These transcripts deal with themes of mental illness and trauma
This conversation took place in Cassandra’s room. Kim and Cassandra met through tangential interactions.
Alright. So please say your name and your age and your gender identity and presentation.
Uh, so I’m Kimberly. I go by Kim. Um, I’m 22. Uh, gender identity… I think possibly nonbinary but I’m biologically female.
Do you want to talk about kind of like the thoughts that you’re having on gender right now? Is it kind of like a… TBD?
Um, yeah, it’s just kind of… I feel like I have like a very definite set of kind of expectations when I hear like “he” versus “she” like… I feel like in my mind I’ve been conditioned to think that like, “oh, if I know that this person is male versus female, that tells me something about them as a person”, which I don’t really feel is true. So I’m kind of exploring that right now.
That’s… was it kind of like something you’ve always felt intuitively and have just started to think about more or like…?
I… so when I was younger I had the experience of like being very clearly labeled as a girl, among a group of friends who were all labeled as boys. And my parents were not okay with that and it like created a lot of tension and conflict in my life. I feel like now, thinking about it more, I’m trying to explore why that was and how I feel about it.
We’ll talk more about gender in a second, but first, so have you been officially diagnosed with any sort of neurodivergence?
I was officially diagnosed in 2016 with chronic depression and generalized anxiety disorder.
Okay. How do you… how do you feel about those diagnoses? Do you think they’re accurate? Do you think they cover the symptoms that you feel?
I… I feel like in my experience, like I’ve met a lot of people who have been diagnosed with depression or believe they have depression and I feel like we all have like very different kind of ways of expressing or experiencing that. So I’m not really sure how I feel about it. It kind of feels like a very blanket term to me. Um, generalized anxiety disorder. I don’t know… at the time that I was given that diagnosis, like it… it… it described what I was experiencing really well, but at the same time, right now… I’m on antidepressants but not like anti anxiety medication. And I feel like the anxiety is like a lot better even though I haven’t taken any medication for it. And I… to what I understand of like that disorder, like… it’s not something that like… is curable per se. So I don’t really know what to think about that one.
So it’s been a little bit less present?
Yeah.
Okay. Um, so this can be a very broad question and people have spent like two minutes or they’ve spend two hours. So it’s up to you how long, um, you want to answer it, but it’s basically what’s your personal history with… with anxiety and depression? Like when did they start manifesting? How did they feel at that point? What have been the major turning points? How’d you end up getting diagnosed? What do they feel like now? Like just… give me the story of… yeah.
Um, so definitely I feel like anxiety is something I’ve kind of… it’s been a presence in my life for as long as I can remember. But it was mostly… it started out as social anxiety, like very high social anxiety. Um, definitely I um… I feel like also I’ve experienced emotions much more strongly than most people. Like… I remember being an elementary school kid, and there were times when I would accidentally hurt someone’s feelings and I’d feel so… just shocked at myself and upset with myself over that. And then I would just be like, “I’m not going to talk like ever anymore”. And that was… so I feel that coupled with also a lot of anxiety, like, “oh, am I like doing the wrong thing? Are people feeling okay like with what I’m doing?” Like, um, I remember always being like very self conscious around that. Like I think even when I was like 6 and I would be like going somewhere with my younger sister—- I have a sister who’s a year and a half younger than me. I was like, “oh, what are people going to be thinking about our interactions?” and things like that.
I don’t think that at a young age like I had very much that was… necessarily indicative of depression. I was really busy and very stressed a lot of the time starting when I was like 9 or 10. Um, I had a lot of pressure put on me cause I was like in a gifted and talented program at school. And that was a lot of work. And um, kind of… I was in a lot of activities and I didn’t have very much time and I was very tired all the time, but not really… um, yeah, I don’t think I would… identify as depressed at that time. Um, that [depression] kind of came up like right as I hit adolescence, like kind of at the same time that it was going through like the changes associated with that. I think it was like 12 or 13.
I just remember like having for the first time these thoughts like, “oh, gosh, I’m just so tired and I feel like I can’t handle what I’m doing. And maybe it would be…” I just remember… I started developing a fixation with like, “gosh, maybe it’d be easier to not be alive. Or, would people even remember me if I were gone” and just things of that nature.
That’s kind of when that came about, um, it’s… and I feel like I… I feel like even though I don’t… I wasn’t depressed, like as a child, there’s definitely things that happened during that time that like later contributed to how I experienced my depression and I guess how I continued to experience it. Um, so kind of like… I never really reached out to anyone directly in like middle school or high school. I um, started dating someone at age 13 or 14, sometime in seventh grade, and I kind of told that person about some things going on, but not everything.
And like I honestly… up until that point had not really communicated with anyone about anything I was feeling. It was kind of not… I was not in the best home environment to discuss feelings. Um, but I definitely started talking to this person I was dating. But it was “dating” with quotes because my parents were like not super in favor. So it was kinda just on the down low and not what you would think of typically as normal dates or like pre planned things. Um, but yeah, I remember at one point like… like I think my mental health during that… that period of… when I was 14 to like… when I finished high school, my mental health was gradually declining. But I didn’t really notice at the time… when kind of… looking back on it, definitely when I was like 14… 13? 14. I was like… I would sometimes be lighthearted or I would be willing to laugh with my boyfriend, but then I feel like as time went on I became more and more fixated with what was wrong or what I felt to be like… like just things that were happening within my family that were really stressful.
Um, like my parents and my sister used to have these really, really intense fights. Um, and I think actually those also got worse as I got older. I dunno, I don’t know if I was like becoming more fixated on it anyway and it just happened to get worse at the same time or if it was like, because it was getting worse that I started fixating on it more. Um, but definitely when I was in middle school, like I still… I still had kind of a sense of like, “I like to do these things, I like to listen to music, I have things I enjoy” and then as I progressed, I lost that sense of, “oh, I have things that I enjoy”. And it just became this sense of, “I have these things that I have to do”.
I was very, very high achieving during that entire time, like a straight A student. And that carried into college too. I feel like I was like very much reinforced for not taking care of myself because my grades were pretty great.
Um, so yeah, just during that time, like, I… by the end of it I was kind of like, wow, I.. I… I think maybe during my sophomore year of high school too, is when I started realizing like… the anxiety was not just in social situations. Like, it wasn’t just, “oh I have like a lot of trouble talking in front of other people”. It also became like “oh, I have a lot of anxiety about like how much time I’m taking to do anything,” from like… brushing my teeth in the morning to like… being in a line and trying to get like food and like… struggling to get like tomatoes on my salad.
Um, and like I… yeah, it was… it was an interesting time. Like I felt like… everything associated with kind of like the realm outside of school… but also in the realm of school. Like… there are a lot of like perfectly ordinary things that would make me like really, really anxious. Like going shopping was really… visually and like sensorily overwhelming. Very simple things like that. Cleaning my room… became overwhelming because I was just like, “am I spending too much time on this? Am I doing this efficiently? Should I be doing something else?” Um, and then of course school is stressful but in a different way. And like in a way that is, I feel more typical of when people describe anxiety, it’s just like, “oh, am I doing well?”
Um, so yeah, I… I feel like I didn’t notice that I was getting worse because the demands of school and extracurriculars were also increasing. So I had less time and I didn’t… I didn’t notice that I had gone from like, “oh, I’ll spend like an hour listening to music I like” to, “I literally have structured all my waking time around getting all these things done”. Um, so… and like I remember during my junior year of high school, like I would just… everything during Monday through Friday would be like, so rigid, like “I have to do this and then I have to do this and then I have to do this, then I have to go to sleep at this time so I can get up tomorrow and do it all over again”. And then over the weekends, I would just like crash and I’d feel so miserable and I would just be like, “okay, I just need to… I just don’t want to think about anything”. And then I’d feel really guilty because an entire day would pass, and I’d be like, “Oh man, I’ve spent like an entire day and a half just laying in bed and being on my phone” or something like that.
Um, and then like during that time too, I think my junior year of high school I first started noticing moments where I’d be like, “hey, I feel really tired and like… I really want to go to bed, but I like… I just can’t bring myself to rest, I just want to keep killing time”. And also I would have moments where I would be like, “I should really brush my teeth” and then I would realize, “but I can’t get up”. I feel like that was the first time I experienced the heaviness that comes with depression too.
Um, and then I came to (insert name of college). Um, and like… the anxiety just… like just exploded. Like, as I’m sure a lot of people have experienced. And for me, it was just like, ah, like… I was doing really well in my classes, but I also had like an interesting form of imposter syndrome. I think that when I started doing well here, I was just like, “oh, it’s just because my professors like me or like this and that. Like I didn’t really… Like I’m not really like earning how well I’m doing”.
And it was also… so context…I had a boyfriend from like age….like 13 and then we broke up I think when I was like 19. But like… we weren’t really… because my parents were not in favor, a lot of our communication was through emails because I didn’t have a phone that could text much. Um, and so…I feel like whenever I was like going through something emotional or difficult, the way I was used to kind of getting support around that was just through reading words on a screen.
Um, and I remember like when I came to college, like I… Orientation week was just a nightmare for me. It was just like, “oh my gosh, there’s so many people”. And at my high school I had been in school with the same people from elementary school up until then, and everyone knew me already. I had a lot of trouble speaking in… like a social setting, but people were used to it and they… like… I know people were really nice to me and they would say that they liked me and things like that. And then…Being thrown into a setting where no one knew me, it was kind of like… like I still had trouble speaking and suddenly, it wasn’t like, “oh, she’s just like that and like she’s a friendly person”. It was like, “oh, she probably doesn’t want to talk to me”. And, um, that made things really difficult. I really didn’t know how to talk. And also like… I never really like… did things in a group setting in high school. And so like, just being thrown into like these group activities and being like, “wow, when do I talk? And what do I say? And what if I say something stupid and like no one, like…” I don’t know, it was just so much.
