A Mental Health Post

The fact I look bad is meant to add to the whole depression theme, in case you think "Ew, did she not see everything wrong with her face", I did!

I don't remember if I've spoken about this before. I have a terrible memory lately due to the mental health problems, but there is a somewhat bright side. After months of pestering and asking for an appointment, we finally received one for tomorrow morning at 10am. If I feel up to it, I'll post a brief description of how I feel it went even the same day or later on throughout the week. 

I have depression, severe social anxiety and high functioning autism. Throughout a majority of the time I have been diagnosed, I have not been taken seriously. I have had to resort to self-diagnosing myself with depression as the only appointment I could get to discuss this (which lasted roughly 30 minutes, and I barely said a word) they basically put it down to hormones/unfortunate circumstances and have been doing this for over four years now whenever I try to bring it up or book an appointment. Well, actually, I still live with my mother and my mother has to do it because I do have severe social anxiety and having an angry phone call isn't on my list of "Things I Can Do". 

After joining college for a higher level/second year, I feel pressures I did not feel last year and when the simplest of tasks often feel like climbing a mountain, help is something I desire. I have broken down more times than I would like to admit. It dents my pride. It makes me feel like I can't handle this or cope with this without help, and it's a horrible feeling. 

There's also things, without the depression, that would have been difficult to cope with anyway - for example, upcoming presentations and work experience. For people who also have bad social anxiety, they will nod and understand the difficulties these will present and for others they will see it as a potential challenge but something that isn't almost impossibly to overcome. 

So, back to the point (I once got a comment, months ago, saying my posts are 'bouncy' and don't flow properly and I can totally see that and, months later, I still haven't improved very much...) I have decided to write a list of problems I have been experiencing and just hand it to her, as I feel like this is easier than talking about it. It also prevents the inevitable, and that is crying whenever we focus or talk about a particular topic - which I almost do in every one of these few appointments I have received over the past few years. 

I also have to attend this appointment with my mother and I know she doesn't read this blog so I can say this: it prevents me from talking about things that have happened in my past that she was involved in or knew about through fear she will get defensive or angry. She is not a bad mother and she has not done anything extremely awful, ever, but she has not been innocent and I have not been entirely honest about this with health professionals. I also do not like talking about my dad in front of her as my honest opinions on him and his parenting can cause negative emotion in my mother and she doesn't always have the abilities to control her anger (not abusive to me or to anyone in the household, no worries there). Saying that, she has had some negative impact on me that I would say is a decent proportion of why I am the way I am today and I feel like, by holding this back, I am holding back an accurate diagnosis and getting the help that I need. I do need her there, though, as my social anxiety is so bad talking to strangers is often half-impossible. 

As a twenty-year-old, I feel like I should not be struggling like this when I don't even have a job (I am trying but they hard to come by) and do not have any obligations other than attending college and doing housework at home. I do not live by myself, yet. Depression/anxiety is hard, no matter what, though and I can't even focus on autism because I don't know what kind of impact autism is having on my life. It's hard to cut up my personality away from my autism, they are intertwined. 

Anyway, if you read this far, thank you for listening and if you have any mental health struggles whatsoever then I wish you luck!