بازسازی هویت من: خودمردم نگاری اکتشافی در مورد افسردگی و اضطراب در دانشگاه Reconstructing my identity: An autoethnographic exploration of depression and anxiety in academia

Introduction I’m meant to be relaxing. He has messaged me to ask if I’m relaxing. But I made the stupid decision to check emails. And there it was, an email about modules and problems with students. And things that need sorting quickly. And things that I can’t work out an answer to. And I write a response to that email saying I’ll do whatever needs to be done and that I’m on leave today but I know it’s urgent. Why do I feel like shit because I can’t fix the problem? Or that I can fix the problem by saying I’ll do it but then knowing that I shouldn’t be trying to fix all problems? I just want to watch telly and chill out. And it’s my day off. And it’s his birthday. And I wonder if I’m close to burnout because yesterday I cried in the office when no one was looking. ( July, 2016) Eight weeks after I wrote the diary entry above, I called a doctor and told him I thought I might be suffering from depression. I had done the online test. The test said I was. I knew I was. The doctor asked me a few questions and confirmed that I needed to come into the surgery as soon as possible. It took a week to get an appointment. When I eventually walked into the doctor’s office, desperately unhappy, I barely knew who I was and what I was doing. My shoulders were permanently slumped. I did not care about my appearance. I felt numb: I’m an academic at a university. I think I’ve done too much.Sent away with a prescription for anti-depressants and the recommendation of counselling (privately if I could afford it, or else wait six months), I trundled home and continued to think about work. I took a week’s holiday, and spent every day running over and over what I needed to do at work, and how I was going to do it. My brain never switched off. I woke up night after night at 2 am like clockwork, checking my work emails on my mobile phone. When I returned to work the Monday after my holiday, I spent most of the morning steading myself. I was at the top of a ladder swaying violently from side to side, just waiting to lose my grip. Every couple of minutes, I felt what I can only describe as a “whooshing” go right through my stomach. Perhaps it was fear. Perhaps it was part of me, the healthy, strong, focussed me, leaving my body to find a home elsewhere. In any event, it only took one e-mail – one tiny message asking me to do something – to send me flying into the abyss. Goodbye ladder. Hello three months of sick leave. I was fortunate to receive six free counselling sessions through my university almost straight away. In the early days, I swung between two equally hideous states. I either cried angrily, insisting to my counsellor that I had to get back to work immediately. Or I was silent, eyes dotting around the room glimpsing posters on suicide prevention and mindfulness trying to work out how on earth I got here and how I could wake myself up from the nightmare this clearly was. One day, my counsellor took a small wicker basket full of contrasting stones and pebbles from behind her, and placed it on the table between us. “This is your life”, she said. “Each stone represents someone in your life. Take your time. Which stone represents, let’s say, your partner?”. I stared at those rocks. I kept staring. I heard the soft ticking of the clock on the wall as I stared some more. Minutes went by. More staring. “There’s no right or wrong answer. Just go for what you feel is best”, my counsellor utters soothingly. Panic sets in. I want to pick one but I know in my heart whichever stone I choose will be a lie. I do not want to lie. I want this to mean something. And then it dawns on me and I say it out loud. “I can’t pick a stone that represents my partner”. And, triumphantly, with a sense of relief, “That’s because he doesn’t come to work with me”. A pause hangs in the air. My counsellor looks at me with sadness, and gently but robustly says “Elaine, I didn’t say the bowl was about work. I said it was about your life”.