Depression at a psychologist from Russia: history and treatment. Life, Illness, Science, and Job search

There was another near-death experience related to breathing. I caught a cold, a common thing – cough, sore throat. It happend when i was yet ten. My brother and I stayed at home, our friend came to visit. We were playing something, talking, a quiet, ordinary evening. And I started to choke. I couldn’t take a breath and that was it. Panic in my head, and my attention was running, sometimes directed at how to gulp air, sometimes directed at panic. Some air still got in, because It enought to said my brother with the phrase: “I’m going to die.” How many minutes it all lasted – I don’t know, but the amazing thing was the acceptance of the inevitable that came in the first moments with the panic. I thought something like – “well, it’s a pity, of course, that they immediately presented me with such a fait accompli, they didn’t warn me in advance, well, since there is no air for me, then take me up to heaven, ok…”. At some point, interest (if you can call it interest) in trying to take a breath disappeared and it became possible to endure these mockeries of nature over your living organism. Although it is rather nature itself that gave the living such an ability to be distracted before death. Approximately like those people who fall from above, they also “watch cartoons” on the way, since here too nature took pity, and did not leave a person in a clear mind while he flies for a few seconds to the ground, into which he will crash. And returning to the situation where I was suffocating, I will say in advance – I survived then. At the end of all the throwing and attempts to return my breath, I lay down on the floor, and slowly came to my senses. I was quietly happy with the opportunity to breathe.

Another situation with similar panic emotions was in the summer, when I went fishing with my father and his friend on the Ishim River. The river has very steep and high banks, we slowly went down the serpentine paths, and began to fish. And somehow the bank beckoned me to climb up it a little, its beginning was not so steep. And I crawled on all fours, having previously determined for myself the point where I would need to stop, because there already begins a steep climb. It would be fine if I slowly walked, but I quickly climbed there with my head down, having missed the intended point, I found myself in a terrible situation: I can no longer go down in any way, neither backwards nor forwards, only to fall, and I also can not climb up because I do not really see what is there, and have already lost the ability to assess how steep or flat the bank is in order to move along it in one way or another. In general, there was no turning back, forward was terribly scary – forward – could mean worsening the already terrible situation. I would call my father, but he was nowhere to be seen, and what can I explain him, a year will pass before I did it. Theoretically, it would be possible to “stick” to the sand and lie there until they found me, after all, I did not fall, while I was in place and did not move. But being in this suspended state, at a crossroads, turned out to be so painful for me that I did not stay in it for long, and then it was as if I “woke up” the next moment, when my arms and legs carried me, in the end to upstairs. I do not know how I climbed up, it all ended. I took a risk and won. I went back down the serpentine to fish.

And if we talk about near-death experiences at all, they changed my attitude to life in general, not for the better. Okay, there is life, and no one asked me whether I wanted to start it or not, but at some point I just started living, breathing, blinking, etc. But that’s still okay. But why do I need to experience these horror stories about death? Why are they imprinted so vividly, colorfully, in detail in my consciousness? They only make me feel bad. And the understanding that I won’t find answers to my questions made me feel worse. I can’t say something like: “I began to value life because I now know that it will end” or “I accepted my mortality.” So, the quality of my life only decreased.

Oh, school It left a mark on my life that can’t be erased. There was a time in childhood when adults ask something like: so are you going to school soon? To school next year? Do you want to go to school? I didn’t want to go to school, and I answered that I wouldn’t go there. At that time, I was faced that phenomenon when clouds gradually gather over my life, and I can’t do anything about it. I understood, but didn’t want to accept the fact that I would go there, and I had a glimmer of hope that something might happen miracle, but I still knew that that hope will die soon.