And I was used to my life being really, really structured in high school and that… like I felt unable to do that here too. I feel like most of what stressed me out outside of classes, was just like, I don’t know how to make friends and like… also like all of my friends from high school are like no longer in touch with me. So I like… I just like felt like kind of like floating in space and just like, “what is happening?”
And… I was definitely like very perfectionist and like somewhat neurotic as well. And like… I remember during winter of my freshman year, um, I just remember being like… so just… so anxious all the time. And I like started reaching out to someone I knew from my chemistry class because chemistry was like the class was giving me the most stress I think. And just being like, “I don’t think I can do this”. And at one point this person was like, “Hey, do you want to meet up and talk about things?” And like, that was totally a novel idea to me. It’s just like, “oh man, I don’t… I’ve… I’ve never really talked to anyone in person about anything”.
Um, and I think it was kind of at that point that that person became like my first… like my first real friend, not just at college but just ever. Um, and kind of at around that same time, like… So I was in… honors chemistry. And winter was kind of when I was like, “I don’t want to keep doing this”. I feel like at the beginning of the year they’re like, “don’t take honors here just to take honors”. And I was like, “uh” and just did it anyway because… I was like, “I don’t know what else to do with myself. Like I don’t know how to feel good about myself if I’m not doing like the hardest possible thing at like the most rigorous level or whatever”.
Um, winter was when I was kinda like, “I dunno what’s going on. And this is a lot of work”. And also I feel like I’ve just been sticking to what I know. Like I was like doing all these things that I had done well in high school and I was like… I had played piano from the age of 5 and then I was still doing that here. But also that wasn’t something I felt like… I dunno, it wasn’t fulfilling any need I had. I enjoy music but I feel like… like what I enjoy about it is when it’s a very individual activity and it’s like… classical music is very different. I’ve always just listened to pop music. So classical was very different than what I feel like I really connected with.
So I think winter I was like, “okay, I am, I’m going to try to make some time to try some other things and hopefully that’ll be okay”. And then I kind of made… opened up to that friend who, um, was like, “hey, you can talk… we can talk about this”.
And then like another friend at the time who was also in my like, chemistry class who was like, “Hey, I’m not going to be in the same class anymore. I’m dropping down”. Like, um, and that like… yeah, that was really complicated and like… things… like I am not in touch with either of them anymore.
Um, and then so the summer after my first year I got a grant and I went to Paris for two months. And like the month and a half before I went to Paris was a very tough time… for a lot of reasons. I think a lot of it too was that I’d become like… in the course of like being able to talk to people for the first time and feeling like I had my first real friends, like I became very, very, very dependent on those people. Like… I feel like whenever I was upset, I would talk to them. Like whenever I wanted to do something I would go do it with them. Um, I was very insecure and like… one of them was like constantly validating me and being like, “no, you’re intelligent and you’ll do fine” and like all of these things like that. And then I lost all of that when I went back home and I was just kind of a mess.
Um, but yeah, and then… so I went to Paris for a couple months. It was crazy because… I think back home, I was really, really, really, really sheltered by my parents. And I feel like that’s part of why it was easy for me to get so anxious around like normal things like going to the store and things because like, just… I never had to. Um, but anyway… because like I went with a grant and not through a formal program, it was kind of like, “I am going to be in Paris by myself for two months”. Um, so I’m from (insert name of place) right next to Chicago. Chicago has been very accessible, but at the same time, I’d never really like explored the city or gone to do things on my own. And like… when I first came to college my first year, I was literally like, “I’m so confused. Like, what is CTA? And like, how do I like… get the bus to stop?” (Kim laughs) Um, so that… like being totally like unequipped to live in a city, I went to go live in Paris by myself for two months.
Um, and like, I really, really was fortunate. Um, I arranged like a homestay through like a website. Um, and my first host mom, we were just… she… she sent me something just like a week ago actually. She was like, “oh yeah, I went to this concert” and I was like, “cool”. But also I don’t speak French very well anymore and that makes me sad. But anyway, I remember like, like I was… like really, really depressed that summer up until going to Paris and I was very overwhelmed once I got there and I was just like, “I’m just going to sit in my room and Skype my friends.” And then one day she was just like, “you are in Paris, you are not going to be back in Europe for a while probably. If this is your first time here, go explore. Don’t waste it”. And um, she also… I did not know this when I decided, “oh I’m going to stay with this host family”. But she was also like, “also I have this card and this card lets you get into all of the museums in Paris for free. So like go” (both laugh) like I was just like, “oh okay”.
And I started exploring and… yeah it was… and like going back a bit, I remember my first day getting there, I was like… so tired and jet lagged and she was just like, “well you need to… at least stop by the school where you’re going to be taking language classes and make sure that everything’s fine and also you need to get a monthly pass for the metro”. And I was just so tired and like, “what is happening?” And then.. it was weird too cause she was like, “oh you need pictures that are like this exact size so you can get your like metro pass”. And I was like, “what?” (Cassandra laughs) I was just like… uh, here’s my driver’s license. And she was like, “no, no, that is incorrect”. (Kim laughs) And then we had to go like to a booth and take pictures of the correct size and like all of this going on in French. And I was like, “what is happening?”
Um, and then we went to the language school and they were like, “oh yeah, you were supposed to take a placement test”. And I was like, “wait, wait, what?” And like they were like, “you can take it right now”. And I’m like… jet lagged and sleep deprived and I’m like, “okay”. (Kim laughs). And all of that… happened somehow. But, my host mom is really awesome. She’slike a very strong independent person… and she’s… she definitely pushed me a lot. She was just like, “yeah, no, you’re, you’re going to do this thing right now and it’s… it’s gonna happen”.
Um, and sometime during that process of like, “okay, I’m in Paris. I’m just going to explore everything now”… I started feeling like really, really happy and I was just like, “wow, everything is so amazing and there’s so much history everywhere. And it’s just such a beautiful city”. Um, and… it’s funny because my younger sister, she went to Paris the next summer and she was just like, “yeah, it was like a hundred degrees every day and it was awful”. But uh… during the time that I was there, it was very nice every day and sunny every day and it was not too hot and like… it was during the kind of the time of year in Paris where most people are on vacation elsewhere. And so the city is only maybe half as full as it usually is, and it’s not too crowded, and it’s nice. It was just a really, really wonderful time. And I was kind of like, “wow. Like I feel really happy and I feel like I don’t have to be talking to my friends all the time to feel okay”. And I remember thinking like, “man, I feel like this is the first time I’ve ever been happy”. And it was just a really wonderful experience.
During that time… I mean, I was really, really shy and I had trouble talking to people and that didn’t change when I went to a different country, especially in that when I didn’t speak the… (Kim laughs) well, um, I was pretty proficient in French, but definitely the language barrier didn’t help in terms of feeling comfortable. But um, my host mom would notice like, “hey, like you don’t make eye contact with people when you speak with them and you speak really quietly so they can’t hear you and that’s not okay. Like you like…” and she was like, “no, like you talk to them like this and you do this like this” and… She was just very much like, “I’m going to teach you how to do everything”.
Um, and then, at the end of my time with (insert name of host mom)… So I arranged two different hosts days and l each one was a month and so kind of near the end of my month with (insert name of host mom), she was like, “hey, so my friend has a place in Spain and she’s not going to be there. And she said we can go”. And I was like, what? And she was like, “you know, this is like one of my favorite places in Spain, we should go”. And I was like, “I’m supposed to be in class”. And she (both laugh) was like… like, “forget about class”.
And um, she took me to Spain and it was like… ah, it’s um, it was a place called Saint Sebastian. Um, and I just remember like… she… we went to like, um, this area by the bay at night and for some reason there was nobody else there and it was just the most beautiful thing and you could see so many lights from the city reflected on the water. She liked reminding me of that time cause she was just like, “you were so happy. You were just like, whoa”. I was just like skipping through the water and things like that.
And like… the month afterwards, I was still in Paris and still doing things and everything, but I feel like that first month was very formative for me. And also during that time, I talked to (insert name of host mom) about stuff that was going on back home and things like that. And she was very sympathetic. Um, and it was kind of like… aside from the two friends I made at college my freshman year, it was like, “wow, people actually think that what I have to say is like a valid way of feeling”. She was just my host mom, but… she very much felt like a mom to me.
I came back to the US after those two months and… Well, I had pushed this trip to Paris like… till the very end of the summer because my boyfriend at the time… he went to a semester system school and he was like, “I don’t want you to go because I haven’t seen you in awhile”. So I compromised and I was like, “I’ll just put it at the end so we’ll have the beginning of the summer together”. And that was… that was kind of a mess. But like whatever.
So I got back and I spent like two days at home before having to go back to school. And like… it was a really unpleasant experience for me. I just felt like… like my parents throughout my life had a tendency to like tell me things like… and like to think they’re talking to me without really talking to me. Like they just have this thing, they’re like, “I feel like you should know this”. And like, they don’t really think about like, “does she even value the things that I value or does she agree with like the premises behind what I’m saying she should do” and…. it’s very bizarre for me because when I was in Paris and I would talk to (insert name of host mom), it’s just… I felt like very listened to and I felt like… like everything she had to say was like… new to me and interesting. But the conversations I had with my parents when I was back were totally different. I felt like, “you know, you’ve told me this exact same thing several times already and also… you never stop at all when you’re speaking so I don’t even know when I can say something”. I just remember feeling, “I’ve been home two days and it’s been way too long”.
