Long-time listener, first-time caller...uh, poster?
Posted: August 7th, 2013, 4:51 pm
So, where to start? I've been listening to the show for about a year, and lurking on the forums. I've been in therapy my whole life, on and off. I'm still not sure if it's helped or if I'm just broken beyond help. Was diagnosed with ADHD at about the age of 11, and Generalized Anxiety Disorder when I was 25. This is what I know of, though - as a kid I would throw temper tantrums and go through weeks-long periods of depression. My dad told me at the age of 3 that I should be kept in a mental hospital. (One thing therapy has helped me with is working through this, to some extent - I've come to realize a lot of this was the product of the dysfunctional environment I grew up in. As my therapist at the time put it, behavior problems in kids that age are always learned from somewhere, or a reaction to something. Or maybe I'm just trying to make excuses for myself,..who knows?)
I"m now 29, going to be 30 in a month, and I've gone from achieving a relative extent of stability to being on the verge of completely fucking everything up. I went away to college at 18, which was the best decision I ever made - having grown up with parents who refused, and still refuse, to let me be an adult (wouldn't let me get my driver's license, gave me no advice whatsoever and actively discouraged me when it came to things like renting an apartment, credit cards, etc.), I gradually learned that I could do things on my own, that I could have control over my own life, that there were people out there who would accept me for who I was, and that not everyone's parents spend every waking moment drinking, screaming at one another, and trying to make everyone miserable.
I graduated, was working at a job I loved, and foolishly chose to start a PhD program on the other side of the country. That was 6 years ago, and I've been miserable ever since. I don't fit in there at all, and still don't understand the culture of my discipline and department. I love having had the opportunity to travel and meet interesting people, and I enjoy doing and talking about research itself, but my project has turned into an unstructured, unmanageable mess, and the thought of presenting anything to my colleagues terrifies me to the point where I haven't been able to actually write anything or even articulate the thesis of my project. Yet I refuse to quit because I wouldn't be able to live with knowing I wasted so much time on something that failed. Part of it is just that I need to sit down and start working through my data, but it's hard to get motivated - I want to use my work to do something meaningful, and there is very little support for people who want to do anything other than pure research. That', and I'd no longer have an acceptable excuse not to live at home, and I'd have to admit that my parents were right when they told me moving here was a mistake.
I have 2 years left before my school stops funding me, and I feel like my life is over. Whether I graduate or not, I have almost no job prospects and even fewer relationship prospects, and most of the time am too anxious and miserable about the future to make alternate or long-term plans. While most of my friends are starting careers, getting married, etc., I feel like I've missed a window for doing all those things and I'll be lucky not to live on the street (which I'd rather do than move back in with my parents, if it came to that).
Sorry for the long and depressing rant...thanks for listening. Not sure exactly what I'm expecting from posting on here...maybe just to tell my story to someone since I can't seem to do it in a way that makes sense otherwise.
I"m now 29, going to be 30 in a month, and I've gone from achieving a relative extent of stability to being on the verge of completely fucking everything up. I went away to college at 18, which was the best decision I ever made - having grown up with parents who refused, and still refuse, to let me be an adult (wouldn't let me get my driver's license, gave me no advice whatsoever and actively discouraged me when it came to things like renting an apartment, credit cards, etc.), I gradually learned that I could do things on my own, that I could have control over my own life, that there were people out there who would accept me for who I was, and that not everyone's parents spend every waking moment drinking, screaming at one another, and trying to make everyone miserable.
I graduated, was working at a job I loved, and foolishly chose to start a PhD program on the other side of the country. That was 6 years ago, and I've been miserable ever since. I don't fit in there at all, and still don't understand the culture of my discipline and department. I love having had the opportunity to travel and meet interesting people, and I enjoy doing and talking about research itself, but my project has turned into an unstructured, unmanageable mess, and the thought of presenting anything to my colleagues terrifies me to the point where I haven't been able to actually write anything or even articulate the thesis of my project. Yet I refuse to quit because I wouldn't be able to live with knowing I wasted so much time on something that failed. Part of it is just that I need to sit down and start working through my data, but it's hard to get motivated - I want to use my work to do something meaningful, and there is very little support for people who want to do anything other than pure research. That', and I'd no longer have an acceptable excuse not to live at home, and I'd have to admit that my parents were right when they told me moving here was a mistake.
I have 2 years left before my school stops funding me, and I feel like my life is over. Whether I graduate or not, I have almost no job prospects and even fewer relationship prospects, and most of the time am too anxious and miserable about the future to make alternate or long-term plans. While most of my friends are starting careers, getting married, etc., I feel like I've missed a window for doing all those things and I'll be lucky not to live on the street (which I'd rather do than move back in with my parents, if it came to that).
Sorry for the long and depressing rant...thanks for listening. Not sure exactly what I'm expecting from posting on here...maybe just to tell my story to someone since I can't seem to do it in a way that makes sense otherwise.