I lost that war for freedom and independence. Got dressed and went to school. The first shift – that’s getting up in the morning, cold, dark, my soul is so heavy. What weighed on me was that I had to go there, where i do not want. I don’t want to, but I have to. I had to be in a place where I don’t want to be. I have to. And I don’t want to. But I have to. I have to do something there, and I don’t like it there. New people, new premises that don’t evoke any sympathy, and these teachers too. I now have to spend a lot of time in a place where I didn’t want to. I have to be there every second, minute, hour. I’ve arrived, now I have to stew there in this “have to” for as long as I haven’t even lived yet. A very long time and I really have to. But not for me. I don’t have to, I don’t want to. I’m not cozily, I’m hard. I clearly felt depressed, yes, unfortunately, I was depressed then. And this story will not a day or a week long, and its end is not visible at all for me – a first-grader. And so it happened that nature frightens me with death, and society shoved me into the framework of school – and this “war” was obviously lost, because the forces are too unequal.

Another story that happened later, in the 3rd or 4th grade, is associatively connected with the story about school. I was studying in the second shift (when i go to school around lunchtime), spending the morning at home with my mother. And it happened that I began to cry. I was simply torn apart by the feeling of the unbearableness of my existence, the unbearableness of everything around me, the incomprehension of what was happening to me at all. I cried without stopping, as if in waves – more, then less, then more again… There was no relief from such a weeping. And I do not remember how the sobbing stopped, and how long it continued. This was the first manifestation of emotions in my life that I could not explain by psychological reasons. That is, if in general terms, no one offended me, i did not expected special at school, nothing happened to relatives or friends, I was not physically hurt, etc.

This event came, shook me, remained unexplained, and was put on the shelf in my memory with a note something like: “maybe someday I will understand what it was.” And during my life I often “passed” by these memories, but no explanation was found. And when at 33 I turned to a psychiatrist, after some time I realized that the reasons for my crying were not psychological, that’s why I could not find them, the reasons were physiological, that is, related to the work of my brain. This, as I understand it, was such a “little greeting” from my future autism spectrum disorder and depressive disorder, or, in other words, their “debut”.

Somewhere around elementary school, I had my first unrequited love. She was my classmate, cute, small, physically thin, with a thin voice, and lived in a village not far from the city. I was crazy about her. But she wasn’t crazy about me. It was the first time my sympathy for a girl and her sympathy for me didn’t arise together. Before that, I had been pleasantly lucky that if I liked her, she liked me. But here, it was completely different. I had to make do with the thought that someday, for some reason, she would have romantic feelings for me

Saturday was always a particular challenge for me. We still studied on Saturdays back then. This girl didn’t come to school every Saturday, but according to some unknown schedule. Well, yes, she lived far away, the bus schedule is unreliable, and her parents probably sometimes arranged a full day off for her. So one Saturday could bring me joyful experiences, when she would come into the classroom in the middle of the second lesson, sit down, and I would know that today she was here, and I would feel good, and we would be able to exchange at least a few words, I would be able to look at such beauty. But mostly Saturdays brought me bitter reality, when she didn’t come in the middle of the second or the middle of the third lesson. And I waited so much, looked at the front door of the classroom, listened to the sounds in the hallway, suddenly she was coming, literally hypnotized reality and myself… She didn’t come… which meant that I would have to live out today in gray tones, without love, and the weekend for me was almost in vain. My God, I was still little and already then such experiences. Horror. But i still didn’t ingratiate yourself with her. I don’t remember how it all ended then, but many, many years later I found out that she also moved to Tyumen. But my train of romantic feelings left long ago, there were so many different stations were, stops, and now she is not beautiful to me at all.

I have always had a complicated relationship with sleep. I know that children often take a few hours of sleep during the day. And i just couldn’t sleep during the day. Perhaps, in this regard, it is a good thing that I was not in kindergarten, since there I would probably have had to force myself to sleep during the day under the “oppression” of a dissatisfied teacher who wanted to do something of her own during “quiet hour” and not be busy putting unsettled children to bed. But my relationship with daytime sleep can’t be called a problem – I don’t sleep, well I don’t sleep. But once I did lie down for a while during the day, after my father and I came home from fishing, and fell asleep. When I woke up, it was as if I had woken up from a long-term coma: I couldn’t understand who I was, what was around me, what time it was, what day it was. That is, I was so confused, all the “standard settings of consciousness” were lost, it was like after anesthesia, and it took me time to collect myself again and understand what happened. But the hardest thing for me was going to bed at night. I did not want to sleep, my brain did not turn into sleep mode, regardless of whether I was tired or not. And this was my big conflict with the Universe. After all, there are enough problems as it is, well, can I at least have the opportunity to switch off at night, reboot there, is it really necessary to nightmare me 24/7, I am not a store.