Um, and then I went back to school and it was just like… I kind of like…was hit again with the depression and the anxiety and I was also jet lagged. And then I also broke up with my boyfriend during that time because I was just like… I kind of realized while I was away that like, this isn’t working, but I was also kinda like, “oh, I don’t really want to have that conversation”. So I was just not really answering texts or staying in touch much. And it kind of just came up because he noticed and was like, “you want to break up with me?” And I was like, “yeah”, so that happened too. And then just… and then I got, I dunno… I was just like… felt like I was falling behind on work too and everything was falling apart.
And then one of my friends from my first year, like one of my… my two friends, um, we kind of… I guess to go back… Like I said already, I was like really, really dependent on people who I felt were my friends. And then… um, yeah, I… at the end of my first year, one of those friends was very, very clearly uncomfortable with that. And then I was in touch with them while I was in Paris and they actually came to.. their family was actually in Paris during part of that time. And he came to visit me and like, yeah, I think… I felt a lot more independent and confident and I felt… just… I mean “not sad” and I feel like… like he very much enjoyed how I was while I was like that. And then I came back to school and I was like, again, very depressed and dependent and all of these things and he was kind of like not okay with going back to that. Um, so like things there were like really rough and then I feel like, just like… I feel like… I think it was just like the day before like things like really, really got bad was kind of like… we through a text conversation– like don’t have… don’t have important conversations through text (both laugh). But like just kind of like… we were like arguing and then I was just like, “you know, like… just fine, like you don’t have to talk to me”.
And then like, I dunno, some combination of all these things, like… I was just so stressed and I was just like, “oh my gosh, like what does.. “like I… I like, I had never felt so happy as I was like over the summer in Paris and I was just like… it had been like a really long time. Like I felt like starting when I was like 13 or 14 was when I like… stopped. Like I felt like I wasn’t like… like… like definitely I had moments where I was like laughing or things like that, but I didn’t feel like happy in that way that I had over the summer. Like so far as I could recall like during that entire time, like… like yeah, like I guess like… age of 13 onwards and I was just like, “this might never happen again”. And I just remember thinking that like… like, “I have no reason to believe that I’ll ever be that happy again”. Things were just so stressful and I was like, “what am I doing with my life?” And like… like my… like friendships were like kind of falling apart and I had just broken up with my boyfriend and I was just completely falling apart.
And then like, I think… yeah, and like all of a sudden like… like I just felt really, really suicidal and it felt like really, really insistent and that hadn’t happened for years. Like, I think when I first started getting depressed I was kinda like, “oh, like I wish I weren’t alive. But like also like I like… that would make my parents sad. So like, let’s not do that”. But then also like, I don’t know, when it came back and I was like 19 and I just spent this time like… kind of being like, “oh, I can’t just do things for other people, I can’t live only for other people”. I felt like, “I’m an independent person. I can make my own choices”. And even though that was positive as an experience initially, like when… like my suicidal ideations started coming back, it made that way worse.
And like I was like… I panicked and I called, um, I remember being like, “I don’t know what to do”. And I like called student counseling and student counseling was like… this was around fifth week. And I was just like, “I feel really suicidal”. And they were like, um, like, “do you have a plan?” And I was like, “no”. And then they were like, “are you stressed over midterms?” And I was like, “I guess”, (Kim laughs) and then they were like, “oh, well, is there anything you can do to like calm down?” And I was like… “I like… I feel like I’ve been like pretty depressed for a while. Like I don’t have any interest anymore”. And they were like, “that seems like a really long term problem that we can’t address right now. Um, like… is there anything you can be doing right now that might help?” And I was like, “I guess I could sleep”. And they’re like, “yes, yes, that sounds great. Go to sleep. And um, then try to get some work done”. I was like, “oh shit”.
And then I feel like something about that call too like, I felt like they took me significantly less seriously after I said I didn’t have a plan. And so like my brain was like, “oh, we gotta make a plan now”. And I was like, “oh shit”. And then I just like… I like…I was just like, “oh man, like I was like not feeling well the other day and I just bought this like giant bottle of Tylenol” and I was just like, “oh my gosh, what is happening?”. And then like… I just like… I was like so freaked out. I was just like crying and I just like kept crying and I was just like, “I don’t have anyone to call. I don’t know what to do”. And I like, called my ex boyfriend. It’s just like, “I don’t know what’s happening”. Um, and he was like… he’s like, “you know what, I’ll take care of you”. And I was like, “no, this is why we broke up”. (both laugh)
Um, and… I at some point, like I reached out to my RAs and my RAs were like on this and one of them was like, “I’m going to come back right now”. And I was like, “no, no, don’t do that” but yeah, I was a mess and I was just like crying for like eight hours. And then I think at some point, like I… like called another emergency number from the university. And I like told them about the first call I’d had with student counseling and they were like, “that… that… that is really, really bad. They shouldn’t have done that. Um, and also I’ll have someone from our counseling center who’s like… who will be better, like…. talk to you on Monday”. And I went there on Monday and they like, were like, “do you feel safe right now?” And I was like, “I don’t know”. And then they were like, “um, yeah, you would seem to be like not in a good place right now. We’re going to have like some police escort you down to the hospital to get evaluated”. And I was like, “okay”.
Um, and yeah, I was sitting in the emergency room for awhile and I dunno… I like kind of called up like one of my other friends, like the one who I had not had like the big argument with, and they came down to the emergency room, um, to like spend time with me… which I really appreciated. Um, and then like a hospital psychiatrist came by and evaluated me after like a few hours, after I was lying there for a while. Um, and I was just lying in an emergency room bed, which was a really bizarre experience. I was like, “I don’t know what’s happening”. And they were like, “we think we need to take you to the hospital”. And I was so confused. I was like, “wait, am I not already in a hospital?” Um, and I was like, “okay”. And then I like was left to wait there for another few hours and I was like really, really confused during this time. I was like, “are they just taking me to like another floor of the hospital? Why am I waiting?” Um, and then eventually, they were like, “okay, we’re… we’re going to take you to a different hospital”.
And then… I got loaded up in an ambulance and taken down to the psychiatric hospital and… and I stayed there for seven days. And on the second day a psychiatrist there saw me and they were like, “you have… um, pretty severe depression”. And I was like, like I kind of like… like felt… I don’t know, I would like use the word depression to describe myself, but like.. my usage of the word was like limited to like my searching the internet and like taking online quizzes. So like…. I would say that I was depressed, but also I was kind of like in denial about it cause I was always… I was always told like, “you have nothing to be depressed about. You’re such a high achiever and you have like such a good life”. And um, definitely my parents who are both from China, were kind of like, “well, like you have food and shelter and you don’t want for anything”. And like it was like incomprehensible to them that I might be unhappy.
In hindsight it’s really weird, seeing that I didn’t get my diagnosis until… until it got to that point. Um, and I was just like, “I don’t… I don’t…” I don’t know, before, sometimes I was like, “I think I have depression”. And sometimes I was very much in denial about it. I feel like when I got my diagnosis, I was like, “no, I think I’m fine”. And they were like, uh… “but… it’s not normal for someone your age to like… want to be dead all the time”. And I was like, “it’s not?” (both laughs)
Breaking news
Because like… I feel like I was like struggling with suicidality a lot towards the end of high school and I was like, “I kind of want to be dead all the time”. And like I would like talk to… like I’d ask my friends about it and like I was just like, “you know, sometimes I wonder… If I were dead, would people remember me?” and like I feel like that’s… that’s the only time it came up with one of my friends and he just responded, “I wonder that too sometimes”. And then with another one of my friends, I once said, “I feel like sometimes I just like want to be dead” and he would just be like, “I feel that way sometimes after I take like a really hard exam”. And I was like, “okay, like this seems… I guess this is normal”.
And that is just when I got diagnosed and like that… like, yeah, when I… so I was like in that psychiatric hospital my sophomore year. And then afterwards like… and like I feel like when I’m at college and I’m always stressed and always like feeling like I’m falling behind and like… like things are going to go wrong. And then I went back to meet with the Dean when I got out of the hospital and they’re like, “do you want to go back to classes?” And I was like, “I feel like I should be able to do it”. Um, cause like in my mind it was like, I always like should be able to do it and then I would just get really sad and then I don’t do it, but I’m just like, “if I just pushed harder, like I could definitely do it”. And they were like, “you know, you can, you can take time off. Like that’s okay”. And I was like, “that’s a thing people do?” Like, like I’d never heard of like a medical leave of absence. They were like, “yeah, and then you can just come back”. And I was like, “what is this?” Um, and I was like, it just seemed like… I dunno, it was just like… cause I… I felt really overwhelmed during my entire time at college. And like, it was never presented to me as an option. Like, “oh, like you can actually just like take some time off and come back?” I was like, “wow”. Um, and so that is what I did.
And then like, um, when I… at the end of my time there… I had a social worker there who supposed to set up my next level of care after getting into the hospital. And she was like, “okay, there’s this program that does group therapy and like, you can go there”. And I was just like… in my mind, like group therapy was just like, you all sit around a table and like you talk about… I dunno, like you just… feel sad together or something. And I was like, “I don’t think I want to do that”. Um, but she was like, “no, no, no, it’s actually really helpful. People say is really helpful”. And I was like very skeptical, but I was like, “sure”. Um, and that kind of like set up that… like my transition into mental health care, whereas previously I had had none.
