have some learning disability that your not aware of, thats all. Or you may not be as athletic intellectually as others, not your fault.

Just food for thought Sophia. I think you need to learn at a level you can, not at what society deems. We are not all track stars you know, each one of us has to discover our own unique learning styles. And it is not unusual for many students to struggle keeping up with a college scehedule.

(((((Hugs)))))

Open Eyes

[SophiaG]

Wow, Open Eyes you always give such good explanations.

If it's okay I'd like to explain about my situation more? It's been torturing me for 4 years and has really affected who I am as a person. (I fear I will never be the same person after having experienced these emotions and thoughts)

You're right in saying I am intelligent. I know I am, at least, intelligent enough to do the work. but, for example, this last semester, midterms came up, then I had papers to do for the midterms right? This was the beginning of my break down.

I pretty much stopped doing work after midterms. I would fake doing my homework, and i managed to do the projects for one class but not for the others. I stopped going to class on time, I'd arrive late, having to drag myself out of bed. As I said before my hygiene dropped.

This past semester I was on prozac and I have never experienced lethargy without it during semesters. But what would happen is that I would have tremendous anxiety that would paralyze me (again around midterms) and then I'd do escapist things to try to get away from that feeling that it'd hurt me.

There's something about processing writing a paper that kills me. It takes so long for me to write a paper, it's ridiculous. I don't know what is going on with me.

I used to think I was a good student, and i was, I was in the National Honor Society in high school, as well as the National Society of High School Scholars.

Now I can barely pull a C in college. It makes me feel horrible.

I have considered that I have ADHD inattentive type and i went on stratterra for it but the anxiety would still paralyze me, and it made me twitch a lot, so i stopepd taking it out of fear that the twitches would become peramanent.

I also stopped taking prozac beacuse I realized it was making me lethargic and I was just trying to give myself enough energy to get through this past semester (which i got 3 c's in and one A).

i tried changing my schedule so I would have a consistent sleep schedule and i tried that during my leave of absence i took at college but that broke down as well.

I don't know what's wrong with me. Someone might just tell me I am lazy but that wouldn't help the intense loathing I feel towards myself.

[SophiaG]

Originally Posted by Open Eyes

I am wondering if it might involve a few things. You begin with a good outlook and as the days shorten? and the schedule hastens? perhaps it is simply more than you can take in as you are conveying here. Perhaps as you begin to HAVE to process and pick up the pace of using the frontal part of your brain, while you can do that, you become very fatigued. What may be happening is your anxiety levels increase and when that occurs you react with mental exhaustion and your SI idealation is simply because as your expressing here, you experience very deep anger and displeasure in yourself.

It may be better for you to educate yourself in a much more low key way. Instead of experiencing the whole work load to a point where you cannot function, a lighter work load may be something you CAN handle. There is no point in going down the road to further your education if every time you do, you end up not truely progressing at all.

Think of it this way. If someone told you that you had to run around a football field 10 time every day for months without taking the time to assure that you were brought up to that level of activity gradually where you could sustain that program, you would physically break down at some point with physical strain and exhaustion. However if you only had to do small portions of that field gradually working in more distance, you would easily get to a point in time where you wouldn't harm yourself and you could go the distance.

A vigorice educational routine is not for everyone you know. It is not a lack of intellect, it is simply that everyone is different, not everyone can handle that environment. You may have some learning disability that your not aware of, thats all. Or you may not be as athletic intellectually as others, not your fault.

Just food for thought Sophia. I think you need to learn at a level you can, not at what society deems. We are not all track stars you know, each one of us has to discover our own unique learning styles. And it is not unusual for many students to struggle keeping up with a college scehedule.

(((((Hugs)))))

Open Eyes

I am taking 12 credits a semester at the moment, even that is really hard for me. This is after I took 15 credits my first semester and flunked three classes and got an A in one and a C in another.

I'm not sure what you mean by the frontal part of my brain? Sounds kinda technical and I haven't taken neuropsychology yet. (I'm a psych student)

Perhaps as you begin to HAVE to process and pick up the pace of using the frontal part of your brain, while you can do that, you become very fatigued. What may be happening is your anxiety levels increase and when that occurs you react with mental exhaustion

this sounds like it might be true.

And i know it's not unusual for college students to struggle with their course load but something just seems off here. *shrug* just my opinion.

[Open Eyes]

Well it sounds like in High School you did enjoy a bit of success and approval there.

Did you experience these symptoms in High School all?

The change to College is truely dramatic because there is really no small safe setting provided as you experienced in High School, no true intimacy of that smaller environment in which you did have a sense of control. Wether you know it or not that change has upset you, your actually anxious in this big fish bowl, not use to the space and you long for a sense of those smaller walls of comfort.