Many children are afraid of dentists. But I am not many children.

I am one of those who was afraid of dentists. It was on my own feet that I had to go to the hated and terrifying hospital, let the latent sadistic women drill my teeth, pick hard with their metal hook in my sore teeth, and wind my dental nerves on those needles of theirs. I did not know what could be more terrible in life than going to the dentist – it was Hell on Earth. It suppressed me for many years, from the first visit until I was 30, approximately. That is so long. It is important to say that I definitely did not see a way out of this situation. I accepted the conviction for myself: “this will be my whole life, as long as I have teeth.” My picture of the world consisted of this. How can I fully enjoy something today if I know that in a while I will again find myself in that damn chair?..

For some reasons, dentists came to our school to examine and treat our teeth. They were located in a small room near the dining room and the stairs leading to the library and assembly hall. It was a strange location within the school walls for me, different feelings were mixed in one cauldron: warmth and interest in relation to the library and assembly hall, appetite in relation to the dining room, and horror in relation to the “branch” of Hell. The walls of a real dentistry are frightening, but here they seemed to have appeared from the last century, and the instruments and approach to treatment were appropriate. I would not be surprised if they had an old drill with a handle like a mechanical meat grinder.

They came in the third school term – the longest, frosty, darkest term (dark because it was winter outside). It would seem that there were enough negative events for such a term, but no. And then every year at one point during the lesson they come to our class and say, like, three people to the dentist. So what? Should I think about the lesson, like, while these trios are leaving and coming? I was shaking, panicking, I couldn’t concentrate on anything, there were simply no thoughts in my head that could support me. I wanted everything to fail, and I would go there too. Year after year, year after year. The third term. And one day I decided for myself that I would not go there, and I would not sit in their chair, and I would not open my mouth. But I had to go, I just had to and that’s it. Somehow I managed to time the teacher and the end time of the lesson and the traffic of these three so that I left the lesson and was not counted. Although it was so scary that someone would look at some list and see that there was nothing next to my last name, and how they would start to haunt me. But that didn’t happen. Incredible luck. But the luck is temporary, because eventually I had to treat everything. But before the treatment I was able to neglect some teeth, so that not holes of caries but “craters” formed in them, so they could not be saved, and by the age of 25 I already had three chewing teeth missing. I had reasons to neglect my teeth, although these reasons were not entirely rational, but, nevertheless, this is how I ensured my emotional safety. I would can list many and long cases in the dentist’s office from which I suffered, but I mention one and the last one that I remember.

I was already living in Tyumen at the time. And I didn’t know from experience that you can avoid many problems if you go to a private dental clinic (although this is not a fact, but the chances of preserving your mental health increase many times over). I didn’t know it, so I went to a state clinic, which was located on the outskirts of the city, on an ugly street called “Narodnaya”, where on one side there are gray, scary panel apartment buildings, on the other side there are garages, on the ground there is dirty snow, black slush, and a cold wind from all sides, next to a gas station and it’s like the end of the city. The walls inside the clinic match the exterior of the street. And, of course, a fat old doctor dissatisfied with life, who, I’m sure, likes to give a painkiller injection in the wrong place, as long as it gets in the mouth and that’s fine, and it’s not her taste to bother with numbing the exact tooth she’s going to treat. There was an injection, after all. You can’t present anything, like. What claims… She starts – it hurts – I endure. She continues – it hurts even more – I endure, writhing there of course, fidgeting in the chair. She finishes – it hurts a lot – blood splashes from her mouth onto her white robe – I actually slid somewhere to the floor as if. I slid as if I was running away from her. And now before my eyes there are red droplets on white and a sediment of thoughts that it seems like it shouldn’t be like this. Well, no, anything can happen, but something like this just shouldn’t be. Even in the Russian Federation on “Narodnaya” street.