Um, and like I got transferred to like a partial hospitalization program afterwards, so I was like in therapy like six hours a day, seven days a week. And it’s just like, I was just like, “I don’t like… just how does this exist? What?” Um, and just summarizing my levels of care, like I went PHP and IOP was like 15 hours a week and then like that… yeah, PHP I was in for like three weeks. And like this was like… yeah, my entire, like I… I took winter off and it was just like, time spent in therapy um, for the most part. I like… I wasn’t doing that great in therapy. Like, I feel like I was learning a lot about myself and like being like, “oh, it’s not healthy to hate myself” like that…that was news to me. Um, and things like that. But also it was like bringing up a lot for me. I didn’t really have the support around that that I probably needed.
Like… I definitely had many more moments during that time where I was suicidal again. And it felt really pressing and urgent and like scary and like it’s really… I don’t know, it was like a weird… I feel like the group component of that program was good, but then also like… you would like have a different individual therapist every time you switched groups. So like I had like… so for three weeks I had one therapist and then I would switch to another therapist and that therapist got promoted to a different position so I switched to a different therapist, which is like very disconnected and incoherent and there wasn’t anyone I could talk to outside of organized session time. So it was just like me like calling friends and being like, “everything is terrible”. And then like venting for an hour and then being like, “okay, okay, I can keep doing this”.
Um, yeah. And then like home at that time was like not a good environment for me because my parents were just like… still very much in denial. They were just like, “oh my gosh, you’ve always been like my perfect child”. I think it was very hard for them to accept that I was very unhappy. It also led to a lot of stress cause I’d be like, “I’m really struggling with this” and it would just become this huge argument. It’s just like, “no, no, no, no. Like I feel like you should be happy …” I feel like also I very much at that time felt with a lot… like a lot of things leading up to my being depressed where my parents’ fault and like, that didn’t go over well. Um, and right now I don’t think it’s their fault. I definitely think there are things that could’ve gone better, but also like, I don’t know. I don’t… I try not to assign blame. I’m not always successful with that, but I try not to.
Um, so in spring I was just kinda like…” I just can’t be at home”. So I just went in, did part-time coursework and that was kind of like a disaster. Um, I was like hospitalized again in the middle of that spring and then I was in the emergency room again, like just prior to finals week. I just felt like… I just felt really, really angry all the time. I don’t know, I just felt like… I was still like, I still didn’t… I still had a lot of trouble interacting with people and being social. And group was helping, but it was like not… I was not where I needed to be to interact well with others. Um, the people I had managed to interact with were like not equipped to deal with like what I was going through. And like definitely, um, I… I don’t remember whether it was the first time or the second time, but like… I would like call from the hospital phone cause I wasn’t allowed to have my cell phone and like… people would pick up the first time and I’d be like, “I’m in the hospital for like this”.
And this was like, the real lowest point in my life. But one of my friends just stopped picking up at some point. Then I ran into them at school and I was like, “what? What happened?” And they were like, “oh I had a comp sci problem set that was like really long”. And I was just like, “you couldn’t have told me like I’m not going to pick up?” I… I dunno.
I feel like I kind of get why they stopped picking up? Like, at that time I wouldn’t have been so understanding if someone was like, “This thing is important to me to finish, and your situation is important too, but this assignment is also important.” I feel like now I’d be okay with it, but… I kind of get at the time why they didn’t even tell me. But also I was just really mad. I was just like, “excuse me, like this is like the worst part of like… this is like the lowest point in my life. I’m sitting in a psychiatric hospital for like seven days and you’re just like, “yeah, no… uh, I have a comp sci PSET, so I can’t talk to you””.
Um, so yeah, I felt… I definitely felt angry a lot of the time and I felt like people had let me down and that’s kind of why I ended up being hospitalized again and then in the emergency room again because I was just like, “people suck. People are awful”. And I feel like the more I ruminated on thoughts like, “I feel like people suck and they’ve let me down and they’re awful”… I… I feel like I would just downward spiral into a really dark place. Um, so like, because I had like… had a very unsuccessful attempt to go back to school in spring, and I went back into group therapy at the same program, uh, over the summer. And like, yeah, I mean like I was definitely making progress there, but also again, like I didn’t have good support outside of group to kind of deal with what I was making progress in. That was a really hard time.
Um, and also I feel like I was kinda like… I was starting to realize like I wanted to explore things outside of… outside of what I’d been doing at school because I’d kind of done the exact same sorts of things from when I was like… maybe 12 to when I was… at that time in college. I’d always played piano and I was like almost competitive but not quite. And I like felt very confident in my ability and it was like very difficult to be like, “I don’t really enjoy this”. Um, and then like I had always been like… I did a lot of science in like middle school and high school and I like continued doing that in college. And I was just like, “I really feel like I want to try something new, but also I don’t know how”.
Um, and like, I dunno… I feel like at some point during this process, like I felt like I was like struggling so much and like I… like my perception of my life up until that point was so unhappy, I was just like, “I don’t feel like I should have to try to do things. Like I just want to get by”. And like, that mentality was not… like my school was not very much like, “yes, you, you really don’t have to try at anything and we’ll just let you slip by.” Like that, that was not happening. Um, and I feel like, I feel like I was like…kind of like, “I don’t really want to go to school year, but like also like, I don’t really know how to transfer”. I dunno like… that fall back… socially I was still… I was doing a lot better in terms of like actually being able to say things, but also I kind of was still angry at most people and like I felt like… kind of like everyone had let me down.
But then when I came back to school again… I arrived and like… like it was only two days after I arrived. I’d only done one day of classes. But I was just like, “oh my gosh, like I hate it here and it’s awful and I’m stressed”. And like… I just like… I just like had a breakdown. Um, and so I just went home.
Um, and then like I started taking singing lessons while I was away, which was something that I’d wanted to try for a very long time, but also like when I brought it up to like my mom when I was like 13, she was like, “but your singing is bad and your piano is good”. So I just dropped it because I was like, “oh, okay. Apparently I suck”. Um, but I started taking singing lessons and like, that was something… I felt like I enjoyed decently. Um, and I was like…” I feel like it was a kind of grasping at straws. I was like, “wait, maybe I could go to school for like a voice degree” and my, um, my singing teacher at the time was like, “oh, well, like you played piano for a really long time, so what you could do if you wanted to do that is like audition as a piano major. And then like once you’re in like music school, switch majors to voice”. And I was like, okay. So I just like, it was kind of on a whim and like, not very well planned, but also again, I was like, “I just need to find something I feel is worth doing”.
Um, and so… I realized that I might want to audition in January and I kind of missed like a decent number of schools’ auditions, but not all of them. And so I just started sending out piano audition videos to places… I was pretty good at piano, so… I mean, I didn’t send them to any especially good or famous schools, but the ones I did send the videos to were very enthusiastic about my abilities. And like I would go for physical auditions and they were like, “oh, you’re really great. Like we can take you on”. And like things like that. And um, so I just like kind of like went around different colleges, like all in the Midwest and I would like audition and like… I got acceptances and it was exciting. And I was like… um, and I was like, “oh well, I don’t know. I feel like I could go somewhere like really, really good if I like… took some time to really practice”… And even though I like really didn’t like being at my university and it stressed me out when I was taking classes, I was like, “well my piano teacher’s there and like there’s a lot of music activities on campus and things. And like maybe I’ll just like take a year off and practice and then like try to get into somewhere like really good for piano, since people seem to like what I can do.”
And like, and that was… I feel like it may have been the case that I would have transferred to music school. Like it was… it was a real possibility at the time. And I like had the acceptances and everything. Um, but also it’s like really weird because I feel like… cause I had kind of dropped piano for a year, like in between when I got back from Paris and like being hospitalized and all these things and I’d picked it back up and I’d like literally been practicing for three weeks when I had sent in these audition tapes and was like… like going for auditions. Yeah I don’t… I don’t know. It was weird cause it was just like, “wow, I haven’t practiced in a year. And like these places are super enthusiastic about having me potentially like… study music there and like I feel like I could do like something like… I can like do way better and like maybe just like stay around and like practice and like… like enjoy the resources there” but also like my parents were kind of like, “well you’re… you’re not going to be in school over there. Like if you’re not going to be school at your university, then I don’t really want to like have to like pay for you to have an apartment there.”
So, I don’t know… I had a friend at the time who I had made my second trip to an inpatient hospital who was kind of like… like “home is like a bad place for you. And you could definitely get by like… on your own” and was really insistent that I leave home. So I subletted an apartment that spring… I guess that was just, yeah, it was only a year ago. It’s kind of interesting. Um, and I was like trying to make money through all sorts of different means. Like I was like tutoring online. Um, and I was like… babysitting for the first time and babysitting was like… I just like kids, but like I’d never really gotten to interact with kids cause like… as a science person in high school… I feel like science people like did their science and like didn’t interact with people very much. That was how my friends were.
And like, I remember during that time… I was like really nervous about it actually because I was just like… I was still like pretty actively suicidal some of the time and I was like, “I don’t know if like… it’s okay to have me be responsible for a child”, but like, yeah, I dunno. Like I… and I’d also never done it before, but like the first night I went over there and I got to meet the family and everything. I was like playing with the daughter and like, I was like… I dunno, like I think the time after that was when she was like, “you are like my second favorite babysitter ever out of eight”. And it was just like, “oh my gosh”. And like it like… it meant a lot to me then and it still means a lot to me now. I don’t know that’s… that’s related to anything. I still babysit her though. So like I think about it.
