One
04-01-11, 18:59
Hey :)
I'll try to keep this relatively short. I'm a 20 year old guy, and have suffered from depression/anxiety for around 2 years. Initally the anxiety started after a traumatic experience (trivial as it might seem to others) in a taxi in the USA. Since then, I suffered from a growing anxiety of transport (ie planes, trains, cars, buses, you name it). I had to travel to university everyday for around an hour and a bit, there and back, and so you can imagine that this anxiety became an issue for me.
I'd always been a glass half empty sort of person, but by no means 'not normal', and had always worried a bit about things, but again nothing massively extreme. I battled on with it for a few months till my first year at uni was finished, and then was unable to find work during that summer due to the recession at the time. This meant I spent the summer unemployed, and therefore with my worries about travel, didn't do particularly much, which lead to depression.
However, once university started again, I began to feel a little better, until a few weeks later my father was unexpectedly diagnosed with cancer and went through various operations and radiation treatments (he's fine now though thankfully :)). As I'm sure you'll understand, having to support not only my wory stricken family through this but also myself took a lot out of me, and my uni work suffered accordingly. As a result, near the end of 2nd year (April 2010) I was forced to take voluntary leave for a year.
For a few months, things were on the up, my dad recovered, I eventually managed to turn up a job in a bar, but since then it has rather gone downhill again. I had to leave my job due to quite severe panic attacks occurring randomly in my day to day life, meaning I could not guarantee whether I could do shifts etc, and felt it was putting pressure on me I couldnt cope with so left.
Im currently unemployed and doing nothing, when I feel I should really be with all my friends (from school or uni) in 3rd year, or in a job, and am seeing a therapist as several medications have had very little positive effect.
Anyway I am sure to have missed large bits out this story out, but thought I'd say hi to everyone :)
I'll try to keep this relatively short. I'm a 20 year old guy, and have suffered from depression/anxiety for around 2 years. Initally the anxiety started after a traumatic experience (trivial as it might seem to others) in a taxi in the USA. Since then, I suffered from a growing anxiety of transport (ie planes, trains, cars, buses, you name it). I had to travel to university everyday for around an hour and a bit, there and back, and so you can imagine that this anxiety became an issue for me.
I'd always been a glass half empty sort of person, but by no means 'not normal', and had always worried a bit about things, but again nothing massively extreme. I battled on with it for a few months till my first year at uni was finished, and then was unable to find work during that summer due to the recession at the time. This meant I spent the summer unemployed, and therefore with my worries about travel, didn't do particularly much, which lead to depression.
However, once university started again, I began to feel a little better, until a few weeks later my father was unexpectedly diagnosed with cancer and went through various operations and radiation treatments (he's fine now though thankfully :)). As I'm sure you'll understand, having to support not only my wory stricken family through this but also myself took a lot out of me, and my uni work suffered accordingly. As a result, near the end of 2nd year (April 2010) I was forced to take voluntary leave for a year.
For a few months, things were on the up, my dad recovered, I eventually managed to turn up a job in a bar, but since then it has rather gone downhill again. I had to leave my job due to quite severe panic attacks occurring randomly in my day to day life, meaning I could not guarantee whether I could do shifts etc, and felt it was putting pressure on me I couldnt cope with so left.
Im currently unemployed and doing nothing, when I feel I should really be with all my friends (from school or uni) in 3rd year, or in a job, and am seeing a therapist as several medications have had very little positive effect.
Anyway I am sure to have missed large bits out this story out, but thought I'd say hi to everyone :)