(In two parts. I was just a tad over the character limit, so rather than hunt down extraneous characters, I just cut the interview in half. This isn't crazy-long, I promise!)
Bagels: Tell us a bit about yourself. I know that you're Canadian and you're a girl - both of which are just super weird.
Prax: Oh thank you. I enjoy being unique. Uhh.. What should I say? :I
Prax: I am Vietnamese. My parents immigrated to Canada because of the Vietnam War stuff. Uhhmm... grew up kind of poor, but I didn't really notice it until much later.
Prax: I was a quiet kid in school. But I was smart (or so I'd like to think). I resented the fact that I got "low marks" in participation because I didn't put my hand up as much as other kids.
Bagels: I don't think you're unique in being quiet, unfortunately
Prax: How dare you undermine my special snowflakeness???!!??
Bagels: sorry!
Prax: OKAY BACK TO MY STORY OF MY LIFE AND ME ME ME
Bagels: that's how I feel about these, too.
Bagels: Ooh! I almost forgot! Favorite games!
Prax: OH YES
Prax: Fire Emblem series, Ogre Battle, Romance of the 3 Kingdoms, Star Fox 64, Mario Kart 64 - because that's the only one I'm good at. lol. Civilization series
Bagels: Why do all girls love Fire Emblem? It's a theory I have.
Prax: Because it has a good mix of both genders. And you can micromanage relationships? XD kind of like SIMS.. but with BATTLING
Bagels: does liking Fire Emblem make me gay? Or is it the sex I have with other men?
Prax: plus not reliant on recation-time
Bagels: recation?
Prax: reaction XD
Bagels: ah. I was going to have trouble fixing that
Prax: Anyway, I was just a kid that did kid things. I don't remember anything that stood out in particular. I have a brother born a year younger than me, and it was fun having a lackey around. My family is actually pretty close and I get along with my siblings (have a younger sister too) really well. Maybe they help me be happy being a loner. lol
I was identified as "gifted" in grade 3 and got to attend fulltime gifted, but I felt really stupid compared to other kids there, since my parents aren't very fluent in English and couldn't help me in homework or assignments. SO I pretty much tried to be self-sufficient academically. Anyway, I did well in school. I was even able to make friends. Though I was never really attached to any of my friends. I think that might be partially social anxiety related. Whenever I moved away--and it was often--I never liked keeping in contact. I had no initiative for social stuff. And phoning people scare me. Authority figures scare me. Asking for help scares me. And I LIKED using my parents being "strict Asian parents" as an excuse to not have to go to parties or other social outings lol
You ever play SIMS? xD
Bagels: no, i haven't
Prax: I figure, my interaction with my siblings and many, many cousins was enough to keep my social meter fulfilled. Outsiders not needed! Buhh.. I feel like I'm talking too much. Let's see.. skip ahead. Anyway, I'm into art. Always liked art. But I was good at school too.
I always knew I was a bit of a social outcast. Or even if others didn't think that of me, I always felt a little different. Didn't want to join in. Didn't want to brother with high school drama. I just withdrew from that. I didn't really understand other people. At some points in high school, I wondered if I had some awareness or empathy problems. Or maybe even low levels of autism for not "getting" people. Maybe I was just trying too hard to be mature or cynical or something. Anyway, my interest in psychology and human behavior increased. So I went to university and get into a psychology program.
I get into a co-op program focusing on "behavior and cognition" (the other ones were abnormal psych and organizational psych)
I specialized it that, got a major in anthropology, and minored in linguistics. I did well. Yet through the whole thing, I really only made one friend. In the last year, I had some kind of panic. I don't even remember why, but I felt this sudden angst of having to graduate and be faced with the real world and getting some kind of career. I increasingly procrastinated through the years in uni so my sleep got increasingly broken packed with last minute cramming
Bagels: me too!
Prax: yeah, i developed the worst strategies for cramming! XD I pretty much could calculate how many pages i could read per hour, and how much prep time I would need to get an A. So it would come down to something like "30 pages an hour, 20 pages a hour if i need to take notes. I need maybe 2 hours to reread notes. In total, 6 hours. I can wake up at 2am, cram for 6 hours and get to the exam!"
Bagels: it's like a science!
Prax: YES. And I was good at it! But it was sooo baaaad for meee. I think it contributed to the depression..