And then like… I dunno… in the middle of like all of this I felt like… I feel like while I was basically like doing auditions and like trying to make money and all of these things, like I wasn’t like… stuck in my own head. I felt motivated. I felt like… I don’t know, I felt like… most of the time when I’m not doing anything, I just kind of feel sluggish, like, “everything sucks” and like I don’t want to do anything, but I was like… very much in a good rhythm while I was like auditioning for places and doing this, that, and the other thing. And then I feel like at one point like… I don’t know if things slowed down or if I just started having doubts. Like was “maybe I don’t want to like… be a music performance major. Maybe I can’t”. But… no, I think what happened… I think I was starting to have trouble managing everything I was trying to do… yeah… I was trying really hard to be able to like pay my own rent and everything and it was not something I was… that I had any experience with before. And I think I was having trouble keeping up with that. I think that’s what happened. But… I ended up having to go back to the hospital again and things kind of after that just like stopped. Because like, I was gone for a week, which… happens when you’re in inpatient. You can’t really leave whenever you want. So I had to cancel all my tutoring appointments as I was on my way to inpatient and like pretend to be someone else and say like, “Hey, Kim is really sick. She can’t do tutoring for a while”. And like I didn’t… and like I dunno… like it was really scary and it shook my confidence and I was like, “I don’t really know what I’m doing anymore”.
Um, and so like kind of… um, during this entire time I was going to individual therapy appointments. Like… when I stopped going to group, I immediately picked up individual appointments. They weren’t… I don’t think they were that helpful. Um, but like at one point, the last person I was seeing was like, “there’s another group program that might be helpful to you”. Um, and so I transitioned into doing that one um, and I feel like… it was like… very frustrating for me because I would think I was like getting somewhere and doing something and then like I would just… things would stop and I’d feel like I’d be like back where I started or like possibly like even worse off than when I started. And I was just… yeah, it was like… difficult too cause like all of my friends are like still in college and like doing their thing and like… kind of knowing what they want to do. And for me it was just like, “oh, I think I might want to do this and then I’m not sure. And then I might want to do that and I’m not sure” kind of going in circles. Um, and also I was like… kind of losing my confidence in my ability to like… complete things.
Um, but like somehow like… during the time, like… like before like… um, June, like I found like… I think I was like looking for different job opportunities and for some reason I was on my school’s job search website and like I found an internship. Um, and like I got the internship but also I was like, “I don’t know that I can actually like… like be stable for long enough to finish an internship” and like… I think like the program I was in like really helped me get to get through that. And then um, I feel like yeah… it was… to backtrack a little bit, like part of what made everything come crashing down when I was trying to transfer to music school… even though I had like… gotten… like, like I guess like the largest amount of music scholarship that like some of these schools had to offer. Like it was not enough to like make the cost of going there like… very feasible I guess. I have a lot of financial aid at my school and like my parents… kept pointing that out to me. It’s just like, “you know, like you even have a merit scholarship to the school you’re going to and like you… there’s all these things and like, it doesn’t make sense to like go somewhere else. And like also… we can’t afford it. And like… we’ll probably have to… mortgage out the house.” And… that was just so much stress and so much pressure for me. And like, my friend that I had made at the hospital was like, “people take student loans, it’s fine”, but like also like I didn’t really know… like I was like… I was just like, “is it fine? Is it not fine?” I had no idea.
I like… I never really was active in my own like college search process. Um, so yeah, it was just kind of like everything was stressful in a mess and I didn’t know how anything was working and I didn’t know what I wanted to do and that was kind of like everything crashed at some point. Um, and yeah, so I guess like… I kind of… by default ended up coming back to my old school… I don’t know. I still don’t know if it’s like really the right decision. It’s just kinda like, oh yeah. Like I feel like… I don’t really know what I’m doing and I… it would be like, people tell me I need a college degree. I don’t really know if I need a college degree, but I also don’t really know what I’m doing and don’t have a good alternative plan.
Um, but like… still in group therapy right now, things are… things are on an uptrend. I still don’t really know what I’m doing, but I dunno… I’ve… along like… definitely this like latest program has been really, really helpful and like a lot of why it’s helpful, it’s kind of like, it helps me not get as stuck in my own head and to like go out and try things rather than like trying to speculate on like what I think will happen. That’s about where I am right now.
I dunno at my first group, it was kind of like a very different group structure. But both have been helpful in their own ways. Like at my first group… we had process groups, which was where we would like… be able to voice things that we were struggling with and get support from the group. This group doesn’t have that. But um, I feel like just being in groups and being able to chat with people before group and like get to know them like… it really helped a lot with the social anxiety I had for most of my life.
Like, definitely I feel like right now, like I’ll… like if I see someone I know I was just like go up and chat with them and like have a conversation. And that was like not something that was possible just a year ago. So that’s been a lot better and I’ve been like trying to… yeah, I feel like I’m not as fixated anymore on like, “everything is terrible.” I don’t know. I definitely still have my bad moments and I feel like I had one just a couple of days ago but like on an upward trend.
So group therapy’s helping. Has the medication been working or…?
That, so uh…
Question mark?
Question mark. Um, so like my… like yeah, medication has been interesting. When I was first hospitalized I was like put on Lexapro and like a small dose and like… but I was still like, they were like, “oh, like if… like it should help with your suicidal thoughts” and it like did not at all. So they just kept increasing the dose until I was like slightly above what… like what is normally listed as the maximum dose. And uh… then they were like, “oh, like you seem to like swing really rapidly from feeling like… pretty like decent to like feeling like really, really down”. And so my first psychiatrist put me on a mood stabilizer and I was like, “I don’t really know if this is doing anything”. And then like there was just like, wait… I feel like there was another one in there at some point. Uh, yeah, it was like aripiprozole. Yeah, and I like don’t even… like they were just like, “this one helps your antidepressant”. And I was like, “I don’t know what that means, but like, okay”, then like they put that one on there too and I like was never at any point stable.
Um, so like at one point it was just like, “oh yeah, so like your Lexapro probably isn’t working so we’ll like transition you off that and like put you on Effexor”. And like at some point it’s like… I feel like once I started doing better in group, they were like, “You can start coming off the medication that never really was that helpful anyway”. Um, and so like I start… I like at some point came off the Aripiprozole which I like…. never figured out what that was supposed to do.
Um, but like, yeah, I’m just like, “what?” It’s so weird. Like I’ve transitioned off that medication and I’m like never figured out what it was supposed to do or if it did anything. And then like… I started seeing a different psychiatrist because my first psychiatrist… like I feel like…. I think like at the point that I was like… the third time I was hospitalized, like I came back and he was like… I was just like, “oh, I was like in the hospital”. And then I came back and he was just like, “uh-huh” and like my parents like during this time were like, “Your psychiatrist is like a load of crap”. And I was like, I dunno, “like I feel like I should just do what he says cause I don’t know anything that’s going on”. But like in hindsight, I’m just like, “yeah, he was a load of crap” (both laugh).
Started seeing a different psychiatrist and she was like, “wait, why are you on this like mood stabilizer thing?” And I was like, “uh, he… he said like, I have like mood swings” and she was like, “you’re not bipolar”. Um… um, so I’m like kind of coming off of that one now. Like every time I’m like… I tell like a therapist or like a psychiatrist, like, “I’m on this one”, they’re like, “wait, why are you on this one?” Um, I think like now that I’m coming off of it, that it was doing something, like, I feel like my emotions got kinda like numbed just a little bit while I was on it. But like I’m not… yeah, I dunno. But like I… like the group I’m in right now has been like pretty helpful. So I feel like… I feel like it’s as like I get better at coping, they’re like, “Aha, you can come off the medication”. And I’m just like, “but it wasn’t doing anything”.
So therapy’s generally have been more helpful than medication?
Like infinitely so like… I feel like if I were just to rely on medication, I would just be like, I dunno, I feel like you would make me into a vegetable and then be like, “ah Ha, well you’re not having any problems”. And I’d be like, “yes, but I’m a vegetable” (both laugh)
In this entire story, is there something that you’re proudest of?
Um, something that I’m proudest of. I think like, I feel like as time goes on I get like increasingly proud of myself for like how far I’ve come. Um, I feel like definitely in the beginning, like I kind of hated myself and I like didn’t… like, I didn’t realize that that wasn’t okay. But now I feel like just… just being able to be like, able to acknowledge my feelings means a lot… I dunno, definitely there was a period in the middle of everything where I was like, “ah ha, I have emotions now”. Cause like they definitely got numbed and ignored for a really, really long time. I was in serious denial about a lot of them. My thought process sometimes was literally, “no, I’m not feeling sad because like my parents said I’m not and they would know”. Um, and then at some point like I started realizing, “oh my God, I feel really sad”. And like I had no idea how to handle that. It’s just like, “how do I take care of this?” Like do… I just stop doing what I’m doing. Do I like… like I was just like… I feel like ignoring it was like not the right thing to do, but then like I went to the opposite extreme and I was like, “I feel sad so I should wait until I start feeling sad before I go do anything”. And then like, I feel like this group has like kind of helped me be like… like find the middle ground and I feel really proud of myself now for being able to be like… “I feel really upset over this thing or I’m like really struggling, but I’m like still still doing the things that I told myself I would do. And that I told other people I would do”.
Um, yeah, I feel like it’s not so much like there’s like a moment where I’m just like, “yes I am the most proud”, but I feel like as I continue on this journey, like I feel more proud of myself on a day to day basis.