I have seen this kind of behavior of doctors, when they use well-known facts as a cover, like their medical interventions can often be painful for patients, give free rein to their “sadistic demons” and taste the sweetness of power and the opportunity to mock another person more than once. Since I worked with people most of my life, and worked in the state office, then they all wanted to be sure that everything was fine with my health. So it was necessary to undergo a medical examination. One of the medical analysis suggested that something like a mini-brush should be inserted into my genitals, right into the hole where I pee, and rubbed there to collect biomaterial. Twice, it seems, with a frequency of several years, I went there, where the same woman as in the story about the dentist was sitting and poking this thing into me, and I had such a sharp, intense, acute pain that my eyes almost went dark. My lightning-fast reaction or desire, which I suppressed because I was in society, without even pulling up my pants, was to slap her hard across the mug and scream fuck! fuck! bitch! moron! And fuck! But I endured. And I didn’t know that a wonderful discovery was waiting for me ahead.

That discovery was a female doctor who performed the same procedure at the next medical examination, and did it in such a way that I did not feel a drop of pain. She was simply a morally healthy person, at least for performing her medical functions. I went into her office, again prepared for the worst, she came up, did the procedure, kindly said that everything was done, and I could go, and switched her attention back to her phone, continuing to type. I was glad about this event.

Returning to dentists, in the end I came to the point that I experienced violence against myself with them, such moral violence, one of the types of violence provided to the people by the state. Unfortunately, the “soil” for this violence was my lack of knowledge that a visit to the dentist does not necessarily have to be terribly painful. As I later found out during the investigation of the causes of my phobia, my mother herself was panicky afraid of dentists. And for her, all these trips to the doctors were a real torture. And of course, she herself did not know that you can visit the dentist and not fall into a state of panic at all, so she kind of distanced herself from this area of my life.

I also often heard from people around me that dental treatment is not painful at all. Hearing such opinions at first, I looked for the problem in myself, thought that I was somehow too weak to endure pain like a man, it was very offensive because of this. And here I am in a situation where they tell me that dentists are not painful, but I feel this pain. Add to this the fact that they always gave me anesthesia, and waited a few minutes for it to work, and often added more, but it was still terribly painful for me. Well, here, of course, I reasoned something like, well, everyone’s body is different, maybe anesthesia does not work well for me – that is, again, I put everything on myself. That’s it, there is no way out of this situation. That’s it, there are no options left. The world, the environment will not help me here in any way. Go and live with this, go and endure, take your panic and close the door from the other side, since you are so complicated. “That” is not “this” to him, and “this” is not “that” to him… Wonderful, right?

And of course, I didn’t talk to anyone about the psychological component, namely about the “satanic” motivation of dentists, because these thoughts are too “for an amateur”, too “not related to reality”. Therefore, I had to go to the dentist, so I went. And I was a lucky catch for the sadists in white coats, because I met important criteria: in my eyes at the threshold of the office it was clear that I was depressed, and I was not going to leave, because I knew that it was better to suffer now than later, because then nothing would change, and in my lifetime there would be no future with new technologies for painless dental treatment. Because we are still too close to the Dark Ages. In my eyes you could see the horror that attracts sadists, much like blood attracts vampires, I will not tell anyone about what happened to me, I do not bite, do not scream or roar, in general, I do not attract unnecessary attention from the corridors of the clinic. This is a hypothesis about my relationship with dentists, quite coherent, but I will not test it for pragmatic reasons: my “dentist case” is closed. I am not afraid of them at all now. Maybe I want to share, but it would take too long to tell how I dealt with it. The only thing that relates to this paragraph is the sediment in my soul that remained after prolonged moral violence. That is all about dentists. The paragraph below is on a different topic.

I had one of the groups I hung out with. There were five of us. And the event happened back in the days when there were no mobile phones, and we would agree in advance what time and where to meet. We would also call each other on our home phones and invite each other to go for a walk. And if there was some kind of glitch, then you just go and go to the places where we usually hung out and find friends. Yes, there were no mobile phones, but we were already drinking with this group… This is by the way about our age.