As you have said yourself, you can learn and excel, you have already done so. So
you do have to consider that a change in an environment is well known to be one of the most stressful events we experience. For example, when my daughter went off to college the college she attended had a special orientation for the parents, students were not allowed. The one big message this college wanted to address with parents is that most of the Freshman WILL call home concerned, afraid, disatified, and beg to come home. They repeated emphatically, "Do not let your child come home, make them stay, no matter what they say". They made it clear that this was going to be a major adjustment for most of the students and they will react with concern and discomfort. There is a definite adjustment period that can vary from student to student.

Now as I read your different posts Sophia, I don't see an issue with your writing capacity. I think the fear you have about writing papers about what your learning has more to do with your concern about being judged in this large environment. Somehow you think that your not going to do well and you have dropped in your grades compared to High School. But did you know this is also common? And that is the other issue parents were warned about their young adult children entering College would face. So on many levels this new environment can lead all students to question themselves and their value as well as capacity to achieve in life.

However Sophia, they also said that this would eventually change as these young students would adjust to this atmosphere, work load, and very different environment from what they experience in High School. And yes, flunking is not a pleasant experience for someone who enjoyed your kind of successes in High School.

Sophia, what College does, most of all, is teach you to learn how to learn. Not everything is about A's and B's and even if someone does achieve A's and B's it is no garuntee of life success. And if Sophia is having a hard time, then Sophia may have to get a bit creative and find some tutors that can help Sophia when she is flunking in a class. My daughter had to learn to buck up and ask for help without feeling that meant she was a failure.

Ok, so your not in the National Honors Society right now, oh your thinking that your a total failure now right? Wrong, your just in a different Pool and it is truely different than High School and thats all. So, you have a new challenge here, finding ways to network and utilize what is in this new big place that can help you get on track. And Sophia, that is also life in the real world, it isn't easy, but it isn't impossible either.

Sophia, your studying psychology? Well, let me tell you, I have not been very impressed with some of the psychologists I have encountered. Maybe some of them got A's in College, but I honestly don't see their skills dealing with patients in the real world. What your experiencing right now, anxiety, depression, confusion, trying to adjust, well that is the real stuff, that is what your going to address outside College in the real world. To be honest with you Sophia, if you can find your way through this, accept what I am telling you about learning to learn and graduate, I think you might be a lot more helpful to someone like me than an intellectual that doesn't personally know what I actually feel. Failure Sophia, what does that really mean? It means extra challenge Sophia, it means that there is something put in front of you that you just have not figured out yet, it doesn't mean you cannot learn to figure it out, isnt that what a good psychologist does? A good psychologist is someone who knows all about failure and how that relates to our sense of well being psychologically and even socially. How is an Honor student going to truely help someone who has not experienced that? Unless you know the struggle and find a way to rise above, how are you going to help anyone else do the same? Do you think you are going to learn that in a book? Are you going to learn that from just making the grade?

Sophia, you were Honor Society material right? Now your struggling to pass, well, your actually learning something in that alone. And with that knowledge alone, you can sympathize with someone else who struggles right? What about a man who experiences success and loses that? What about a man who feels so troubled by that he too feels the darkness that you speak of here? If that man came to you one day for advice and you do find your way through the learning how to learn atmosphere, you WILL know how to reach to the depths of him in a way that he will understand and you may save him from the darkness. If you think of this one example it is not about you now is it? It is about your learning how to learn in all of what you experience that will serve another in a meaningful way. Believe me, someone could be a straight A student and flunk at having the capacity to help others, which is what I think you want to do right?
What makes a survivor is not the one with a silver spoon, it is the one who earned the silver spoon.

I don't really like that diagnosis called depression. I honestly think that it is too broad and if someone is experiencing stress, struggle and fatigue, the term depression is a bit extreme. I don't like it because it bears a stigma of a state of mind that is inescapable. Oh, we all fall off course in our lives, and that can be when we really learn. Ask yourself what your really pushing away, this change?, this fear of failing?,
Always remember the football field, one may be capable of running it, but that doesnt mean they accomplish the capacity to do so for a great length of time. Remember the tortus and the hare? Right now you are actually learning something, something very important, something real, not something that was tucked safely in the Honor Society. Yes, that was a nice setting, nice to have as well. But to be a good psychologist, in my opinion, it takes a lot more than that.

Sophia, read this message a few times and toss it around in your mind a bit. Forget about that young girl in the Honor Society, that is an experience that you can draw on, but not in the way you thought. What can you do now to help your situation is make a decision to simply find the resources in this environment that will help you learn how to learn. Forget about being hard on yourself, forget about entertaining SI over what you fail to do. Make a decision to learn how to learn in a totally new way and if you fail, so be it, failing is learning too. If you ever get to the point where you truely sit in a therapist's chair your going to need more than just book knowledge to be successful at it. Your question here, your frankness about your weakness, your sense of failure, that is a desire to learn, learn how to overcome. That is a good start in the right direction.

