I know how you feel anima241
I use to be depressed for 2.5 years cause I didn't have much friends in uni, let alone them talking to me that
much, in other words I went through a social stagnation. At the beginning of the year, I just lost all motivation to do
things and even felt like giving up on life at times.
Luckily I told my parents about my depression and my dad helped me by bringing me to what they called
"Toastmasters".
What is toastmasters? It's a social club where you give speeches about whatever you want and some of the people
there give you positive feedback on it and tell you nicely on where you need to improve. It's a friendly and
positive environment and the people there make you feel welcome. It really helped give me the confidence to speak again
and has really helped revived my social life. It costs only $80 AUS from where I'm from, but you can come back as a
guest many times as you want. Toastmasters is all over the world.
Here's the website: http://www.toastmasters.org/
Don't worry if you don't meet the age requirement, it doesn't stop you from coming back as a guest many
times does it :P lol this guy's wife in my club comes back as a guest many times.
Anyways, you might not believe this but I recovered from my depression a few months back. I finally decided to leave uni
in mid year, cause I didn't like the course I was doing in the first place and I did pretty bad in it as well and
well as having some personal problems as well. Never made it pass the first year in uni though T_T.
I've decided to go to college or what they called TAFE in Australia and do "I.T.". I wasn't too
confident about making friends there as well. But 2 weeks before the start of the semester, I was determine to at least
try. I had good peperation. I hanged out with the friends I'd already had and tried talking to my contacts on msn
that I'd hardly talk to. I took risk, lots of risk. I'd even planned what I wanted to say on paper by writing
it out and try to predict what other people were going to say and how'd they'll respond to it and rehersing it
a few times and tried memorising it.
Finally, TAFE started, I wasn't too confident when going on, but I tried to look confident, be myself, and took
risks. I'd even tried smiling and laughing a lot even at little things.
My plan was just to hang out with a small group and kinda tagged along and tried to be involved in there conversation
sometimes.
After a few days in TAFE, I felt happy and was on a high, almost everyone that I'd talked to talked to me, and
people were coming up to me and wanted to engage in conversations with me. I felt really happy and relieved for the
first time in 2.5 years. And even started to express emotions naturally which I didn't use to do before.
My studies improved a lot, although my course was really easy, we'd just learned about the basics of a computer
both hardware and software.
Now thinking back a few months ago, I had exceeded all my expectations. Now I'm almost friends with everyone at my
course and I do talk heaps with confidence, now even some of my jokes are funny and I made the class laugh a few times.
I've even could hang around 2 groups and change around them if I wanted to. The last time that happened was back in
year 9 for me a few years back. I'd started to appreciate the little things in life and thats what made me feel
happier.
Overall I finally feel happier and relieved and still can't believe I've actually gone this far.
Though, I might still have problems, at least I'm doing something about it. I don't make that many excuses as
I use to. I'm always asking people I trust for help and advice in my problems. It's not being dependent on
them, it's just that if you can't find anyway to solve it or unsure about your method you should ask them for
advice. I think of it as a learning experience so if the problem happens again I know what to do and I can help people
with my experiences as well.
So to summarise what I just said:
My transition from being depressed to happy and relieved was because:
-I went to Toastmasters, they made me feel welcome and it gave me the encouragement to start speaking with confidence
again.
-I took risks.
-I tried showing my emotions more, both happy and sad ones.
-I had peperation, 2 weeks prior to the start of my college semester, by hanging out with friends, talking to friends
online and trying different stuff.
-I'd planning on paper and reherse what I was going to say.
-I ask people for help, no shame in that.
-I appericate the little things in life and thats what makes me happier.
I know this sounds deep and you're thinking like WTF all of a sudden this guy talks about this stuff. But I'm
just trying to pass on my experiences and let people know that there is hope that things can change for the better no
matter what. Remember don't make any excuses and always keep trying and don't be embarrassed to ask people for
help thats what some of them are there for (e.g. counsellors, people in this forum :) )
I hope this helps you anima241.
