I'm hoping I can make it through the school year without another mental breakdown

In My Humble Opinion
1

I decided I am going to try harder to to try to keep up, to try to not miss classes because I’m crying in the corner somewhere. but it seems that when I’m upsetm it doesn’t matter if I’m physically in the classroom, I still can’t pay attention. I have to keep up this semester. I can’t drop out again. I’m not dropping out. But I’m worried, that no matter how hard I try, I might end up messed up again anyway. it has to work better than that right, right? If you do your work and do your stuff you succeed? And yet I keep finding myslef breaking down into tears. I am sitting here sobbing and shaking because of certain things that might not even have bothered anyone else. **I get so worried that I’m not able to be normal.

You think I’;ll be able to make it this year? Is this a legimiate op, or is it just too whiny? i don’t think I’m in s state right now to judge social stuff.I’ve never been good at that under the best of cirumstances.

2

No advice to offer but…good luck and best wishes! Hope things sort out for you.

3

Have you sought help, been evaluated? There are medications and different therapies that can help you. But you have to seek it out. If you haven’t, do so. If you have, and it’s not working, seek again. Keep seeking. You have resources- use them.

4

Oh, I’m on medication. A lot of medication. It’s just my doctor and parents have been trying to help me try other stuff, because I’m on a lot of medication already.

I’m just worried, I guess. One of my tell-tales of worsening mental health, I’ve noticed, is writing long angry message board posts with lots capitalization, exclamation makrs, and/or bad spelling. I think I’ve just written three of them in a row. Hey look, I can spell better now! But I’m still crying and on the verge of givnign my spell-checker (if I had one, which I don’t on this computer) a headache.

I probably sound whiny and self-pitying. I am probably am whiny and self-pitying. But I’m having my gazzilionth panic attack about whether I’ll be eighty before I finish college. I don’t think I’m at my most rational in this state.

5

Alice the Goon is right…there is help out there, and good help. Try starting at your student health center. They’ve seen lots and lots of students having the exact same issues as you.

In the meantime, do this. Set little goals. Anything is better than nothing, right? So, even if you can’t pay attention, be present in class, because being present is better than not being present. If you can manage that, then try and take some notes, because some notes are better than no notes.

Once you have that, then look at your homework. Remember, we’re talking about what’s possible, not the ideal, and again, something is better than nothing. Turn something, anything, in. If you can manage that, then try and make it relate to the assgnment. And if you can get that far, see if you can put some quality in it. As much as you can, you can’t ask for more.

6

I’m sorry you’re having a tough time. I can’t add much to the excellent advice offered by Lucretia, but wanted to wish you well. Be gentle with yourself.

7

Have you looked into cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) at all? There are workbooks that you can get via Amazon, etc., which allow for self-guided therapy exercises.

CBT basically tries to break the cycle of unproductive, irrational thoughts that end up being self-sabotaging. Speaking as someone who has dealt with recurrent, deep depression, I know full well what kind of an emotional “well” you can find yourself caught in.

8

I think I was going to try that… I dont remember. I’ll have to check?

9

One step at a time. You can make it.

Here’s some starting links for workbooks - the last one has quite a few positive reviews:
Cognitive Behavioral Workbook for Anxiety
Cognitive Behavioral Workbook for Depression
Thoughts and Feelings: Taking Control of Your Moods and Your Life

Listen to Lucretia. Set tiny goals right now, and be gentle with yourself.

10

Okay. I’ve stopped crying. If the sky sky doesn’t fall in and my internet doesn’t disconect again and no one says anaything mean to me, I should make it to bed-time.

Thank you for putting up with me.

11

As gently as I can put this, that bolded part is not a factual statement. It’s tough out there.

12

It’s definitely a factual statement. If the only thing I can say about myself when I die is “I did my stuff,” you bet your ass I’m marking that down as a success. I think most people feel the same way, and the rest is more about keeping up appearances. What the heck else can you do but do your stuff?

I think you’ll find, MIS! – or at least I found, and that’s all I’ve got to go on – that you’ll tend to overrate by a factor of a million just how normal and unbothered everyone else is, and as a result you’ll convince yourself that every little foible is a sign of impending annihilation. As somebody with pretty self-destructive anxiety who got spit out of his academic career with reasonably impressive credentials anyway, the two big lessons I learned about feeling broken are

  1. however awful of a job I think I’m doing under the circumstances, and as inexcusable and irredeemable of a shape as I feel like I’m in, I am almost always doing a job that is way less awful than that, and
  2. however easy I think everyone else is finding the stuff that I’m finding difficult (and think I’m doing a terrible job of), and however much better I think a normal person would be doing in my shoes, they actually tend to find it way less easy than that and are doing much worse than that, on average.

