Throughout my journey with my own mental illnesses of depression, anxiety, and PTSD, I’ve always made it a point to myself that my experience with mental illness is my experience alone. I have tried my best to make “I” statements and to not give advice to others, but only share my own personal experiences as a way to potentially connect with others and help others feel less alone in their journeys.

Participating with my local National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) chapter has really helped me feel more fulfilled and more like I’m in the right place and doing the right things because my values and the organization’s values align almost perfectly and I’m surrounded by like-minded people there.

But a majority of the time, I feel lost without any real direction. Sometimes I’m just too tired to feel anything.

My anxiety tends to present itself by rumination and contemplating constantly what the “right” thing to do is. I tend to do a lot of introspection and questioning. I have a natural tendency to ask “why” of everything. I weigh out the pros and cons of any situation, try to predict the effects of an action, and figure out what the most empathetic thing to do in a situation is, no matter who I am interacting with. But at the same time, I’m impatient (anxiety, is that you?). I don’t like to keep people waiting, but I also want to take the time to make the right decision. Sometimes that means taking 10 minutes to think of a response and then later ruminating for hours whether it was a right one. Other times that means taking days to form a proper response to try my best to mitigate any consequence.

I’d like to think that I’m a morally good and ethical person. I think I’m inherently kind and empathetic – sometimes too kind for my own good. I try to help others however I can, and especially when they specifically reach out to me for help.

I recently encountered a situation that combined these two previous thoughts. I was contacted through this blog by someone who wanted to become friends and possibly get help with finding a job in the legal field. The person was recommended my blog by a former acquaintance of mine so it wasn’t entirely random. The initial communications by this person were quite lengthy for me, with what I perceived as quite intense and personal for first interactions, but I didn’t think it was anything harmful or directly uncomfortable. I figured that once I got to know the person better, I would understand them better and feel more comfortable around them and get used to their way of communicating. I’d adapt. Just like how first dates can be really awkward and how you never interact with one friend the same way you do with another. There’s different rhythms in different interpersonal relationships.

Instead, after a few emails going back and forth, I started feeling more worn out by our interactions and developed a certain feeling that I still can’t really name. It wasn’t necessarily a negative feeling, but it didn’t feel positive either.

At the same time, an emergency event happened in a neighboring county that caused nearly 50,000 residents to be evacuated from their homes. I usually don’t watch the news or scroll through social media, but during this time, I was watching the news all day and night and searching various websites and even Reddit to try to get answers about what was going on. With my Rotary club as well, I became heavily involved in local relief efforts, constantly monitoring rapidly changing needs at evacuation centers and helping coordinate donation efforts. The entirety of the event was about 5 days from the start of the emergency to when evacuation orders were lifted and residents could return to their homes. By the end of the 3rd day, I was completely wiped out. I could no longer process any of the updates happening; all I knew was that the situation was resolving.

So after that and going back to those emails, I tried my best to be courteous and keep a conversation going while also expressing my limitations and capacity at the moment.

But after a few weeks, the exhaustion didn’t go away. I was concerned I was entering a depressive episode. I usually do get more depressed starting in July, but it was still June. I initially thought that I’d just need a couple days to recover from the information overload and regulate my nervous system from the emergency event, but now it had been two and a half weeks and I was still exhausted, still didn’t want to do anything, still lying in bed for a majority of the days, and hardly eating. Usually I know when something’s wrong once my appetite starts to decrease. That’s usually my first tell-tale sign of stress for myself. But it had been 2.5 weeks since the emergency event and everything else seemed fine, so what was it?

That’s what pointed me back to what else was new during this time – my email interactions with this person. To me, the emails seemed to be quite lengthy and felt strongly opinionated about various topics. I never paid much attention to it in their emails at first because I just filtered through the ramble and focused on the purpose of the conversation and the initial reason why this person reached out to me. Over time, their emails felt like every word I was writing was being psychoanalyzed. We were planning to meet in person, but with the exhaustion I was experiencing and their increasingly psychoanalytical communication that was also draining me, I ultimately decided not to meet up with them. I sent them an email with my decision to not meet in person, explaining that I didn’t feel like our values or philosophies aligned with some examples and how I personally felt about some of their emails. They sent me a 6,000-word response with a lot of psychoanalysis and evaluation of my own email, starting with:

First of all, I understand there really is such a thing as Highly Sensitive People and it’s a useful label for some people, though something I’ve observed as in this case, is that many times Highly Sensitive People really just have social anxiety and due to their unhealed trauma, do their best to anticipate / read into / assume (which often times is inaccurate because they are basing on their past trauma filters).

Some other notable pieces that I thought were interesting:

• “If you experience it as negative, that is your subjective experience, though I will not have you projecting that upon me as objective fact, because that is rude and a boundary issue upon your part.”
• “By the way, if an email is too long or has too much words, you are allowed to vocalize it and tell the other person, and if they could possibly stop.  Or vocalize that you won’t read their emails further unless it’s five sentences, for instance.  Or another thing you could do, is read in segments and take as long as you need.  To not take these steps or other steps to self-advocate for yourself, and then project it as the fault of the other person, is you not taking accountability for yourself having healthy boundaries and not taking accountability for communicating like a mature adult and allowing unhealed traumas to dictate your behavior.“
• “Are you familiar with the ‘either-or logical fallacy’?”
• “Lol, I already told you I tend to be a confident / self-assured person, it’s not a sin to be so, and I still have humility about it, so please worry about yourself and get off my back.  “

And they closed the email with:

Best,
[Nickname they picked for themself] (as for now I really don’t want to say my name to someone who got so triggered and wrongfully assumed / sabotaged what possibly could have been a good hangout, all because they took on picking up vibes / feelings they created for themselves which have nothing to do with me) 

And with all of that, I still kept questioning myself afterwards – about whether I didn’t communicate kindly enough, whether I could have worded things better as to not be misinterpreted, whether I jumped to conclusions, what I did to deserve a 6,000-word response. It doesn’t take much to shake me because I know I have trauma and mental illnesses and I am trying to recover. But after a full day, I concluded that I made the right decision for myself and that I am confident that my experience was true for me. I know everyone perceives the same situation differently because of our own experiences and values, so I do take it with a grain of salt that maybe I somehow brought this onto myself. But the interaction helped confirm that we did not align.

I did feel a lot lighter after my decision to not meet with them and the day after, I received really good news that took a lot of stress off my shoulders. But who knows how long this will last.

Physically, I still feel fatigued, which has greatly impacted my ability to drive safely. I’m actually kind of scared of driving by myself right now. I really don’t feel like I can be safe driving on my own. I’m still struggling to curate a good appetite, often eating only a small meal once a day with no particular cravings. Self-care still needs to be improved. I learned that if I stay in bed past 10 AM, my will to do any of my daily chores (brushing the cats’ teeth, cleaning the litterboxes, vacuuming, showering) goes out the window. If I at least get out of bed before 10 AM, then there’s a chance of me doing at least some of those. I think I’ve only done all of those in one day maybe once or twice since I reached my maximum burnout in February. I’m still probably oversleeping – about 8-10 hours at night and usually another 2-3 hours midafternoon.

Though, with all of this, I know there is hope for getting through this because I at least still enjoy spending time with my partner, family, and friends, and there are still things I am grateful for (such as my partner who has been a huge help during this process). I don’t feel as though everything is utterly hopeless with no light in sight and wanting to die like I did in February. There’s a light at the end of this tunnel. I just wonder how long it’ll take to recover both physically and mentally.