Hello!
This post will be a bit longer and I’ll try my best to explain everything. I also apologize if this isn’t the place for something like this but I was hoping that someone here might have the same or similar issue and maybe an advice. Bear with me!
I’m currently enrolled at the university of philology and my major is japanese language, literature and culture. I’m also learning greek as a side language.
As of right now, I’m 4th year student. However, there’s one huge, and I mean HUGE, issue that’s been holding me back ever since the beginning. It goes back to my teenage years, when I started feeling depressed and anxious but eventually got out of it when I was 3rd year high school student. I felt pretty confident, I didn’t really have an issue with anxiety and things were going pretty well at the time. However, COVID hit my last year of high and that’s when things went downhill again.
Classes in uni were online and joining an online session gave me anxiety and sometimes borderline panic attacks. I felt sick from it. On top of that, I didn’t really get to meet anyone, and even if I did, I couldn’t make a meaningful connection or get closer with them, stay in contact and make an actual friend. Groups eventually started to form and I was lowkey left alone. I made 2-3 friends later on but they all ended up dropping out. I’m still friends with them though, so I’m really thankful for that.
But all of it led to me feeling isolated and miserable. I rarely went to any class, and when I would go it would usually be classes about history or literature. And even then, anxiety would kick in, I felt judged, alone and weird, scared of talking or doing anything. It got to the point I went home couple of times before the class even started. I was, and still am, even more afraid to go to the most important one - japanese language class.
This led further to me studying everything on my own without any class notes or professor lectures. I passed most of the things and did pretty well on the exams, I even enjoyed being at home and doing everything the way that felt the best for me, considering everything was paced how I wanted it. But, I slowly realized that, even though I passed exams and did fine there, my language speaking skills and overall comprehension outside of exam/class material environment, was pretty bad. I can’t really speak it. I can’t really understand if it’s spoken too fast.
What made it worse was that some professors were yelling or getting mad when the student didn’t know something or when it was hard to understand (happened on greek class) which caused my fear of making mistakes spike up significantly. I constantly worry about saying something wrong, doing something wrong or making a big mistake that when I should’ve known something since I’ve been studying the language for 3 years now. There’s this constant fear that I’ll end up sounding stupid and that I’ll end up being judged or isolated even more. Especially since I did not go to almost any class (they weren’t mandatory), and not the pressure piled up even more cause “what if the professor says something, what if they wonder where was I this whole time, what do I even say, what if they comment on it, what if students comment on it, what if I get judged, what if I embarrass myself, what if this, what if that” it’s a constant stream of negative thoughts that I don’t know how to get out of. I truly believe I picked the wrong path and it kills me even more.
The reason I didn’t quit and continued, even though this just seems like something that wasn’t ever for me and I chose it without much thinking, is because my parents kept telling me I should continue and it wouldn’t be worth quitting now, with what I honestly agreed. I don’t want to quit now since I went through the majority of it but then again the longer I’m here, the more miserable it becomes.
My question is, have any of you here dealt with something similar and how did you manage to go through it? What were the things that helped you and such stuff. I know many of you will say therapy, but I’m curious what other methods or solutions there are. How do I overcome this cycle and how do I start mot caring what others may or may not think of me? I genuinely feel so lost and depressed from all of this lol.
Anyway, if you read this whole thing, thank you and I’m sorry for wasting your time on my worries and problems. I truly appreciate any advice, any feedback and any information from any of you.
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