My family got into a lot of financial problems during that time too. So I was working part time and cramming with stupidly and angsting about my future and I also needed to find a grad school because wtf would I get with a BSc in psych? I panicked and angsted and squandered all my time because that's what I trained myself to do. And I guess depression kills motivation. So, I realized "too late" that all my grad school options were closed by the time i decided to think about it. My one friend graduated a year earlier and was going into an occupational therapy program and said it was cool and that I would like it. I also helped her with her application, I think. XD
Okay, so all the deadlines were passed for other grad programs. I self-sabotaged. I could feel it. And I hated myself for it. So I made a last ditch attempt and just decided to apply to the OT program because well.. *shrug* why not. Don't wanna face the real world.
I get in and do well for the 2 years I'm there, don't really socialize, but I'm a nice person and probably come off as self-confident so it's okay... I get more and more miserable though as the program nears its end.
Money is still a huge concern and working at a really crappy retail job killed me more. Like this seems so trivial in comparison to what others go through, so I keep trying. And the final placements dont go well
I forget things constantly. New information doesn't seem to stick. I can hardly remember different patients or even my supervisors' names. Even now, i could not tell you what the names of any of my supervisors were. Lol
Bagels: I have huge trouble with names too, for some reason. Maybe not quite that bad...
Prax: it became embarrassing and humiliating for EVERYONE involved. Looks bad for the institution, the school, and me. So I had to take a leave of absence as I practically felt like I was blowing all my fuses dealing with this. And the constant meetings with my supervisor or school counsellors or coordinators.. every meeting drained me more and more. I had to tell people constantly how anxious I was feeling. That I felt like I had social anxiety, though you know, they'd say something like "but you seem like you're doing well, you don't have a phobia, etc." And I didn't know how to explain it to them. >_>
Bagels: that's pretty rough
Prax: Well, I eventually had to get some kind of help, like get a referral to see a counselor or psychiatrist and i got anxiety meds that made me kind of.. sleepy?
Bagels: which one(s)?
Prax: but uhm, even with them, i blew my placement. And had to take another leave of absence to see if I needed a longer time to recover and try again the next year.
Prax: I don't even remember which one! XD I even remember looking it up when I got them, but I don't know now. i have like.. nooo memory. Maybe i've left a sheet in my drawer.. lol yesss
Prax: what issss.. mylan-mirtazaphine?
Bagels: remeron! Did it make you crazy hungry?
Prax: what is co-citalopram? XD (that was the more recent one--I think after i switched meds)
Bagels: Celexa
Prax: I dont remember it doing anything except making me sleepy or kind of light headed
and the celexa.. i don't know. I can't say if it did anything either. LoL. It was a low dose though (10mg) and I felt almost no effects
Bagels: it's used off label for anxiety. Psychiatry is all about going off label
Prax: well, whatever it was supposed to do, it probably didn't do it enough, and I became one of those bad patients you always read about that didn't know how to comply to a regular medication schedule. >_>
and then I even tapered off my dosage myself because I didn't want to bother with asking for a refill. Not that I noticed a difference--but everyone else, don't do as I did in this circumstance! Follow your doctors' advice or at least let them know!
Bagels: A very special message from Prax
Prax: TOTALLY NON HYPOCRITICAL
I was SOOOOO close to being a healthcare professional, so.. I know some things! LOL
ALL THESE As AND YET WHAT DO I HAVE FOR IT EXCEPT 25K IN STUDENT LOANS
Bagels: You can't put a price on sorrow!
Prax: So I was diagnosed with clinical depression a couple of years ago and had weird crying spells in front of people and every time they would bring up something to do with "self esteem/worth" or were just being extra nice in a "how can I help you" way, I would break down. I don't even really get it. Why is being nice to me the thing that makes me explode? Maybe because it implied I was vulnerable and allowed to be, so I reacted. But I hated it.
I decided to cut my losses and just get the heck out of the program that I was never graduating from at this rate. They knew I had potential and kept doing all they could to help me continue, but I thought it only kept me in some kind of undecided purgatory. Knowing I was on a deadline to "get better" really killed every motivation for me to try to get better
I know I NEED deadlines. Being a procrastinator, I need them to get stressed enough o get things done. but yeah.. I don't think it applies to my mental health. >_>
Bagels: hard to put a timeframe on that...
Prax: Especially since it doesn't seem like something totally under my control. And maybe I resented that I had to "control" myself. I got tired of all the self-discipline and dragging myself through misery to live up to expectations and I just wanted to retreat and not be bothered. And my family didn't really understand. I think you have a gist of my personality. And it's not really one that comes off very much as really down.
it was very difficult for them to understand that I've always been really socially anxious and that I was depressed because "You were never like that" kind of things.
I've always been kind of.. the optimistic type. I don't brood or linger on bad memories (maybe because I can't remember them). And I was smart and didn't do all those "bad things", etc etc.
