I started this year thinking that if I worked hard at university and got good grades my depression would go away. I don’t know why I thought this, it was quite idiotic when I think back to it. Therefore two weeks into university I quickly realised that my depression was not going to fix itself. Motivating myself to go to a counciling session was difficult, but it eventually happened. And now I am trying my third antidepressant and my third councilor, and am still depressed. In a year I have not gotten very far. However during this time I have realised that among health professionals there is a major lack of people capable of empathy, or any form of understanding.
My first councilor could not seem to comprehend that I didn’t know what to talk about and refused to ask me questions. This resulted in us playing a game to see who would break the silence first. I won this game every time 🙂
The second councilor asked me more questions and therefore I was at least not paying to sit in silence. However they could not comprehend the fact that I did not know what emotions I felt. . . I told her I was emotionally numb. She obviously doesn’t know the definition of numb. I would like to see her describe what type of pain she was experiencing while she felt physically numb.
When I saw a Psychiatrist my session lasted 20 minutes, after every answer I gave they made the same noise I make when someone is talking to me about physics while I pretend to listen, and half way through they answered their cell phone for from what I could tell was not an important phone call.
The only positive that came out of experiencing this lack of empathy was that although my brain constantly tries to tell me that when I finish my degree I will never get a job in my chosen health profession, is that I now realise that I am capable of empathy which is something that can in some ways unfortunately put me above other people.
Life of a Depressive 