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

I was happy all the time we were together, even if I went to Tyumen. At a distance, we wrote each other an unrealistic number of SMS and called each other, then still on the home phone via “long-distance”.

However, such a life did not last long. One beautiful cool autumn day, before the snow, I managed to come to Petropavlovsk not during the holidays, but somehow in the middle. I made a surprise. It is happend for my friends. And so we are standing with them in that very football box near the school, which was not used for its intended purpose, chatting and laughing, and a little further away, from where everyone usually came to the box, I see a divinely beautiful red hat and my favorite silhouette. Oh, these moments of parting and meeting with her, they were always so emotionally intense and significant. Of course, our eyes meet something like a romantic passage from a book or a film begins, when we rush towards each other, touch, etc.

Probably, for an outside observer it would look like: lovebirds meet in a standard way after a long separation. But as a participant in this beautiful moment, I saw and felt some foreign variable that definitely should not have been there. The meeting of our gazes and desire for each other were not so smooth and completely given over to the control of love. Something confused me, but I could not even think what exactly, although this unknown variable had already irrevocably changed my life.

A few hours later I found out that a boy named Sasha from our school had settled in the heart of my beloved. And the hat, the sight of which that morning made me almost faint from the experience of happiness, was not intended for me, but rather for the boy named Sasha. Because I, like an undesirable-sudden husband, who came back from a business trip on Monday, although they were expecting me by Friday. I somehow found out this story, found out that they didn’t seem to have a full-fledged romance yet, and I also don’t remember how we made peace that same day, decided to continue our relationship. She even reinforced the agreement by deleting either a photo or correspondence with him from her phone, and I decided to somehow process and explain to myself such an act of my kazakh love and continue living.

During that day I thought that my mind was clear, I didn’t feel anything supernatural, except that it was painful and offensive in my soul. It was such a working state as if I had been at the market all day, walking for a long time, choosing, buying and carrying many things home. And I don’t know how, but I managed to fall asleep that day.

The night opened the royal road to my unconscious and showed me what I had actually experienced during the day. In terms of the level of hopelessness, this state was similar to that when films show a period slightly after the Middle Ages and where a hopelessly ill dying person lies in a white bed, on an uncomfortable huge pillow and in a fever, he is shakering with pain, there is nothing to help him with, and a concentrate of worldly suffering has fallen on him before he exhales his last. I do not remember the content of the dreams that night, but I woke up many times, physically I was sick of the mental state, there was a desire to do something, to move my muscles in order to “shake off” the pain that is in me, but it was night outside, silence, almost complete darkness and there was no point in moving, whether you move or not. Before my eyes was the bottom of the wardrobe, the second pillow, the ceiling, and so on in a circle all night long, and when drowsiness set in, then a terrible dream would immediately begin about her action that was killing me, and I would immediately try to jump out of the dream, and having jumped, I would end up in the same room and in reality I would experience all the same states as in the dream, but from a different perspective, from a “different director.”

Something that I was very afraid of happened to me, and I can’t change it in any way, I can’t forget it, I can’t live with it. Our relationship will never go back to what it was before. All her words, all my hopes and dreams about her attitude towards me, all the hopes that she values me, thinks about me and that I am that one person for her for the rest of her life… Everything shattered, broke apart without warning, and in its place I was overcome by emotions from hell. I don’t remember what happened in the morning, I don’t remember how we met and looked at each other, but from that moment our relationship died, although formally it continued to exist for several more months.

And then and the formal existence ended when she said that her loved one should be nearby with her, but I’m not nearby, I’m in Tyumen, i am far away. It was funny not to meet such a simple criterion, and at the same time it’s hard that all that romantic, wonderful heaven created had to end again because I’m not nearby. One could exclaim something like: what about those words? what about love? what about our innermost dreams? you and I accidentally “cheated” the system and felt the most genuine love without suffering… But the answer would be just about: “I am not there, and therefore do not meet the criteria”. As a result, the romance ends, she leaves, and gives her love to a lucky boy who lives very close to her. Therefore, I refrained from these lamentations. And I began to dislike Tyumen even more, not on purpose, of course, and it was not logical. Not only did the city take away both friends and the love of my life, but I also had to return to it and get back into the life pattern in order to live on.