A lot of my family members came to think I'd be the one to do everything. Be the healthcare person, ask me for advice, help all the other kids be successes, etc. And I felt i let them all down and they couldn't understand why I couldn't be that person. And maybe if I just "tried harder" it would work
Bagels: that really makes thing worse
Prax: Yeah.. but I figure they dont know any better .. or they mean well so I feel bad feeling bad about their good intentions
Bagels: so you feel bad about feeling bad, so that makes you feel bad...
Prax: YES. There is so much cyclical guilt. Even the social anxiety stuff. Part of the guilt is knowing I am judging people about them judging me
Bagels: So what are you doing at present?
Prax: Oh well, after about a year of not being in school and most of my family hopefully has gotten over that fact, I am just working part-time as a cashier and doing art on the side and just generally wasting time
I had a lot of.. angst about wasted potential and my mom tries to let me know about her great disappointment about that
i am very defiant and glib about it though. i don't even know if that's the right strategy. LOL
Bagels: I have a small sample size, but the children of immigrants I know, the depressed ones (which is...all of them?), have a real problem getting sympathy from their parents
Prax: but humour and levity and a laissez faire attitude is all I have left. XD
Yeah, a lot of my relatives don't "believe" in mental health issues
Bagels: humor is supposed to be one of the best, most "mature" coping styles.
Bagels: Penis. Ha ha!
Prax: or believe in getting medication and seeing a specialist for them anyway
Bagels: see how mature that was?
Prax: I am lucky that I think very highly of wit and humour and try to use them as much as I can daily to embrace the absurdity of life. I come off as a hippy--sometimes a cynical hippy at times, and I wonder if that annoys other people, but I want to help people..
Bagels: My dad is very, very funny, in a dry, sarcastic way. I asked him where that trait came from (I was asking everyone. I had just started Freud's The Joke and Its Relation to The Unconscious). He said that he was an idealist, and he found humor in how the real world fell short of his ideal view of things
Prax: Ooh. that sounds similar to me
I was an idealist as a kid. I had some pretty.. high up there views and was kind of annoyingly self-righteous
Bagels: aren't all kids?
Prax: but I tempered that with what reality kept showing me. I was also very cynical though. LOL I don't even know why, but very early, I was already thinking that teenage love was foolish and wouldn't last. That people were naive or stupid etc. That humans sucked.
I think humour was the only way to balance these two outlooks.
Bagels: Tell us a bit about yourself. I know that you're Canadian and you're a girl - both of which are just super weird.
Prax: Oh thank you. I enjoy being unique. Uhh.. What should I say? :I
Prax: I am Vietnamese. My parents immigrated to Canada because of the Vietnam War stuff. Uhhmm... grew up kind of poor, but I didn't really notice it until much later.
Prax: I was a quiet kid in school. But I was smart (or so I'd like to think). I resented the fact that I got "low marks" in participation because I didn't put my hand up as much as other kids.
Bagels: I don't think you're unique in being quiet, unfortunately
Prax: How dare you undermine my special snowflakeness???!!??
Bagels: sorry!
Prax: OKAY BACK TO MY STORY OF MY LIFE AND ME ME ME
Bagels: that's how I feel about these, too.
Bagels: Ooh! I almost forgot! Favorite games!
Prax: OH YES
Prax: Fire Emblem series, Ogre Battle, Romance of the 3 Kingdoms, Star Fox 64, Mario Kart 64 - because that's the only one I'm good at. lol. Civilization series
Bagels: Why do all girls love Fire Emblem? It's a theory I have.
Prax: Because it has a good mix of both genders. And you can micromanage relationships? XD kind of like SIMS.. but with BATTLING
Bagels: does liking Fire Emblem make me gay? Or is it the sex I have with other men?
Prax: plus not reliant on recation-time
Bagels: recation?
Prax: reaction XD
Bagels: ah. I was going to have trouble fixing that
Prax: Anyway, I was just a kid that did kid things. I don't remember anything that stood out in particular. I have a brother born a year younger than me, and it was fun having a lackey around. My family is actually pretty close and I get along with my siblings (have a younger sister too) really well. Maybe they help me be happy being a loner. lol
I was identified as "gifted" in grade 3 and got to attend fulltime gifted, but I felt really stupid compared to other kids there, since my parents aren't very fluent in English and couldn't help me in homework or assignments. SO I pretty much tried to be self-sufficient academically. Anyway, I did well in school. I was even able to make friends. Though I was never really attached to any of my friends. I think that might be partially social anxiety related. Whenever I moved away--and it was often--I never liked keeping in contact. I had no initiative for social stuff. And phoning people scare me. Authority figures scare me. Asking for help scares me. And I LIKED using my parents being "strict Asian parents" as an excuse to not have to go to parties or other social outings lol
You ever play SIMS? xD
Bagels: no, i haven't
Prax: I figure, my interaction with my siblings and many, many cousins was enough to keep my social meter fulfilled. Outsiders not needed! Buhh.. I feel like I'm talking too much. Let's see.. skip ahead. Anyway, I'm into art. Always liked art. But I was good at school too.
