Dear Ilyana:

I hope that you do experience a supportive community here. You shared in both threads that you were diagnosed with a bipolar disorder at 26, married at 34 to a man who does not get you, a man who gets angry often, is unempathetic and does not support you emotionally, and gave birth to your only child at 35. It was a traumatic birth during which you almost died. Because of that traumatic experience, you have been depressed ever since, did not bond well with your son, and your relationships with your son and with your husband are strained.

In the last few years, you’ve been having “serious cognitive problems- memory, concentration, and comprehension”. This is devastating to you because you’ve always thought of yourself as an intellectual, and you teach philosophy. An MRI did not reveal a physical cause for the cognitive problems.

You “drink too much, smoke cigarettes and weed.. have poor eating habits and get almost no exercise.. feel like crap most of the time, both physically and emotionally… it feels like I am at the bottom of an immense mountain, and I have no idea how to get up it. Often times I feel like I want to die, like no one loves me, and  like I am doomed to be miserable”, “I feel so alone so much of the time… I don’t know how much longer I can live with feeling as alone as I do”.

“I just wanted to share and see if others have gone through anything similar”- I experienced (and still do, but to a way lesser extent) the serious cognitive problems that you mentioned: memory, concentration and comprehension beginning in childhood. The reason: I was anxious, depressed and feeling very much alone. My understanding now is that without adequate, quality social interactions with others, our cognitive abilities deteriorate. Born as social animals, born to need others, we literally can’t think straight when alone for too long.

You mentioned having bad habits. Clearly, you need to form a new, good habit, such as exercising. Being the habitual, once you form this new habit, it will be difficult to change it back to not exercising. Best would be if you found a way to exercise around other people, such as in a gym. But because of Covid, I am guessing gyms are not open where you live?

anita