Mental Health Update

This Blog Post was originally published on adagia.org.

A few months back, my Grandfather died (Grandfather Yours Truly), and I've written about how bad I felt back in December / January (2021 - A shit Year Yours Truly).

As the company I work at was bought (Employer Change Yours Truly) I was feeling down a little bit more, and so I finally looked for professional help. I settled on an email contact service from the "Kriseninterventionszentrum" (Crisis Intervention Centre) because you can contact them anonymously. Writing about it openly shows me it has gotten way better since march.

Although I'm not a fan of self-diagnosis, reading the text I wrote back then, I was definitely in a depressing phase. I felt like the ground was ripped away from my feet. The upcoming war in Ukraine didn't make that better. At least I'm grateful I didn't have suicidal thoughts and can say that I didn't have them in my life yet.

Writing to a completely strange person was a relief. I thought about writing here first, but back then, the thoughts were too private to share here. It wasn't long after I wrote the email and I got a response from a Psychotherapist. She gave me some basic ideas on how to tackle the situation and asked if I wanted to talk to somebody in person. They even offered a long telephone call where I would consult a doctor and a therapist and could get medication afterwards. Normally I'm a fan of medecin and drugs but not when it comes to psychotropic drugs.

Since I was feeling way better after sending the email, I forgot about it for a while. Then the opportunity with the new employer arose out of nowhere. And with the change upcoming, my mood made a 180 and turned from slightly less depressed after the email, to what feels like euphoric again.

I wrote them again to let them know that I feel way better but still would like to get a list of "nearby" therapists I could contact. Maybe I'm going to contact one, but for now, I don't feel like it is necessary. We will see how that progresses over the course of the year.