Depression Update (8/2/13)
So this is kind of an update since the last time I talked about depression, which was in January-ish, when I first started going to therapy. For that semester, from late January until early May, I was seeing a psychologist for depression. And that was kind of rough at first, having 3-ish years of festering emotions suddenly spill out over the course of 2 hours. Then it progressively got better and I was feeling better about myself too. My typical cycle of episodes is that I'm depressed for 7-8 months, and then I'll be fine for 3-4 months. By May I was pretty good; I wasn't depressed and I was about 4-5 months out of a depressive episode. Now I'm in Caltech, and I was hoping to use my coming out here as sort of a gauge for how well I was doing.
So it turns out not that well, since I had an anxiety attack on July 31st. The way it typically works is that it kind of ramps up over the course of a week, after having barely slept for about 5 days. I went into work one morning at 4:30 AM after an all-nighter to take my mind off of the stress. I started fiddling with an electrical device that I'm dealing with for the next few weeks, and it stopped working. The solution was literally: unplug it and plug it into the adjacent socket. But after being too exhausted and too stressed out, I just completely shut down, and cried for the next 4 hours about nothing.
Panic attacks are something that have happened every few months, but I never gave them much thought because they were almost always within a depressive episode, and I'd be able to tough it out for the most part. It sucked but I figured it was part of the depression. But on the contrary, it seems like something separate that has to be addressed on its own. After my 3rd hour of crying, I head over to the psychological services at Caltech, and talked to a psychologist, who helped me get through it.
So clearly, there's a lot more to get through and peel away at than I initially expected, which is really disappointing. But obviously, there's not really any point in sulking about it. The psychologist I spoke to on Wednesday and Thursday (yesterday) suggested that I talk to my psychologist at Columbia again when I go back to school, because the depressive episodes I've described sound like a mild form of bipolar disorder. Which adds to the list of more things to have to sift through. I'm going to continue seeing her once a week for the next 3 weeks, until I go home, and hopefully I'll be able to get something from that before I go back to Columbia.
Also, in passing, my psychologist here just asked me in passing on Wednesday if I play guitar, after she saw my nails. Then on Thursday she told me that she had made a call to the music department at Caltech (there's a music department here?) and asked if they had guitars on loan for students. That was one of the most thoughtful things that someone had done for me lately, and it was someone that I had literally met 1 day prior.
So depression, and then anxiety/panic attacks, and then hypomania/bipolar disorder. There's a lot more I have to get through for however long I end up going to therapy again. I'm disappointed, but I suppose I'm not in much of a hurry either.
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