Really those are the same lesson, but on opposite ends of the spectrum: I wasn’t the biggest wreck of a thing ever, and other people had problems too. The way that I felt about how I was doing was a totally different thing from how I was actually doing. How I felt and how I was doing had like never even *met *each other. I thought a normal person wouldn’t feel so bad about how hard it was. I’m pretty sure that isn’t true, though. I’m pretty sure a “normal” person is basically a construct that my brain uses to tell me I suck from time to time, not an actual thing I could find if I looked. The entirety of my experience of failure and sucking and being bad at everything was internal. Which didn’t make it not real, but it did make it not accurate. And if you think about it, that means that nobody else would have been able to tell that was how I felt - because why would I have been feeling like that? If you were in my class maybe you’d have thought I was a normal person, and holy crap how wrong you’d be, would have been my opinion.

It was a big obstacle for me because under the same kind of pressures as my classmates, where my classmates would mostly blame the stressors for being, you know, stressful, I would blame myself. I’d be thinking “here I go fucking up my life because I can’t handle this.” It was a feeling. I was wrong. It seems to me like you’re kind of saying that, which is why I bring it all up. You can’t trust a bad feeling as an indicator of whether you’re “making it,” is what I learned. That is exactly the one thing you can never trust. There’s a reason that all coming-of-age-making-it stories start out with protagonists who can’t find their way in the world and don’t trust their own abilities and think they’re doomed. I suspect that’s the only experience any person has ever had inside his or her own head.

So, you know, sure I think you can do it. If you were another person, you’d tell yourself the same thing.

13

You don’t have to take a full college course load.

Take a couple classes this semester. That way you’re not buried in course work. Then try three classes a semester, It may take 5 years but you’ll eventually get that degree.

I took a semester off between my junior and senior years. I was feeling burned out and needed the break.

14

All good advice
I can only add, make sure you get everything documented.

I almost killed myself at the start of the last semester, and now they are disputing that I had problems.

15

Maybe it’s time to stop crafting yourself to fit life, and craft a life that fits you.

If you’re spending all this anxiety, and time, and worry, while heavily medicated, over college, maybe it’s just not for you.

Maybe, just maybe, it’s time to stop trying to stuff, your round self, into those square holes?

Just something to think about, I wish you nothing but the best.

16

I’m not exaggerating to say that this is maybe the best advice that I’ve ever heard. I think I’m going to put it on a poster and make 20 copies and put it in every room in my house.

Just what I needed this morning, Jimmy Chitwood. I hope it helped the OP, too. Thanks!

And to the OP, I am sorry that you’re going through this. I’ve been there before and it will get better.

17

[non-mod]I’m truly sorry you’re going through such a rough patch, Malleus, Incus, Stapes!. Hope things improve soon.[/non-mod]

[mod]Since you’re getting a lot of good advice here, I’m going to move this from MPSIMS to our advice forum, IMHO.[/mod]

18

Seconded. That was amazing, Jimmy Chitwood.

Speaking as another college student who often feels crazily overwhelmed and stressed and gets that omghowcanidothisforanothersemester feeling, Malleus, you are not alone. Sending a virtual hug your way :slight_smile:

19

Thank you. Thank you all. I am feeling more calmed down today. I think I can make it from here. I have one class I really love today (and one I already hate, but I’m going face it bravely).

This is my fifth year. I’m a lower junior, by the way.

I am taking less classes than usual this semester. This was an accident. I signed up for classes, saw I had filled in five slots on my schedule, and forgot that lab counts as part of bio. Whoops.

By the way, I am told that in most colleges people generally take four classes a semester. Is this true? In my school, you can take up to seven, and most people seem to take at least six. I usually try to take five.

20

Hoo boy, do I ever know about school-influenced panic attacks. I’ve been working on my PhD for 5.5 years now, and some days, it still doesn’t feel like I’ll ever get there. I began having panic attacks about it last year, when I had to throw 2 years worth of samples away, because they were useless, and I was facing my written and oral qualifying exams in one semester.

It all began to culminate when I had to drive halfway across the country to consult with some notable experts in my field - they had invented many of the molecular protocols in the discipline. They worked with me for several days, and at the end, had to regretfully tell me that they could not help. The long drive back down the East Coast was filled with dread, apprehension, and finally, outright panic. I ended up thinking I was going to die on the side of the interstate. Some kind soul called 911 for me, and I ended up in the hospital in southern Virginia.

I didn’t know to call what had happened a “panic attack” at the time, since absolutely nothing like it had ever happened to me. As the winter wore on, I began to feel more and more trapped, and I let despair take over. I ended up having more attacks in the winter and early spring. It was terrifying. I had no idea what was happening to me. The anticipation of the possibility of having more of those terrible, paralyzing attacks was almost as bad as the actual attack. I found myself standing on the brink of panic every day, and it sunk me even deeper in despair about myself, my future, the world around me, everything.

Dark times.

I began to improve when I made a promise to myself: no matter how long it takes, I’m simply going to work on it every day, and do it right. The process is more important than the result.

That promise has been like an immovable anchor to me. Many, many times, I’ve found myself on the brink of panic again, and simply repeating that promise to myself like a mantra has helped me. You must work on what you can, right now, and let everything else go. You WILL finish. You will NOT be 80 when you do, and in five or ten years, all this will be a distant memory, and you will have moved on from this dark place.

Good luck.