Is there… what was like… what would you say the biggest thing is struggling with right now? Is it kind of figuring out what you want to do or like what is the… what is the place that applying the most pressure at this moment?
I feel like right now like…. like a lot of my current therapy like it’s… it’s dialectical behavioral therapy and like the interpretation of it right now is kind of like just… it focuses a lot on the ability to form and keep commitments even if you’re not sure what do you want to do. And I feel like that’s been really helpful for me in terms of like, “oh well I don’t know exactly what I want to do, but I’m like… I think like I’m interested in this thing so I’ll try it”. And I think that’s been like very helpful to me. So it’s like not so much like… or at least like most days it’s not so much the issue like that I don’t know what I’m doing, although that does come up like that definitely does like still hit me sometimes and it scares me.
Um, yeah, I… I feel like honestly like what I’m struggling most with is like kind of how I like view myself and like my story I guess. Cause like definitely there was a time in which I would just feel like… I felt like I was like somehow like… like, well I definitely felt like a lot of people let me down and I felt like I was somehow like singled out for like having an especially difficult experience and like there’s bits and pieces of it that I feel like… I dunno, I feel like at one point I was like obsessed with this idea, like, “I have had such so much like have a more difficult experience than most people”. And like I don’t know if that’s true. And I don’t know if that’s not true, but like also I feel like it’s not really like… productive either way to try and come to an answer. Um, yeah I think there’s a… there’s a bit of like acceptance and commitment therapy in what I do right now. And part of the premise of that is that like… the most relevant feature of like a thought is like not necessarily whether it’s true or not, but like whether it is helpful to you in your recovery. So like I try to see things through that lens and like I don’t always succeed cause sometimes I’m just like, “I really want to know if it’s true”, but like also… maybe it’s not even possible to know.
People use different metaphors to describe depression and anxiety. And I think those are helpful because I think they show how people position themselves in relation to it. So whether through a metaphor or otherwise, what do they feel like to you?
I feel like for me like… I feel like both sometimes kind of… like they… they have this way of like taking hold of like everything. Like, I feel like… like, I don’t know, sometimes like with people… when people talk about love, they talk about like rose colored glasses. Um, I feel like… I don’t like how people with like… with like… with depression often like refer to like… seeing the world in shades of gray… jokes about shades of grey aside (both laugh). Um, because I feel like it’s not so much that everything looks gray. It’s just like everything is still colorful, but also you feel like you can’t enjoy it. Like you’re… you’re aware that it’s still colorful and you should be able to enjoy it and feel something, but you can’t.
And like… you’re gray?
Yeah. I don’t know. Like for me, depression and anxiety, it’s like I feel… I’m just trying to like think of how I feel about it and then hopefully come to a metaphor after. I don’t know. It just feels like, like I feel like if I were to use the metaphor of the glasses, it’s like glasses that like… all of a sudden like… are stuck to your face and like you can’t take them off but also like sometimes you don’t even realize you’re wearing. Um, cause definitely like when I feel like depressed or sad, sometimes I’ll be like, “everything is awful and everything will always be awful” and I won’t even realize that it’s because like I’m feeling upset to begin with. I’d like just think that everything is actually awful. Um, yeah, I just, I… I feel like, hmm… I wish I like had like a metaphor in mind cause I feel like the ones that are common with depression, like I don’t agree with… like I don’t agree with like the cloud thing. Like I don’t agree with the gray, but I don’t… I haven’t put much thought into like how I conceptualize it really.
That’s okay. You can think about it and we can come back to it if you want. Um, so what are the… it seems that the sorts of things that tend to… like I guess trigger like a worsening of it… I think it seems like there are several different sorts of things, whether that’s like home life or kind of like not knowing exactly like where you’re positioned in the world and or like an interpersonal stress. It seems like those are kind of like three of the bigger things. Is that…?
Yeah.
Um, and then what are the sort of like very clear, actionable things you do on a day to day that make you feel better?
Um, yeah, I… I’ve spent a lot of time kind of trying to think through like coping skills and things like that. Um, I like… at one point I was like very much into like coloring as a way of like calming down. Um I still enjoy doing puzzles. I find that to be pretty calming. Um, a lot of like DBT specifically is focused around like… like skills use. Um, so definitely like… I like… mindfulness is a big part of that. Like I try to practice mindfulness. I’m at 20 minutes a day now. And I think that really helps. Um, just like noticing like when I’m upset and kind of like… I feel like I… I like have been like working a lot on like body awareness too. So like when I notice like I’m getting like tight and like… um, tense, like I’ll try to like actively relax and like… breathe and that’s really helpful. There’s also like what DBT refers to as self soothing using different senses, like touch or taste. And I feel like I use that sometimes, but also like… like I try not to use that with foods so much cause I like don’t want to fall into a habit of like, “I feel really bad. I need to eat something”. Like I just don’t want to get into that. I don’t want to start that.
Um, yeah, I feel like definitely like as I’ve been going through this process I’ve been like more and more like able to… kind of like… regulate better and like not… get like as caught up in things as I was before. Like because I do a lot of mindfulness and a lot of the premise of that is like… not getting… like engaging with thoughts and getting caught up with them and like everything… like sometimes when I do notice want to ruminate on something, I’ll just be like, “nope, we’re not going to think about that right now”. So that helps too.
How much do you talk to the people around you? So it seems like you kind of have talk to your friends, you’d seems like you talk a little bit to your parents. Like yeah. What position does it play in your life in terms of like your interactions?
That is definitely still a work in progress. Like I feel like at one point like I was very dependent on other people to like… make me feel better and I started moving away from that. But I feel like I went like very far in the opposite direction and then I was like, “I’m just not going to talk about it”. Um, and I’m kind of like coming back from that.
Um, yeah, it’s like… I feel like I’m like… hm. It’s been like an evolving thing. Um, I have recently come to the realization that I’m not very good about being honest, even though I don’t usually lie… like… I’m just not good at being like, “this is what I’m feeling” and especially when I… when I anticipate that that won’t necessarily go over well.
With my friends here right now, I feel like, um, yeah… it wasn’t very clear in the course of like the narrative, but like… I lost all the friends that I originally made at college. Like one of them, I mean the one I had the argument with, like we just never became friends again. And the other one, we dated for a time and that didn’t go well and that relationship just kind of ended. Um, and still kind of like… I feel like I… I have trouble knowing when to open up. I was going through a really like… I don’t know, I was like really upset at one point this year and like, I was just like crying in the hallway of my old dorm. And then like, after that incident, like I opened up to some people and like the RAs of my dorm. I live off campus, but like I spend a lot of time in my old dorm, and like the RAs, there’ve been very kind to me and like very supportive and like they definitely still feel like my RAs even though I don’t live there.
Um, I would say I have one friend here who I generally… when I’m not doing well, they will… I will let them know in some way or another. But also like… I have trouble like figuring out how people can help. Cause I think in moving away from like, “I need you right now to like make me feel better” and trying to figure out like how can I make help myself feel better, I’m kind of like… now I like… I don’t know what role other people should have.
So to the figuring out like healthy ways to talk about it?
Yeah. Yeah. That’s where I am right now.
Um, what… what are the sorts of reactions that you’ve gotten from people when you have talked to them about it?
I feel like… like in my head it’s distorted too. Like I… I like tend to fixate on the times that people haven’t understood. Um, I feel like now, like I… um, I recently started dating someone just a couple of weeks ago and like when I started kind of opening up about some of these things, like, um, he was surprisingly like very understanding about it and I feel like I don’t expect that. I feel like I… I feel like a lot of the reactions I got when I was like… initially getting my diagnosis and everything have stuck with me, like those reactions of like… Like, I don’t want to be around you.
Like the way my… that like one friendship like ended was kind of, um, it was like very bizarre, I feel like, because like… I’d been like very depressed in my first year and then like, I was suddenly like very happy and independent and then I was like, depressed again. Like the way that person ended up articulating what they were feeling was like, “I want to be friends with people who are happy and confident and like, if you can’t be that way, I don’t want to be your friend. I can’t be your friend if you don’t ‘get better’”. Um, and I feel like… I feel like that has stuck with me a lot, even though I feel like recently my interactions with people have been that they’ve been pretty understanding.
And like definitely that’s something I have to like check myself on a lot. Like I’ll be like, “okay, they’re totally not going to get it and I just shouldn’t say anything cause it’s going to be awkward”. And then like… sometimes I try to like take the chance and say it anyway. And then when things don’t go as I expected and people are understanding, I try to tell myself, “ah, see it’s not that bad”.
How has it affected the way that you approach people? So it seems like when you were having more social anxiety that made it very hard and so like, yeah. In general, how is it… aside from social anxiety maybe or including social anxiety, how does it affect the way you approach people?
Um, like how does, sorry… what?
How do um… depression, anxiety, affect the way that you approach and interact with other people?
I feel like definitely initially it was kind of like… I was like, ah, so socially anxious, I was like, “I don’t want to interact with people cause I think I’m going to be a bother”. Um, and like my mom also very much has that kind of style of interaction. Like, “I would rather not bother you and not interact than take the chance of interacting and being a bother”. So that was kind of how anxiety, like conditioned like my ways of relating to people.
