Depression since childhood

[Annie_267]

Hi everyone,

I am new to this forum. I'd like to reach out to share my experience - may someone out there who reads this will know that they're not alone.

I am a working professional in my late 20s living in Sydney. I have been struggling with negative thoughts, self-doubts, anxiety, feeling of helplessness, hopelessness, emotional outburst at the smallest irritations, self-pity and a generally limited ability to feel joyful regularly.

I grew up in Vietnam and migrated to Sydney to live with a relative family and study highschool when I was 16. I have a collection of evidence pointing to untreated depression since childhood and the symptoms were labelled as my characters. Although the level of awareness of mental illness in the community was low, I did grew up in a peaceful household.

The list of evidence for my depression is quite long and they can be summarised into a few themes:

- Easily overwhelmed with negative emotions (anxiety, anger, feeling not loved/ accepted by family, self-pity, hopelessness)

- Engaging in violent/ revenging behaviours when angry (guilty of ripping off a teddy bear head and putting a screw driver through it to 'teach' my annoying sister a lesson at the time)

- Difficulty in letting go of these emotions, I remain sulky for a long time after the things that upset me passed - this is also now playing up in my personal relationship

- Not regularly feeling close to my parents - my mom is loving but also quite critical, until this day I still feel shy of sharing details of my personal life with her as I don't find her reaction supportive. When I recently shared that I am struggling with my career, she simply said when she was my age she already had two kids and a business. I learned that it takes certain skills and training to be able to just sit with and listen to a loved one struggling, so my poor mom and dad must also have been out of their wits about what to do when I was younger.

- Occasional thoughts of wanting to just disappear/ vanish from life at a very young age, whenever I feel upset

- Not feeling hopeful about the future, not feeling that there is a future for me

Fast forward one day my mom asked me if I want to study overseas. I did not think much of it and said yes. Then everything happened so much faster than my little brain can comprehend. My adolescence and early twenties years in Sydney were peppered with feeling guilty for the economic burden I placed on my parents for attending school where fees were expensive in Vietnamese currency. Without any conscious deliberation, I made obtaining Australian citizenship status my only goal, I worked extra jobs while at university to help pay my tuition, in response to the constant reminder from calls with my mom that school fee per term for me to be in Australia is equivalent to five years of one of my auntie's salary in Vietnam. I did not call home reguarly as I could not find anything exciting enough to share that would match the economic worries that were at the front of my mom's mind.

I accomplished that goal. And now I feel like the fish that escaped the dentist's aquarium in Finding Nemo. Now what? I have been working for more than 4 years now. I have come to realise the profession I chose when I was younger (chemical engineer), in order to purse my Australian citizenship goal, was not a good fit for me. I have come to realise that I hate working in an open-plan office and that I hate the commute. I often feel anxious and am prone to stress at work and feel that I have to be someone I am not at work. I often get into spirals of anxious thoughts, staying back late at work, skipping meals as I lose appetite. Despite encouraging messages from colleauges I often feel any sense of achievement dissipating very quickly.

I have taken some leave earlier this year and seek help from a psychologist. My well-being improved markedly during the time that I have off though I did not let my family know that I took time off. However, as I came back to work (4 days a week), the anxiety and self-doubt slowly creeped back in and I have taken more sick days recently. I am hanging onto this job while trying to figure out what to do next, I've started learning programming and quite enjoy the process.

My deepest fear is that no matter what I do, maybe this is all that there is for me - a cycle of struggle followed by very fleeting moments of joy, pride and peace. I feel that I have so much more to enjoy and experience in life, but just maintaining a baseline level of pleasantness and ease in the day-to-day is already an enormous task for me. It feels like I'm walking under water all this time.

[FloatingFeather]

Hi @Annie_267,

Welcome to the Forums. My name is FloatingFeather an I am one of the peer support workers at SANE. It is great that you have found us and thank you for sharing your story and feelings with us. This is a safe, anonymous space with many caring members with a variety of lived experiences.

From what you have written it sounds like you have achieved a lot and done really well for yourself in terms of your career and achieving your goal of becoming an Australian citizen. I'm wondering if you feel like you / your family put a lot of expectation on you? That can be a lot to deal with, particularly when you are young and trying to navigate through life.

You are very insightful and self aware which is a credit to you. I have had bouts of depression and anxiety in the past and some of the feelings you described resonate with me. It's not an easy way to feel and I think it's really good you sought professional help in dealing with your feelings. 

You are still young and there are many things in life you can look forward to. Even though you may not feel it now (I felt the same at your age) you never know how life can change for the better. From my experience it often does happen when you least expect it. If you really don't like your job would be open to changing to a new career? Is there something else career wise that really interests you?
As I have gotten older I have come to realise (just my personal opinion) that life isn't about really about happiness. It's more about being content - I feel like feelings such as sadness and happiness are more intense feelings that aren't typically an everyday feeling. 

I look forward to seeing what other members have to say. It's really nice to have you here - keep posting, we are here to support you.

Warm wishes,

FloatingFeather

PS. On an aside, if you want to directly chat with someone on the Forums use the @ symbol and then start typing their name directly after it. A dropdown box should appear, and you then select their name. This ensures that they are notified of any posts you mention them in.

