I imagine some of you may have felt similar things, and I'd greatly appreciate any advice that you could offer on what to do and how to cope.
I'll start with some context; I'm a 21 year old female, just gone into my final year at a very good university, and since having returned from Kenya (where I spent the summer volunteering), I've felt increasingly alienated, anxious and depressed. Today has been the worst - I've locked myself in my room and pretended not to be in, and spent most of the day crying about the mess my life is becoming. It's odd, as yesterday evening I was almost euphoric laughing and joking maniacally with friends, and today my mood has swung right to the other extreme.
I'm not explaining myself clearly. Basically, a few days after I returned from Kenya I started feeling increasingly 'unreal;' nauseous when I stood up for long periods, dizzy, etc. Then I started getting periods of shivering and awful chills, and, having just come back from Kenya, chalked the symptoms up to malaria. The test proved negative, although the doctor is in the process of running some other tests as my urine showed a highish WBC count and she things I might have an infection, and since then I've been trawling through internet sites, attempting to self-diagnose (and have repeatedly convinced myself I have leukemia).
Up until now I've been ploughing on with my university work (of which there is far too much, as I'm in my final year), but today it seems everything has somehow broken. On the plus side, I don't think today that I have leukemia, but it seems to have sunk in that everything in my life is a facade, carefully constructed to hide the mess I am underneath.
To start, I've never had a healthy relationship with a guy. I have a decidedly unhealthy relationship with my closest male friend - we jibe and tease each other all the time, but over the last year I've somehow begun to have intense feelings for him, which I try incredibly hard to keep hidden and seem only to be able to express through teasing him. I'm angry, both with myself for continuing to feel this way about him despite his many obvious faults, and for being utterly unable to tell him, and also with him for not realising, and (I presume) not loving me back. He's a bit of a psychological mess too - not that he'd ever talk about it. The rest of my friends are wonderful, but many of them have their own problems, and as I put on quite a convincing act of being happy, I usually somehow slip into the role of being the 'life and soul.' It's good, it makes me forget about the emptiness and anger that I feel when I'm left alone. I'm also stressed by uni work, and have no idea what I'm going to do next year after I graduate. I used to be excited about the future, but everything seems somehow pointless right now.
I do have a history of mild mental problems, and hypochondria in particular - when I was 12 I had to be taken to hypnotherapy after I convinced myself that a tiny mole on my arm was skin cancer (my parents hid the family medical guide from me for 5 years - shame that they can't hide the internet
). I also had panic attacks as a teenager, and a generally bad time at school, where, as the cleverest one in my class, I had to be quite defensive and assertive to avoid teasing, and also the doctrinaire programme of my Catholic teachers. My father, who I had an awful relationship with when I lived at home (he almost threw me out at one point, although we now get on quite well), I suspect has undiagnosed depression, given that since he retired ten years ago he has developed a pattern where he leaves the house about three times a fortnight...
Sorry to ramble; it seems as if there should be poetic, soul-bearing way to write all that, but it's just come out as utter twaddle. I'm usually someone who tries to see the beauty all around - I look out of windows, have dreams, dance like a fool - but at the moment, although I'm sure it's still there, I just can't see it in my life. Beauty, after all, is true, and I feel at the moment as if the self I show to the world is just a pretence, an elaborately constructed coping mechanism to cover over the emptiness and loneliness inside.
Given my hypochondria, I thought I had anxiety disorder, but reading back over that diatribe I sound depressed as well (with characteristic twinges of defensive humour to paper over the cracks). Can anybody help/advise/sympathise?
Right now I have my psychologist debating my psychiatrist! One thinks I have it and the other is convinced I don't! Oh, and I also have DESNOS, which stands for Disorders of Extreme Stress Not Otherwise Specified.
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