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I've got a lot of things wrong with me, and everyone in my family knows it, as well as a few of my friends and closest teachers. I've struggled a lot with anxiety and depression, and I know I shouldn't be self diagnosing, but for a while I've been wanting to ask my therapist about the possibility of some form of mild agoraphobia or separation anxiety. There's been a lot going on this past five years, I've lost three grandparents, had my mom and a close family friend diagnosed with cancer (Both beat it, thank God, but it was still a lot to handle at the time), I've had a minor heart surgery with major complications, and two weeks ago I was one year free of an emotionally abusive boyfriend (something I do not recommend, especially not to anyone who already has anxiety and depression). I've been working on managing everything a lot, my doctor and I are avoiding medications for now, and despite everything I've gone through,I'm overall pretty happy, and I've come out with pretty good grades, which mean a lot to my parents, as they both fell short when they were in high school, and both regret settling. Of course, these last five years have complicated things a bit when it comes to school, and it stresses out my parents a lot. I used to do scarily well with my grades, I was in all accelerated classes through elementary and middle school, and even now in high school I've done well enough to take part in honors and AP classes. Due to a few factors, I've messed with my schedule through high school (I started to struggle a lot as I got into higher level/theoretical mathematics, so I dropped the honors courses and am now taking regular level to get past my graduation requirements; I dropped out of my AP Physics class this year, because the teacher didn't explain enough, and it was causing a real dip in my mood, so my guidance councilor made the decision to pull me out for my sake) but I'm still taking two AP classes this year, and another year of a world language, all for the sake of still standing out on college applications. I've already started filling out applications for a few places, and I far exceed what they look for when it comes to academics. And all of this was well and good, I was doing really well, school work was a breeze- until school started switching programs. Now we have an online grade book, as well as class forums (Genesis and Google Classroom, if you are aware of the programs) and my mother has access to EVERYTHING. All of my teachers have late work policies, and on top of that my guidance councilor has put a note in my personal file to accept late work with lighter consequences because of my anxiety. Yet a lot of times, my teachers put things in the grade book as zeros for me, because in order to grade the class they have to put it in as an assignment and grade it all at once. As well as that, we can submit work through the online forums, and the forums send you an email if something is missing. Of course, my mom signed up not only for the online grade book, but also the class forum. Once a week she gets an email telling her that I haven't turned something in, and once a week she yells at me for not doing my work. More often than not, I'm screamed at to the point of feeling physically ill, and a few times my parents of contemplated taking me to the hospital for the panic attacks induced by my own mother screaming at me about how I'm failing my classes and she's going to pull me out of every club and activity I participate in (things that I'm actually using to manage my anxiety; knitting, drama, choir, and horseback riding, productive outlets my therapist praises immensely) I know she cares about my mental health, she takes me to my clubs, she pays for therapy, she does a lot of thing a bunch of other parents would never do, and I'm so grateful for that, but she is the one causing the vast majority of my stress and my anxiety, she knows that bringing all this up is counter productive, she knows she's done wrong hours or days afterward, because she always apologizes, but I have no idea how to get her to just stop causing the stress in the first place. She knows I get things done in my own time, she watches me every semester as I pull my grades up from Fs to As and Bs, and I know I would be able to excel faster if she would just stay out of it and stop putting that added anxiety on my shoulders. I've actually pulled away from my family a lot because of this, and my friends don't always have quite the support I need when it comes to a lot of the day-to-day stuff I stress out about, they don't understand how little things affect me so much. I've been getting that awful feeling of loneliness a lot more often too, and though I've never been suicidal or intentionally self harmed, I find myself scratching my arms a lot more often(a subconscious self harming habit that I didn't realize was self harm until I was asked about it by my therapist). Sometimes I fear that all of this will push me to be suicidal some day, it's not the first time it's happened in my family.
Sorry about the long rant, I've just had a lot on my mind lately, and this was the only way I could think of to talk about all of it.
Sorry about the long rant, I've just had a lot on my mind lately, and this was the only way I could think of to talk about all of it.
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