[hanami]

Hi there @Annie_267 

Welcome to the forums and thank you for sharing your mental health journey so far. I resonated so much with some of the things you write. I remember doing things to my brother's toys when he was little to get 'revenge' on him for being born. But now I realise I was actually just yearning for my mother's love. She was loving but had her own issues and would go for long periods of time without speaking to me. I was a little kids so this was super confusing. I thought I'd done something wrong. Thankfully my dad was loving and always there for me. Anyway, I remember my brother got this blow up clown toy for xmas one year and I put a pin in it and deflated it that day! I can't believe I did that as I really adored him but as I said, it was me crying out for my mother's love. 

There's so much more I can relate to as well. That feeling of walking under water is so real. I'm in my 50s now (can't believe that) and I have four kids and I still have anxiety but I manage it. I've had ups and downs throughout the years but never anything like that darkness I felt in my teenager years and early 20s. It was a slow process but I've learned ways to get by and feel joy each day even when I can be super anxious at the same time. 

The forums are a great place to reach out to others who understand so I hope you get a lot ouf of them.  Seeing a good psychologist might be helpful too. Do you have a good GP who can give you referrals and talk about mental health? A psychologist could also help you with advice and support about a possible career change. 

Looking foward to seeing you around! 

Hanami

[Annie_267]

Thank you @FloatingFeather and @hanami for your reply. It means a lot to me. I am very glad I found the forum as I feel that sometimes the dark cloud over my head brings my friends and family down too. Just writing these thoughts down clear my head a lot.

@hanami so good to hear that it gets better over the year! Now that you mentioned, I certainly can say I am a lot more accepting of myself and know when have more self-compassion now than I did back in my adolescence and early 20s. Your comments already add a small dose of hopefulness into my head already.

@FloatingFeather I agree with your thoughts on just feeling content on an average day instead of the intense feeling of happiness or sadness. My mood swing has improved compared to my early 20s. I still feel a little less than content on an average day though - it feels more like treading through water most days for me. I think it's the poor job fit at the moment. I definitely think a lot of pressure was on me when I was young. Adapting to a new country, language, culture, living with relative family who has their own set of norms that are vastly different from my own. I felt like I was thrown into the ocean but never have had a swimming lesson ever in my life. My auntie whom I lived with at the time also went through a rough period of her life having her own issues with deal with, and she depended on me a lot for emotional support. This was very frightening as I have never learnt how to deal with this ever before in my life at that age. All of this I was unable to share with my mom and dad back at home because I could not articulate what to tell them. I have journalled a lot about this period of time in my life and it seemed that I still have a lot more to work with. I definitely have picked up a lot of the unhelpful mental processes from my auntie during these formative years - which I am still trying to unlearn.

Today is one of those days that I just want to rest, write, read, do yoga and go for walks. I have become more comfortable with taking break when I need to, and not beating myself up this last year after seeing a psychologist. I still feel a little guilty facing my colleauges the days after I take some days off.

I am planning to change career to software developing. I am teaching myself from programming language 1 day a week on Friday and it's often the more enjoyable day in the week. Last week I had a very busy week at work with deadlines so I worked until 8pm most days and it wore me out. I'm looking for a part-time job that is less stressful so I can focus more on learning. I find it daunting as lower income reminds me again of the financial stress in my early twenties even though I'm in a much better position now with some savings over the year. I also fear that even when I manage to get a job in software development later on, I may still go through the same cycle of stress. But I'm taking a bet this time because I realise I have not had the opportunity to think about what I'm actually interested in and what I am good at. So I'm just going to try and see.

I only saw a provisional psychologist at a university for about 2 months earlier this year, we had weekly sessions and I improve a lot. I am not seeing any psychologist at the moment, I think I am coping okay but sometimes I do slip back into the spiral of anxious thoughts.

[amber22]

Hey there @Annie_267 

Thank you so much for sharing your journey here on the forums with us, and welcome to the forums! I am so glad that you have chosen this safe space to share how you are feeling and what you have gone through.

So much of it resonated with me too, and I wanted to reply to say that you are not alone in any of this. Already in the replies you have received there are people that resonate with certain aspects of it and I find that really comforting and supportive to know that. I definitely needed to know that as sometimes I feel like the way I act or what I feel is only me feeling it, but really it can be quite common if we all talked about it more! 

I also immigrated to Australia and have been living here for ten years from a country that did not normalise mental health. Although I grew up in a good household, mental health was not a talked about subject and I found it hard to navigate as I got older too and realised that my actions were because I was feeling a certain way. Luckily I find that living here in Australia it is a lot more talked about and semi-normalised in some communities, which makes me feel a lot better. 

I'm really glad that you got to take some time off at the start of this year and really focus on your mental health. That is great that you were open to a psychologist as well and its lovely to hear that this helped your mental health and how you were overall feeling a lot. Sometimes a little time off and a lot of rest can do wonders. We need to remember to take care of ourselves more often. 

I see that you aren't feeling great in the job you are currently in and that you are just hanging onto it for the time being. If you are enjoying learning about programming, is this something you can look into doing as a career maybe? It always helps when your job is something that you are genuinely interested in and enjoy doing. 

Sending virtual hugs,

Amber22