Dear jess:

Good to read your positive update: being in counseling for a couple of months, cutting your study and work load by half, and arranging for study help programs/ support networks for the next time you slump.

You wrote in your recent July 26 post: “The last big slump which was around the time I first posted on tiny buddha I remember being able to reason with myself even in the hardest moments“- you first posted on tiny buddha a bit over 3 months ago, on April 21. As I re-read your April posts, I agree that indeed you reasoned well in those posts: your thinking was organized, clear, purposeful. You were not drowning in depression to the point of being disorganized, confused and aimless, nor did you express suicidal ideation, all which makes me hopeful (as a person who is not a health care professional of any kind), that you do not need to get on psychiatric medications.

Here is how you described your “emotional/ physical slumps” back on April 21: “Unfortunately about every month and a half I slump/crash. literally for 2-3 weeks. I become incapable. I can’t study, I can’t focus, I become a recluse, all the purpose and enjoyment gets sucked out of my life… this deep empty feeling I have. It used to feel really physical. I was extremely fatigued, couldn’t get out of bed… over the years the slumps become less and less physically exhausting. They are mostly just emotionally draining. But it still interrupts my life, work, study..  feel a bit grey and empty.. 60 percent of the time its ok. Unfortunately the rest of the time is in these slow and emotionally draining slumps that happens somewhat regularly. it Really feels like out of my control. Often nothing much has set it off, or something very small“-

– seems like there’s been much improvement over the years: the slumps have been improving, becoming “less and less physically exhausting” and “60 percent of the time it’s ok”, and the slumps are less frequent: they used to occur “about every month and a half”, but for 3 months now, you did not experience a slump, or at least not a significant one. The therapy and your actions as a result of the therapy in the last two months probably have a lot to do with the improvement.

Back in April, you expressed your interest in understand the regular slumps, so to address them: “I’ve tried to look online to find something to explain this but I can’t find anything. There are a lot of articles written about slumps but I couldn’t find anything about experiencing slumps extremely regularly. Its still happens now every month or so and I just want to know what it is. I genuinely really want to address it but I just don’t know why it keep on happing all the time“.

I (as a non-professional) will try to explain what you have been experiencing based not on knowing you personally, but on the little you shared here + my life experience and science:

Key sentence in regard to your childhood: “I remember feeling a little bit more emotionally interdependent from my parents and less family orientated than a lot of peers“-

-to me, “emotionally interdependent from my parents” means emotionally-separated-from-my-parents, aka Lonely, and “less family oriented” means again, Lonely in the context of your family.

About your parents, you wrote: “They are their own people, they have their own lives, jobs, my other siblings to take care of. So I’m not resentful for that at all“-

– to me,  your parents having-their-own-lives means that they had their lives and you had yours, and your life was separate from theirs. Again, the theme is your Lonely experience in the context of your family. You added that you are not at all resentful for that. To me- it means that you no longer feel resentment or anger about them having their own lives that do not include much of you, but you used to. I assume that the anger you no longer feel has turned into the depression that you experience during the slumps.

You shared the following: “when I was 12 I went overseas for a couple of weeks without my direct family. I went to visit some extended family. When I came back my friends didn’t ask a lot about my trip. I was really disappointed but it also made me realise that unlike me, their lives hadn’t changed for the space of a couple weeks… I guess that experience made me..  feel like the people who were supposed to care (my friends) didn’t… realising how everyone around your is living their own life… it made an impact on me“-

– I boldfaced “their own life” which you wrote regarding your friends, as well as “their own lives” which you wrote regarding your parents. Seems to me that at 12, before returning from overseas, you trusted that your friends’ lives and your life were connected. After your return, you realized that their lives (like your parents’) are separate from yours, and the feeling of being Lonely is what impacted you.

In your original post in April, you wrote: “I’ve been feeling pretty shitty since I was 12. Nothing particularly happened“- seems to me that something particular did happen when you were 12: you returned from your overseas trip, and upon your return, you realized that you are Lonely: not only in the context of your family, but also in the context of your friends.

Science Daily. com has an February 2009 article titled “Loneliness Affects How The Brain Operates”. The Summary portion reads: “Social isolation affects how people behave as well as how their brains operate.. The research is the first to use fMRI scans to study connections between perceived social isolation (or loneliness) and activity in the brain. Combining fMRI scans with data relevant to social behavior is part of an emerging field examining brain mechanisms”-

fMRI stands for Functional magnetic resonance imaging. This technique detects changes in the blood flow in the brain. Increased blood flow in the brain happens when there is a neural activation. When an area of the brain is in use, blood flow to that region also increases. This technique then, detects what part of brain is activated and what part is not activated at a particular time.

Notice that the article defines Loneliness as Perceived Social Isolation (boldfaced, below), which means you can be with people but perceive yourself to be isolated/ alone.

Part of the article: “The research, presented February 15 at a symposium, ‘Social Emotion and the Brain,’ at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, is the first to use fMRI scans to study the connections between perceived social isolation (or loneliness) and activity in the brain… Researchers found that the ventral striatum—a region of the brain associated with rewards—is much more activated in non-lonely people than in the lonely when they view pictures of people in pleasant settings”.

– When we are lonely, part of the brain called “ventral striatum” gets de-activated (it gets less blood flow, less blood flow= less neural activation.  Wikipedia: “Functionally, the striatum coordinates multiple aspects of cognition, including both motor and action, planning, decision making, motivation, reinforcement, and reward perception”.

Back to your description of your slumps back in April: “I become incapable. I can’t study, I can’t focus, I become a recluse, all the purpose and enjoyment gets sucked out of my life”- this reads to me (a non-professional) like the deactivation of your ventral striatum: less blood flows into it, and as a result, the functions listed above in the Wikipedia’s entry diminish, including the motivation and ability to study  and to socialize, as well as the ability to feel pleasure (=reward).

anita