I was killing my love for her for a long time, but the love did not to die. I kept wanting to meet, to say something that would change something, resurrect the relationship, but it was unrealistic. And what can I say, since I was so exchanged. Then, if I can put it this way, I used the tactic of “suppressing” my feelings for her – I tried not to think, to get distracted, to forget, to delete contacts, photos, messages, I even burned her memorabilia, gifts that I kept with such warmth. I suppressed my feelings, and they transformed there inside me and again sprouted in the form of fantasies and hopes. Even once, returning home from school, I noticed a car driving in the distance, the same as her stepfather’s, I looked closely at the license plates of the car, I never saw the exact numbers, but I saw that the license plates were Kazakh, with the letter “T” at the beginning, indicating that very region of the country. Then the car turned towards my yard. While I was watching car, my legs carried me, and that is good no one car hit me. Because I daydreamed that it was she who arrived, asked my stepfather to bring her, that she decided to take such a step… I saw the car from afar, so I had time to daydream and “escape from reality” while I was run up to my yard. Along with dreams, there was also an inner voice, which, of course, dissuaded me from the idea that such a miracle could happen. I don’t remember how it all ended, but of course, in the end it wasn’t her. And this whole situation was just a typical mental reaction of a person experiencing sorrowful feelings.

The love story began, when I was a happy teenager, but gradually turned into an unhappy young man. I was sure that I would never be able to love anyone else at all, and that’s how it happened. This whole story took about six years of my life, of which only about a year was spent on our relationship. Another year I had another relationship, which I ended, realizing that I still did not love another, and that my heart was asking to return in past relationship again. In general, the essence is clear – I was “charmed” for a long time, in the end I gave in greatly because of this, it’s a pity, of course, that all this pain happened at such a young age, although it is unlikely that there is an optimal period in life for this. And then I was disenchanted, the spell has been lifted from me. And if further in the text it makes sense to tell how this happened, then I will. But for now I told such a love story because, as I said above, it greatly complicated my moral move to another place of residence. And when I ended that relationship inside myself, “got off the dead horse,” then I was inspired to be open to a new love from Tyumen.

My move did happen, it was painful, but it happened. It was painful first of all because it wasn’t me who made the decision to leave my homeland, and it wasn’t me who chose the place I was going to. If we take it globally, then in the end I agree that the move was necessary – but that’s another topic. And in continuation of this, it’s important to say that I paid a very high price for the change in my life. So, now I lost the feeling that my city – my home. I loved my hometown, I loved living there, and it was an extension of me, my inner world, my space, and I was an extension of it. I was like a fish in its pond. My roots were there, and so, by and large, I was never drawn to “break out of a small town and into the big world.” But what happened happened. There was sadness, and probably still remains to this day, that having left my native place, my home, I never found another home. I still have no love for the city of Tyumen, no feeling that I am in my warm, native, beloved environment, no feeling that I am dissolved in the city. I am here as a separate unit, building business, almost working relations with the city. And now, twenty years later, I no longer expect and do not want these relations to become qualitatively different. It would seem that if I return to live in Petropavlovsk, then that’s it, I will, as before, find myself in my environment, but no.

I seriously thought about moving, and often visiting it, “trying on” a return… But we parted with Petropavlovsk, and it, like me, went its own way. It became different. Almost everyone who is dear to me has already left there, or died. And the appearance of the city has changed and continues to do so in a completely different direction than before. Architecture like “Birdshit Architects” came to my favorite green old park, a cozy front garden near the school, where there were many different beautiful plants, is now a lifeless asphalt on which cars are crowded together, all looking the same, and even all the dovecotes have disappeared from our yard except for one, which is living until its elderly owner dies, also surrounded by asphalt and cars. And, of course, many beautiful changes have occurred in the city. But it is already alien to me. I do not feel the warmth of my home there either. Therefore, on the day when crossed the threshold of my apartment for the last time, I became a man without a homeland, only I did not know it yet. It’s sad, but what can you do Thus:

There were no tragedies or catastrophes in my life that would undermine my mental health – which means that I had no direct indications to see a psychologist.

My social behavior was within the norm – not withdrawn, sociable, adequate – which means that there were no indications to see a psychologist.

I did not have obvious and “popular” symptoms for treating mental illnesses (schizophrenia, mental retardation, severe autism, etc.) – which means that psychiatrists were not waiting for me in their offices, and no one intended to take me there.

But I felt and understood that something was wrong with me. Somehow I was concentrating too much on my experiences and thoughts not so much because they simply aroused research interest, but because they made me anxious. But my vocabulary then had practically no words to “catch my state by the tail,” to describe it, to make it clear for observation and understanding. And if I did try, then the phenomenon that puzzled me most was something rooted in the state of sadness. But sadness is not quite the right word. Sadness can be bright, calm, and in general can potentially carry a positive function – to encourage a person to change his life situation. Longing, despondency, sorrow, grief – also do not suit my state of mind.