So one day, I think it was a summer day, I was expecting a call from my friends, but I didn’t get one. I called them myself, their parents said they were out for a walk. Strange, but okay. No, that’s already strange, without “okay”. I get ready, go out, and go to all the places where we could be found. I went everywhere, there was no one anywhere. I was so upset then that I wanted to spend the day in one way, but it all went down the drain. And this upset was so hard to stop, also because I didn’t understand where everyone had gone. I came home, and I don’t remember whether it was in the evening or the morning of the next day that I got through to one of my friends, and he said something like this: “don’t you understand, we abandoned you over.” “abandoned” means they unilaterally made and implemented a decision to stop communicating with me.

I have never heard the word “abandoned” in this sense before or after. I don’t remember how I reacted then, of course I wasn’t happy, but it didn’t become a big shock that knocked me down either. Although for the next few days I had a hard time rebuilding my life for being alone. It was especially hard not to know what influenced their decision, why they stopped communicating with me, and of course, I wanted to communicate. On summer days and evenings, sometimes such sadness would creep up on me about the missed walks, about the fact that right now I could go for a walk, but I don’t. I remember that I didn’t like spending time alone at all, as if I was carrying this burden, serving out a moral sentence. This stage of my life was somehow endlessly gray. But I also had no intention of asking to join a company.

What’s the matter? Why didn’t I approach my friends so suddenly? Especially since nothing had happened in the last day or two, no arguments, no complaints, etc. Everything was going well, the friendship was floating. And the matter was in one fat red skunk, as I understood later. There was one guy who occupied a leading position in the friends company, but probably with my arrival he began to lose it. Another thing that often worked against him was that his parents forced him to stay at home with his very small brother. It’s a shame when friends build booths and try alcohol and gasoline in them, and you sit at home with a very small brother. And, in general, it was noticed that he was a real liar. A professional one. And this talent of his as a bullshit-monger helped him turn his suggestible friends against me, thereby bringing everyone back under his control.

What did I learn from this? That communication with people is generally an unstable phenomenon. Even friends are not constant. But without drama. I also learned that I am able to interrupt communication with people whom I consider close today. This is a difficult, but pleasant understanding. It supports my independence. I realized that I have a problem with not liking being alone with myself. I did not know then how it should feel to be alone with myself for a long time. But I made a note that I need to return to this in order to figure out what’s what. And much later, when I was about thirty, I had to return to this issue when it arose very painfully. But then in childhood, time went on and on, and passed, autumn and school came, and I became closer to other guys, and it was better. I knew them all before, but now I began to communicate differently. The company we created turned out to be psychologically healthy. And to this day we maintain relations, although we live in different countries.

Oh, high school algebra and high school geometry, I hate you with all my heart. Just think, I was never an excellent student, not counting elementary school, but three Fs in a term is still quite something. If I recall correctly, in 7th grade I got a “2” in algebra in a term, and in 8th grade I got a “2” in algebra and a “2” in geometry in different terms (a “2” is the worst grade you can get, you can’t imagine anything worse). The most painful thing was that for me, all of algebra and geometry were nothing more than numbers placed in different places on a line, Latin letters, and geometric shapes drawn with a ruler. I completely didn’t understand the essence of the subjects. More precisely, when I studied with tutors, I understood what was there and how to do it technically – I did it without any problems. But as soon as I finished it, it immediately disappeared from my mind – “passed and forgot.” Because I simply couldn’t remember those three-story equations for long because the curriculum required it. As a schoolchild, I didn’t need them. And even the person writing this now still doesn’t need them, and almost half my life has passed. I hope it’s half my life. Because I didn’t understand them and didn’t want to, algebra and geometry lessons probably became the breeding ground for my anxiety. I had to somehow cope with my level of knowledge in these subjects. Okay, homework is always copied either from classmates or from a homework collection. Okay, a test or a quarterly assignment is either copied in advance from friends in parallel classes or, during the assignment itself, from classmates. I’m just being so simple now, although to achieve these goals, naturally, you had to become a master at getting out of hopeless situations and a master at cheating under the teacher’s nose. I’m not called to the board that often, and my classmates still help me by whispering, and the teacher doesn’t expect much from me.