I always knew I was a bit of a social outcast. Or even if others didn't think that of me, I always felt a little different. Didn't want to join in. Didn't want to brother with high school drama. I just withdrew from that. I didn't really understand other people. At some points in high school, I wondered if I had some awareness or empathy problems. Or maybe even low levels of autism for not "getting" people. Maybe I was just trying too hard to be mature or cynical or something. Anyway, my interest in psychology and human behavior increased. So I went to university and get into a psychology program.
I get into a co-op program focusing on "behavior and cognition" (the other ones were abnormal psych and organizational psych)I specialized it that, got a major in anthropology, and minored in linguistics. I did well. Yet through the whole thing, I really only made one friend. In the last year, I had some kind of panic. I don't even remember why, but I felt this sudden angst of having to graduate and be faced with the real world and getting some kind of career. I increasingly procrastinated through the years in uni so my sleep got increasingly broken packed with last minute cramming
Bagels: me too!
Prax: yeah, i developed the worst strategies for cramming! XD I pretty much could calculate how many pages i could read per hour, and how much prep time I would need to get an A. So it would come down to something like "30 pages an hour, 20 pages a hour if i need to take notes. I need maybe 2 hours to reread notes. In total, 6 hours. I can wake up at 2am, cram for 6 hours and get to the exam!"
Bagels: it's like a science!
Prax: YES. And I was good at it! But it was sooo baaaad for meee. I think it contributed to the depression..
My family got into a lot of financial problems during that time too. So I was working part time and cramming with stupidly and angsting about my future and I also needed to find a grad school because wtf would I get with a BSc in psych? I panicked and angsted and squandered all my time because that's what I trained myself to do. And I guess depression kills motivation. So, I realized "too late" that all my grad school options were closed by the time i decided to think about it. My one friend graduated a year earlier and was going into an occupational therapy program and said it was cool and that I would like it. I also helped her with her application, I think. XD
Okay, so all the deadlines were passed for other grad programs. I self-sabotaged. I could feel it. And I hated myself for it. So I made a last ditch attempt and just decided to apply to the OT program because well.. *shrug* why not. Don't wanna face the real world.
I get in and do well for the 2 years I'm there, don't really socialize, but I'm a nice person and probably come off as self-confident so it's okay... I get more and more miserable though as the program nears its end.
Money is still a huge concern and working at a really crappy retail job killed me more. Like this seems so trivial in comparison to what others go through, so I keep trying. And the final placements dont go well
I forget things constantly. New information doesn't seem to stick. I can hardly remember different patients or even my supervisors' names. Even now, i could not tell you what the names of any of my supervisors were. Lol
Bagels: I have huge trouble with names too, for some reason. Maybe not quite that bad...
Prax: it became embarrassing and humiliating for EVERYONE involved. Looks bad for the institution, the school, and me. So I had to take a leave of absence as I practically felt like I was blowing all my fuses dealing with this. And the constant meetings with my supervisor or school counsellors or coordinators.. every meeting drained me more and more. I had to tell people constantly how anxious I was feeling. That I felt like I had social anxiety, though you know, they'd say something like "but you seem like you're doing well, you don't have a phobia, etc." And I didn't know how to explain it to them. >_>
Bagels: that's pretty rough
Prax: Well, I eventually had to get some kind of help, like get a referral to see a counselor or psychiatrist and i got anxiety meds that made me kind of.. sleepy?
Bagels: which one(s)?
Prax: but uhm, even with them, i blew my placement. And had to take another leave of absence to see if I needed a longer time to recover and try again the next year.
Prax: I don't even remember which one! XD I even remember looking it up when I got them, but I don't know now. i have like.. nooo memory. Maybe i've left a sheet in my drawer.. lol yesss
Prax: what issss.. mylan-mirtazaphine?
Bagels: remeron! Did it make you crazy hungry?