I feel like with depression, like I think earlier stages, it was a very similar thing. It was like, “I don’t want to like be upsetting or unpleasant, so I’m not going to interact”. And then later as like my depression became more developed, I think it became like, um… and like I became more distrustful of people was kind of like, “well I don’t want to interact with you because I think that you’re going to hurt me”. Um, and then I feel like… right now… being overall in a better place… I feel like a lot of the ways in which I’ve learned to be a better listener through therapy and to be like more like… I guess receptive and willing to hear people… like what people say, rather than what I think they’ll say… like I feel like… I’m better at listening now. It’s not a direct result of depression and anxiety, but definitely like the… the, like the treatment I’ve had because of those things have made me feel like I’m better at interacting with people.
How do you interact with other people with mental illness? I mean… like you said you made friends and groups, I guess that’s one example, but like how do you navigate that?
So, um, I mentioned at one point, like the second time I was hospitalized, I made a friend there and um, she became one of my best friends for a time, but we don’t speak anymore. Um, and the reason being that like she…. um, was struggling very much with her own issues and with addiction.. Um, and that… I knew that at the time that we were friends. That’s not why ultimately like things didn’t work out. But… she also like… she became very, very suicidal as well. I think she attempted maybe three times while… during the time that we were friends. Um, and she was like very aggressively suicidal. It… I dunno, at the time that we became friends, I was like, “I have had the experience of feeling alone and feeling like no one will be there for me. And I don’t want other people to have to go through that too”. But then also at the time that she started becoming very suicidal and I was also still in the same place, like… I felt like… I started feeling like it was kind of bringing us both down. Like, that I wasn’t really doing her any good and I was just being dragged down with her when she hit her lows. And then at one point we cut things off just because like it… or at least I guess like I… I just stopped reaching out to her and she kind of took that as like, “oh, you don’t want to talk to me” and things…we just haven’t been in touch since.
Um, so I feel like after that, like I interact with people with mental illness, like from a standpoint of like… empathy and like… wanting to be helpful, but also like wanting to keep some distance because I’ve been like very swept up in other people’s like… mental health recovery before and to like my own kind of detriment. And so yeah, I think at one point like… I would have been like, “oh, like, you know, I want to be… or like… like a huge support in your life and I want to do all these things for you if you’re going through the same thing I am”. But like also right now I’m kind of like… I still feel that urge. Like, “I want to be able to provide you with access to someone who understands”, but also like I kind of try to keep those people… like as bad as it sounds like kind of at arm’s length while I’m still working on my own recovery.
Yeah. I mean you got to watch out for your own mental health. Um, so we’re gonna switch gears and talk about gender. Um, so yeah, the same way that gave a personal history with mental illness, kind of, what’s your personal history with gender and that’s sort of like a two part question or I guess there are two ways to approach it. Um, one of which is like gender… like internal gender identity and one of which is like how you’ve been treated according to gender.
I think the two like tie into each other and I think I’ll start with the external. So I mentioned earlier that like I like… I think starting like… from like third grade, well, no, definitely starting from third grade onwards. Like all of my friends and like… till the end of high school, like all of my friends were boys and I was like a girl. Um, and like my parents are from China and like, uh, so definitely when they were growing up, like it was not really okay for like a girl to be friends with guys and like, in fact like, um… pretty much like if you were spending… to my understanding, if you were a girl spending time alone with a boy in China, like the only thing that could possibly mean was that you probably were going to get married. Um, so that was… um, yeah, that… and because my parents didn’t really understand like my choice of friends like they were kind of like… “you know, like if… if you become friends with girls, like you can have like your girl friends hang out at our house, but like not… not your current friends”.
And um, I don’t know. I, I just never really made any female friends and like the reasons why or up to a lot of… well I dunno, I feel like I still don’t fully understand and like my… like the people I talk to now who know about this, like they don’t really like… I dunno, we speculate about it sometimes. Um, yeah. But like, I don’t know, I felt like definitely… I had like a very definite, like kind of sense of like… “this gender does and this gender does this” when I was younger, like definitely. And I remember like, just things like watching TV in the mornings and noticing that the advertisements for boys’ things were… were like toy cars and like really cool. And then the girls things were like… flowery and like fairies and like baking”. And I was just like… I just remember like being like, “well no, I don’t want to bake or anything. That’s dumb”. And like, I kind of… I definitely identified with the description of a Tomboy. Like, “yes, I like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and like being outside”. Um, and like that didn’t seem to fit into what the media I consumed was throwing at me as far as like, “you’re a female, so therefore like you were like this”.
I feel like my need to distinguish between myself and other girls got intensified because like, I was only friends with boys for a while. And they were like, “Girls talk a lot and they’re gossipy and they are weird, but like you’re okay”. Like I was a girl and identified as a girl, but also all my friends were boys and they were like, “you are okay. But like all the other girls are really weird”. And… I started buying into that. I was just like, “yes, the… those other girls are so weird”.
Like, um, so like, yeah, I like still… I feel like I come back to this a lot and I keep trying to make sense of it and I just cannot, I’m just like… and like, I don’t know to what degree, like it was like my friend group conditioning my ideas of gender and media and like my parents ideas. It was like also like a really… I definitely remember like one aspect of that experience that was like really confusing for me. It was just like… because like I was a girl and if like a group of friends who were all guys, people are always like, “oh your friend has a crush on you and like this friend like…” and I was just like… I was flattered but also was like, “I don’t really know what that means”. Like… like I had not had romantic feelings for anyone when people started saying things about my friends having crushes on me. And I was like…like between the ages of 8 and 12. And I think that’s pretty normal. So I was just like, “I don’t know what they’re talking about”. And that was really confusing. And then I like hit adolescence and I still was like friends with all guys. And like it just became more confusing I feel.
And I feel like right now, like a lens through, which I’m trying to see it is like just, I don’t know, community? I feel like I’ve… I’ve made friends with like individual girls throughout my life and during that time. But like I never felt like I fit into that… like a group the same way. Like I dunno, I just felt like… most of the things I enjoy doing, like I don’t know, I was just having this conversation with like a friend the other day and I was just like, “for some reason like girls in my hometown didn’t play tag” and he was like, “What do you mean they didn’t play tag?” And I just meant that they just didn’t play tag. (Kim laughs). Um, yeah I dunno. I just feel like in terms of like interests like I fit more easily into like a group that like was like… like that identified as male and like those were considered like more male interests. Like I was in science, that was kind of… for a while more of a male thing. And like, even when… other, like… females started like getting into like the science clubs at my school, I think I was just like very well established in the group that I was in.
Um, but yeah, I don’t… I don’t know. Like I… like I was saying earlier, like I definitely still have like very concrete, like… associations with like, “this is what it means to be a boy and this is what it means to be a girl”. And like… I feel like at one point like I was like… I was like, definitely when I was younger it was like… I… it was just like, I just remember having this moment where like, I was in ballet and I like… I had to like… as a really young kid and I like put my hair up in a bun for like one of the performances and my sister just looks at me with my hair up and she was like, “you look like a boy”. And I just remember that being like such a bad thing. It made me so upset. And now I just wonder, “why is that such a bad thing?” I don’t know.
And then like I feel like it’s tied up to some degree with sexual identity too. Like in middle school I was like… well I would say I was like really homophobic and just cause like I didn’t understand what it meant to not be heterosexual. And then I feel like as I’ve gotten older and definitely in college, I’ve heard and met more people who identify like with… as being in the LGBTQ community. And that’s helped gender to be a less restrictive category in my mind. I feel like that’s kind of helped… helped me see that like, “okay, there isn’t just one way to be if you are a certain gender or one way… or like one group of people you can love”. I think I would still identify as heterosexual. Um, cause that’s just always been the case for me. But like definitely I very much feel okay and comfortable now with people who are not.
Like I feel like… especially with interactions I’ve had with that community, it’s just challenged a lot of what I grew up with. It’s kind of something I’m still trying to make sense of for me and like what that means, how I fit into that.
Um, and for my social psychology class recently, we had to read a very interesting article that was challenging the gender binary. That’s given me a lot to think about too. It was like, “we talk about like male and female as if like… being one means that you have high levels of these hormones and low levels of these hormones and you have these characteristic brain structure sizes or degrees of development and you have these interests”. But like, that’s not true. Like if you look at like, like the… uh, like the way someone put it to me is like, “the amount of variants you would have between like… like within the category of male and within the category of female differs much more than the differences between the average male and the average female”.
Um, and like during my time in group therapy, like we introduced ourselves every day… my first program, we would introduce ourselves everyday with our pronouns. I met people who are transgender there. Um, and yeah, I… I definitely, there were a couple of people who went by they/them pronouns and that was very interesting to me.
And like I… right now I’m just in this exploratory place. I don’t know if it’s going to go anywhere. But I’ve just been wondering and thinking about things. Like wait, “why does being female and mean that I should have longer hair and dress a certain way?” And I’m kind of like considering maybe not following the societal expectations for a little bit and seeing how I feel about that. But it’s like a weird… it’s a weird place right now. Like I dunno, it’s just like a transition-y exploratory time for me, I think.
Next question was going to be, what does femmeness mean to you? But I guess it seems like the answer is kind of like, “I don’t know at this moment”?
What does…?
Femmeness. So I’m using the term like “femme”, not as in Femme vs a butch but as in femme versus masc. Kind of like an extension of feminine just as an umbrella term. So it’s like what does… what does that quality mean to you? But it seems like you’re kind of still figuring that out.
