What happened? My background
Posted: Tue Dec 13, 2016 2:59 am
Hello again! So as I said yesterday I am back with some more time and I want to write something about myself. My name is Tiberiu, I am 32 years old and I am from Romania. My problems with depression, anxiety and panic attacks started about 2 years ago but I am still not sure exactly how or why. At present time I am a biologist working as a researcher and I study amphibians and reptiles, but mostly snakes.
Looking back at my life I see some major traumas that I have not managed to overcome: the death of my grand-grandfather when I was only 3, the death of my cousin (who was only a few month old) only a few month after my grand-grandfather had passed away, almost drowning in a lake at the age of 4, almost choking to death with some candy around the age of 6, a very serious car accident during high-school (I was not the driver) and 2 very serious snake bites during faculty. My PhD (which I finished in 2015) has also been a major source of stress for me. Another problem I am having trouble dealing with is social anxiety: because of my interest in amphibians and reptiles I have always been viewed as weird and marginalized. Almost all my life I have avoided talking about what I do and what I like. In high-school I mostly gave up on my interest for amphibians and reptiles in order to be treated as "normal". Socially my life has been up and down - I had a lot of friends before going to school and I felt like my world was torn apart the moment everyone started going to school, I lost most of my friends and only had 2-3 friends during school. In high-school I had a lot of friends again only to be separated when everyone left for college and I haven't recovered eversince. Not only that but I feel that my life has been on a downward spiral: I started loosing more and more friends and at the moment I only have my girlfriend and 0 friends or social contact; I am struggling alot to make new friends but it just seems very very hard and I feel so alone.
I think that's about it, thank you for reading!
Looking back at my life I see some major traumas that I have not managed to overcome: the death of my grand-grandfather when I was only 3, the death of my cousin (who was only a few month old) only a few month after my grand-grandfather had passed away, almost drowning in a lake at the age of 4, almost choking to death with some candy around the age of 6, a very serious car accident during high-school (I was not the driver) and 2 very serious snake bites during faculty. My PhD (which I finished in 2015) has also been a major source of stress for me. Another problem I am having trouble dealing with is social anxiety: because of my interest in amphibians and reptiles I have always been viewed as weird and marginalized. Almost all my life I have avoided talking about what I do and what I like. In high-school I mostly gave up on my interest for amphibians and reptiles in order to be treated as "normal". Socially my life has been up and down - I had a lot of friends before going to school and I felt like my world was torn apart the moment everyone started going to school, I lost most of my friends and only had 2-3 friends during school. In high-school I had a lot of friends again only to be separated when everyone left for college and I haven't recovered eversince. Not only that but I feel that my life has been on a downward spiral: I started loosing more and more friends and at the moment I only have my girlfriend and 0 friends or social contact; I am struggling alot to make new friends but it just seems very very hard and I feel so alone.
I think that's about it, thank you for reading!