Prax: what is co-citalopram? XD (that was the more recent one--I think after i switched meds)
Bagels: Celexa
Prax: I dont remember it doing anything except making me sleepy or kind of light headed
and the celexa.. i don't know. I can't say if it did anything either. LoL. It was a low dose though (10mg) and I felt almost no effects
Bagels: it's used off label for anxiety. Psychiatry is all about going off label
Prax: well, whatever it was supposed to do, it probably didn't do it enough, and I became one of those bad patients you always read about that didn't know how to comply to a regular medication schedule. >_>
and then I even tapered off my dosage myself because I didn't want to bother with asking for a refill. Not that I noticed a difference--but everyone else, don't do as I did in this circumstance! Follow your doctors' advice or at least let them know!
Bagels: A very special message from Prax
Prax: TOTALLY NON HYPOCRITICAL
I was SOOOOO close to being a healthcare professional, so.. I know some things! LOL
ALL THESE As AND YET WHAT DO I HAVE FOR IT EXCEPT 25K IN STUDENT LOANS
Bagels: You can't put a price on sorrow!
Prax: So I was diagnosed with clinical depression a couple of years ago and had weird crying spells in front of people and every time they would bring up something to do with "self esteem/worth" or were just being extra nice in a "how can I help you" way, I would break down. I don't even really get it. Why is being nice to me the thing that makes me explode? Maybe because it implied I was vulnerable and allowed to be, so I reacted. But I hated it.
I decided to cut my losses and just get the heck out of the program that I was never graduating from at this rate. They knew I had potential and kept doing all they could to help me continue, but I thought it only kept me in some kind of undecided purgatory. Knowing I was on a deadline to "get better" really killed every motivation for me to try to get better
I know I NEED deadlines. Being a procrastinator, I need them to get stressed enough o get things done. but yeah.. I don't think it applies to my mental health. >_>
Bagels: hard to put a timeframe on that...
Prax: Especially since it doesn't seem like something totally under my control. And maybe I resented that I had to "control" myself. I got tired of all the self-discipline and dragging myself through misery to live up to expectations and I just wanted to retreat and not be bothered. And my family didn't really understand. I think you have a gist of my personality. And it's not really one that comes off very much as really down.
it was very difficult for them to understand that I've always been really socially anxious and that I was depressed because "You were never like that" kind of things.
I've always been kind of.. the optimistic type. I don't brood or linger on bad memories (maybe because I can't remember them). And I was smart and didn't do all those "bad things", etc etc.
A lot of my family members came to think I'd be the one to do everything. Be the healthcare person, ask me for advice, help all the other kids be successes, etc. And I felt i let them all down and they couldn't understand why I couldn't be that person. And maybe if I just "tried harder" it would work
Bagels: that really makes thing worse
Prax: Yeah.. but I figure they dont know any better .. or they mean well so I feel bad feeling bad about their good intentions
Bagels: so you feel bad about feeling bad, so that makes you feel bad...
Prax: YES. There is so much cyclical guilt. Even the social anxiety stuff. Part of the guilt is knowing I am judging people about them judging me
Bagels: So what are you doing at present?
Prax: Oh well, after about a year of not being in school and most of my family hopefully has gotten over that fact, I am just working part-time as a cashier and doing art on the side and just generally wasting time
I had a lot of.. angst about wasted potential and my mom tries to let me know about her great disappointment about that
i am very defiant and glib about it though. i don't even know if that's the right strategy. LOL
Bagels: I have a small sample size, but the children of immigrants I know, the depressed ones (which is...all of them?), have a real problem getting sympathy from their parents
Prax: but humour and levity and a laissez faire attitude is all I have left. XD
Yeah, a lot of my relatives don't "believe" in mental health issues
Bagels: humor is supposed to be one of the best, most "mature" coping styles.
Bagels: Penis. Ha ha!
Prax: or believe in getting medication and seeing a specialist for them anyway
Bagels: see how mature that was?
Prax: I am lucky that I think very highly of wit and humour and try to use them as much as I can daily to embrace the absurdity of life. I come off as a hippy--sometimes a cynical hippy at times, and I wonder if that annoys other people, but I want to help people..
Bagels: My dad is very, very funny, in a dry, sarcastic way. I asked him where that trait came from (I was asking everyone. I had just started Freud's The Joke and Its Relation to The Unconscious). He said that he was an idealist, and he found humor in how the real world fell short of his ideal view of things
Prax: Ooh. that sounds similar to me
I was an idealist as a kid. I had some pretty.. high up there views and was kind of annoyingly self-righteous
Bagels: aren't all kids?
Prax: but I tempered that with what reality kept showing me. I was also very cynical though. LOL I don't even know why, but very early, I was already thinking that teenage love was foolish and wouldn't last. That people were naive or stupid etc. That humans sucked.
I think humour was the only way to balance these two outlooks.