The other thing about College is that often what many enter College to be, is not always what someone ends up being. My daughter wanted to be a High School Math Teacher, she ended up a math major and is working for a big company in a higher paying job than a teaching job. Give yourself some breathing room as far as your choices go. That is a funny thing about life, it doesn't always turn out the way we think it might, doesn't always mean bad things, can be something we end up liking more.

Open Eyes

[Open Eyes]

Sophia,
What courses do you do well in and what courses have you failed in?
I would like to see what areas you are struggling in.

The other thing I didn't mention above is that when my daughter started college many of the students around her truely didn't know how to study and do their homework and learn how to absorb information on college level. My daughter ended up teaching others how to study. I had spent a lot of time with my daughter in this area because she was dislexic so she had skills that she learned which helped her learn in many areas. College is not an intimate environment like high school at all as I mentioned
so it really is a change.

Are you living on campus? It can be hard if you are and there is a lot of noise and activity around you while your trying to learn. My daughter truely had to find quiet places to go to for her quiet studying.

Open Eyes

[SophiaG]

I do well in religion courses, not well in psychology courses, and i usually fail math and philosophy courses.

Any courses with a ton of papers and projects I am "doomed" in.

[elliemay]

This could be a type of situational depression actually, but I don't think that there is anything wrong with you per se.

As the work loads builds and you get further and further behind, the anxiety creeps in and depression follows.

I think depression in your case maybe a natural extension of anxiety because, well, you just get exhausted from worry. It certainly happens.

I write a lot for a living. I've noticed that some people have a very natural flow to their writing, whereas other (like me!) find it to be anxiety inducing.

It was important to me to realize that "perfect" truly is the enemy of good. I work on that every single day. Perfect is the enemy of good. Perfect can be paralyzing.

Now, knowing that the writing is going to give you trouble is a big step in helping yourself. Does your university have a writing center? If so these centers usually have people that can get you over the hurdle.

Another thing that has worked well for me is the mantra "don't think, just write." It's surprising how well that can work.

You might also want to invest in one of those speech recognition software programs. For some, staring at a blank page, or an empty computer screen is just awful. Talking comes much more naturally to them. You can always edit, once you no longer have to stare at that blank page.

It may surprise you to know, that most hospitals HAD to switch to an oral dictation service for their physicians. Why? When the doctors actually had to write the notes from a visit, they simply were not doing it. Piles of cases would mound up months and months deep. The problem was completely resolved when the physicians could talk the notes out.

Just a suggestion...

Overall, you'll definitely make it. Just some strategies for coping and managing the workload may be in order.

Hello,

I've had troubles with depression for a long time and have learned to cope with it pretty well. The first depression I had that completely paralyzed me was my first semester in college, just after high school. I had trouble attending classes and completing work. I thought about suicide enough to begin preparing for it, I stopped. I am glad now that I stopped. At the time I was numb and kinda indifferent. It's like I stopped because I was too depressed to follow through, maybe. I dunno.
I know it got better. The real world is different than college and high school. In the real world, lots of people suffer with depression like symptoms every day, as they deal with troubled families, difficult jobs, not enough money and health problems. In the real world, people understand depression and misery. It seems they know how to cope with it also. I take medicine for depression also. I have therapy regurally as well.
In school, it seemed popularity and fun were high priorities, as well as studies. I find that being around "happy go lucky" folk while miserable and slightly desperate from depression, was a very bad situation for me. I received a medical dismissal from college.
I get by these days without a degree. I am a senior at a local university and I will finish if it is appropriate to do so, someday. I clean offices and take care of my family and myself. I enjoy playing the guitar and reading memoirs. I attend church, though I don't really "believe" to enjoy the fellowship. I attend 12 step meetings to stay away from unhealthy lifestyles also.

I think you should know that there is hope. I believe that life is challenging(and rewarding) with or without a degree in america today. I think you should know that there are options. You should seek professional help also. Don't do anything desperate. Suicide is a permanant solution to a temporary problem.

ENDURE...

Peace, A.

[lizardlady]

SophiaG, Elliemay already said most of what I was going to say. Your posts remind me of myself when I was an undergrad. I'd start the semester out fine, but as the workload mounted I'd get behind which caused anxiety, which lead to depression, so I'd get further behind and get more anxious and more depressed which made me get further behind....

In addition to checking out if your uni has a writing center I'd suggest you see if they have any resources for test anxiety and some help with study tips.

Also, I suspect many of your classmates experience what you are going through. Go talk to someone in the counseling center at school, or, if you're in therapy, give your T a call.