Posted by Peter on April 8, 1999, at 20:18:09
In reply to question for peter, posted by mila on April 7, 1999, at 14:01:45
> Peter, what kind of difficulties are you experiencing. And how are you managing to get through them?
Hey mila, well just getting out of bed is one difficulty. Concentrating and staying focused on the task of finding a suitable topic for my dissertation, getting a committee together, and doing research are other difficulties. What interferes with these things is my usual depressagenic thinking: "what's the use, this is going to fail, I can't go on, blah, blah, blah" (depressive thought is so boringly repetitive!)
Right now I'm not coping very well; every idea I have seems to run into a brick wall.What is useful for me (essential!) is seeing a therapist who I can really talk to and who helps me gain a sense of the big picture and reaffirm why the hell I decided to do this in the first place. It is so easy for me to get side-tracked and wind up completely depressed and hopeless. It is a continual effort to stay on task and focus on doing one thing after another without getting sidetracked into a depressed dead end. I wish I had more social support, but one of my depressive tendencies is to isolate,and anyway my friends don't understand why I'm having so much difficulty. I think having a group of people going through the same experience would probably be extremely useful to me.
Sorry I can't provide you with more inspirational advice, but right now it feels like I'm struggling to keep my head above water. Best of luck!
Peter
poster:Peter
thread:4323
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/19990401/msgs/4580.html