Hi everyone! I don't want to share my real name, but you guys can call me Tea 🙂 I'm currently in my final year of high school and nearly 18. I'm aiming to be a language teacher. I enjoy music, food, anime and all things cozy. I have lots of hobbies and interests, but I lost my passion and motivation for a lot of them years ago. I've come to this community in hopes of finding and offering support and advice. I look forward to interacting with everyone! For this post, I'll highlight the key points as a kind of TLDR.
A bit of background... I hit rock bottom in 2017, and although I've grown so much since, I still experience a few mental health issues. I went to a few counselling sessions during this time (about four 30-min sessions?), but my father suddenly decided to stop taking me; he didn't give me notice or tell me why, I simply stopped attending, but I believe my father saw improvement and assumed that I didn't need it anymore. Now, I generally struggle to be content for more than a week or verbally communicate my emotions. I also experience sudden (and perhaps seasonal?) depressive episodes, during which I'm very emotionally unavailable and low functional. I manage to hide these episodes from everyone except my s.o as it really strains my romantic relationship. I'd love to go back to counselling, but I've never had the courage to reveal to my parents that my depression was never really 'cured'.
Anyway, my first depressive episode of this year started recently, but I can't afford to go through this, as I'm in the midst of my HSC and really want to do well. Even counselling feels like a waste of time, even if I were to work up the courage to ask my parents. Does anyone have any advice to offer me to get through this school year, study hard and manage my mental health?
Thank you all in advance, for even just skimming through this introduction/first post. Sending you all buckets of hope, positivity and strength 🙂