I feel like in my head, like I… I definitely like have like very societally shaped ideas that like… to be masculine is to be strong and like… um, like I guess like… from what I’ve seen of people, like… like I feel like they masculine people should be less emotional and things like that. And then to be like… I… I’ve had like a… I’ve struggled a lot with like… in terms of like, I guess like condition… like from what I’ve seen about conditioned, about how females should look. Um, and definitely like, yeah, I… I dunno, like I…I had a really… I’ve had a fixation for awhile that I think I’m kind of starting to get past with the idea of like being pretty, um, and yeah, I don’t know. I… I definitely feel like for me, to be feminine… like in terms of as an aesthetic, it’s always been like, “oh, like, well you don’t want to be too muscular because that’s not feminine” and then like obviously there’s expectations from with cosmetics marketing… Like “oh yeah, to be feminine is to have long eyelashes and this and that”. And like, I’m just like… that’s… I still have those associations and I don’t think that’s truly what like femmeness is, but it’s kind of like what mention of that gender brings up for me.
Has your experience, um, being someone who up until now has mostly presented and identified as a woman, I guess like with an asterix there, um, experience… affected the way that you experience intimacy, whether familial or platonic or physical, uh, or like any… any form of intimacy?
Um, with my first relationship. Um, yeah, it… it did. Um, there’s definitely an element of like when… when we started trying to explore kind of like more sexual, like and intimate relations. Like it was kind of like… I was like not very into it and he was kinda like, um… like I… I don’t know if I would describe what he had like a kink, but like, um, something that he was into, I was not into. And I dunno, his argument when we would talk about it was always like, “I’m like a male and I need it”. And like I was kinda like… I was never really into it, but like… I don’t know, like that felt like… a normal, like… thing for a female, to not be interested. But um, we would still go through with it, which was like.. It was a really unpleasant time. Or um, experience. Like I wouldn’t say that… entire time cause like, I mean obviously there were other things going on, but like… that particular part of that experience was not pleasant.
And so, yeah… I have a lot of trouble figuring out like if like the environment in which I grew up was really as gendered as I remember or if that was just how I experienced it. But like I feel like my experience with that… within that relationship, within still being in like my hometown… gender was definitely a very relevant thing and like shaped a lot of how I feel like I was like… I interacted or perceived myself.
Um, and so the answer to this question can be no, but do you feel like there’s been an interaction between gender and mental illness for you?
I definitely feel like… like my specific circumstance around like certain aspects like… um, like my gender being different than the gender of my friends was definitely something that contributed to some of the difficulties I was having. Um, I don’t know that like.. I would like… I don’t think like switching the gender, like my gender and like telling the story again would like mean that I wouldn’t have mental illness. I don’t know to what degree it affects it, but like, um… I think like,
I dunno, I find that like.. people of different genders tend to like manifest oppression in different ways.
Yeah. That’s kind of… the whole project is not necessarily like, “oh, men don’t have mental illness” or like, “men with mental illness, it doesn’t suck for them”. Like that’s not that… it’s more that like… the way that mental illness is treated is kind of uh… is fairly gendered and interacts with gendered roles in specific ways. Which I think changes from person to person, but yeah.
I definitely… I think having a different gender would like change some of the details but to what degree? Like I… I don’t think anyone can say.
Yeah. Um, and so you’ve talked a little bit about being Chinese American and kind of that interacting. Are there any other identities that you feel have interacted with gender or with mental illness for you?
Like I feel like when I think about it like… the most like salient aspects for me have been gender and being Chinese American, yeah. Like definitely like the… the kind of discrepancy between like my parents’ status as immigrants from China and like my own status as like just really an American. I don’t have much connection to my Chinese roots. Like… that was definitely something that was difficult. Um, and I’ve found actually that a lot of the Chinese American friends that I’ve spoken to have expressed like a similar difficulty with communicating with their parents and like that impacting their mental health in different ways. Um, yeah, I would say gender has been a category that’s been very relevant in terms of like everything that’s happened.
I don’t know. I don’t know if this is a category exactly, but definitely like… like my younger sister and I have had like very different sets of pressures and I feel like something… some part of our status like as being like older or younger sibling has like affected a lot of the ways in which like we’ve felt pressure and we’ve had to… we felt the need to kind of like achieve or perform. Um, yeah. Beyond that I don’t… yeah, I think… I think that’s about it. That I can think of right now.
Is there anything you want to talk about that you haven’t gotten a chance to talk about in these questions?
Um hmm. I feel like… hm. I might have… I have to think about it, but there, there may well be something.
You can always write it in later.
That’s fair. I feel like something that has come up a lot for me is kind of like… like or something that I’ve thought about a decent amount and like in bits and pieces is kind of like… like definitely like when you… like I think this is more the… the concept is more present in terms of like, um, when people are victims of some sort, but like the idea that like, you know, it’s never the victim’s fault– I feel like I… like that with regards to mental illness it’s… it’s something like I wonder about, because I feel like… definitely like… like mental illness is not anyone’s fault but also feeling like totally helpless or conceptualizing yourself as totally helpless makes it a lot easier to like…. just keep being caught up in it and not recover.
Um, I dunno, I guess like… I think a lot about the degree to which like… one’s sense of like one’s own role and agency like in one’s story, like how that affects like the ability to recover.
I feel like… like for a very long time I was very attached to the idea of like my experiences as like unique or special or like somehow worse than most of the people around me, which I’ve…. I’ve said. Um, and… essentially like…It’s easy to hold onto the moments where you feel like you’ve been wronged. And to like want people to make it up to you or to fix that. Um, and the way someone put it is that, in the process of recovery and doing what you need to do, like a consequence of that is that like you lose the ability to like… bring the people to justice that you… you feel deserve to be brought to justice or blamed. Um, and I think right now I’m still in a phase where I do want to blame people.
But… I guess I wonder too, like if at the end of this I’ll end up deciding… I get the sense sometimes that like maybe at the end of this when like all the work that I… not all the work, since recovery’s like forever, but… when most of the work that I needed to do is over, like the brunt of everything has been done. I wonder if I’ll feel like… like no, it wasn’t anyone’s fault and no, I don’t really care if I’m worse off than other people.
I feel like right now I still am attached to that idea of like my experience is like uniquely difficult or that like, that’s why I became depressed at a young age and continued to be depressed for awhile. Yeah. And I… I kind of wonder if that’s going to transform into like, um, just more of… more so of like… “it’s not that I’ve been through especially difficult circumstances, but just that like that’s the way the chips fell”.
Is it a comforting thought to kind of point to something and want to be like, that’s the reason?
It is. it’s comforting and it feels good, but also I think it’s ultimately something that like… might feel good but like just be really harmful.
Yeah. So it’s important to me that these are more conversations than interviews. Um, so just… you sat with me and answered all my questions. So just to establish a little bit more of a back and forth, I want to give you the chance to ask me any questions if you want to. You don’t have to, but it’s just if you want to turn any of the questions back around on me, if you want to ask about the project. Um, yeah, just if you have any questions.
Um, yeah, I… um, so I know you’re pretty open with your own experiences with mental illness and you’re like… that it started pretty young for you. Um, I guess like where do you feel like you are now in terms of…?
Yeah, I mean it did.. it did start fairly young for me. I got diagnosed when I was 15, I want to say, but I was definitely feeling it before that. Um, I think I’m in a fairly stable place. I think… I started going to therapy once I got diagnosed. So yeah, it would have been 15 and it took a while where I would just like sit and talk for like the entire hour. Like she would not say anything, I would just keep talking and eventually, like… I kind of like, I think cleared out all the junk in my brain is kind of how I see it. Um, and that got me to a place where I found it was easier to kind of reflect, um, in the present about how I’m feeling. And so that… I always feel like that’s a very crucial part for me of maintaining stability is… constant introspection, which gets kind of tired… or tiring sometimes, but it’s like… I don’t know what I’m walking around, when I’m going to class. Like I’m… I’m very thinking about the things that are going on my life and I’m processing. Um, which kind of like… I think any big major bad events still send me a bit for a loop. Um, but they become easier and easier to handle.
Yeah. That’s been my experience as well.
Yeah.
And I will say like, I haven’t thought about it in that way, but I do feel like constant introspection has become a part of my life. Like, I mean, like I definitely have to like be careful like… that I’m not just like dwelling on things, but like I definitely spend a lot more time thinking about like, “is this like what… I guess like what kind of person do I want to be? And like, what does this mean for like, I guess how I see myself and how I see this fitting into my future and things like that”.
Yeah. I get very confused when I like ask someone else, like a question that I’ve just been thinking about that feels like a very base question to me. And they’re like, “oh, I’ve never thought about that”. I’m like… I don’t… I don’t… like not in like a judgmental way. I just don’t know what people do with like that head time, I guess. Like what are they… what are they thinking? Because that’s just like the most constant thing that I’m thinking about. Um, I’m just like, “oh, like this is not necessarily what everyone is doing. There are neurotypical people who aren’t necessarily doing this”.
Um, yeah. And I like… I don’t know how I feel about the word neurotypical. Like definitely my friend, who like I met at the hospital. Like she… she had like a thing against neurotypical people. She was like, “I hate neurotypical people. They never think of anything important”.
I would not say that. That is not what I’m expressing (Cassandra laughs). It’s more just like, if you don’t need to constantly be thinking about your own stability and the things that are required for that, I wonder what takes up that brain space.
No, um, but yeah, I don’t really know what neurotypical even is.
Yeah, so it is…that’s…I’ve been trying to go about this in a way where it’s like.. like what really is mental illness? And it’s like, clusters of specific symptoms. And when you poke at it too hard it sorta like… yeah, it gets into a lot of complications, but it’s like… a lot of the words I’m using, I realize they are imperfect, but I kind of have to use them any ways to be able to communicate efficiently with the people I’m interviewing.
That makes sense.
The Cassandra Transcripts 