Struggling to cope with school.

xsolaris
Mon, 09 Sep 2013 18:22:49 +0000

I’m seventeen, living in England, studying for AS levels and hoping to apply to both US and UK schools next year. I have Asperger syndrome, depression and anxiety/agoraphobia - or at least, that’s what my rather unhelpful doctor has said.

I’ve struggled with my mental health since I was eleven but it’s always been relatively manageable (excusing a period of time where I was bullied relentlessly by an ex-friend but this was five or six years ago and fairly irrelevant now). This was until last May, when halfway through a normal school day, I just snapped, left and couldn’t go back. This prevented me from sitting my AS exams and I’m now retaking the year with the intention of doing it better.

The thing that kept me out school and the end of last year was this constant feeling that I was trapped. Doing the same thing every day was driving me mad, I was intensely bored with it all and finding it extremely difficult to be told what to do all day long. I feel like this makes me sound insolent and lazy but it absolutely was not - I hated every second and wanted nothing more than to enjoy school again. But being in the building was making me incredibly panicky all of the time and I got to a point where I couldn’t physically force myself to go. I’ve never had so much of an issue with anxiety until then and I have no idea what triggered it.

The school were informed of my health issues and they’ve been wonderful in setting me up for the new year. I was really looking forward to going back. However, I’ve now been back five working days and have skipped three of them because I can’t shake the feeling that it’s not what I want to do anymore. So much so that I had a panic attack this morning at the thought of going. This is incredibly frustrating, because I want to get good A Levels and go to college more than I have ever wanted anything else and that used to be enough to spur me on but it doesn’t seem to be working anymore.

I see a psychiatrist on a semi-regular basis, but he’s never been much help - never given me an official diagnosis to work with or suggested any other anxiety/depression treatment than medication. I tried fluoxetine, which just made me constantly aggressive. I’m at a point where I just want to give up on it all but I don’t know what else I’d do.

Does anyone have any suggestions on how combat this? Any help is very much appreciated. Thank you.