How a school prank shattered my self-esteem for a decade

On living with depression and anxiety

Disclaimer and trigger warning: Depression. I may not represent everyone dealing with depression. People may react differently to antidepressants and therapy, but this is my story. I am not a professional; please consult one if you are experiencing something similar.

When I found out I had depression, I craved attention. I wanted to be seen. I wanted people to care about me by acting like I didn’t care about myself.

“Psychiatric Help” — GIF from Peanuts

It all started in sixth grade.

It was a few weeks before my birthday, and my best friends made a shared Twitter account with a group of people I barely knew. It had tweets that had comments about me — how my forehead was too big, how I rarely spoke in class, how my skirt looked like a banana peel, how I was ‘full of myself’ for being known as someone skilled in graphic design, and someone accused me of saying things I have never said, too.

It was a time when pranking was a trend on YouTube. The idea was to surprise me by the end of my birthday, that no one meant what they said because it was a simple ‘prank.’ But deep down, I knew that the people I barely knew who partook in it meant what they said, and they took it as an opportunity to make me a laughingstock.

This was a turning point in my life, where I let those comments define me.

The negative voices in my head that haunted me for the next ten years were echoes of what they said.

It was difficult for me to accept compliments from other people. No matter how kind they were to me, I would’ve always assumed they had malicious intentions — that they never meant what they said, that they were lying, they were saying all those things just to make me feel better, and that one day, they’re going to turn their backs on me. I made new friends as I grew older, but I couldn’t understand why they even wanted to talk to me.

That was how low I viewed myself.

Things started to escalate in high school. I had a close group of five. One of my closest friends was a social butterfly; I’ve always perceived her as someone everyone wanted to be friends with. She fit society’s beauty standards; she was kind and fun, had guys noticing her, and soon after, she became closer to different people. I would see her going to places after school with our mutual friends almost every day, but I wondered why I was rarely invited.

I took everything personally. Why wasn’t I invited? Was I not fun enough? Not pretty enough? Not talkative enough? I was always upset whenever I saw her going out with them, but not me. And yet, at the same time, I would reject her invitations to hang out because I felt like she didn’t really want me around; she just did it because I told her that sometimes I was upset. Our friendship became somewhat toxic because of my extremely low self-esteem.

In university, I started to notice similar patterns. But this time, it involved work. My friends and I survived the same classes and had similar extracurriculars, which made me feel like we needed to grow at the same pace. However, I would cry out of sadness whenever my friends got job offers, but I didn’t; I felt left out and betrayed. Even though I wanted to be happy for them, I couldn’t.

I was very fragile; I would cry when I woke up and before I slept. I would cry once every few hours, being reminded of how much of a failure I was — despite my good grades and achievements. I cried seeing anyone show any sign of happiness without my presence, I cried over my friend’s late responses, I excessively worried about not getting a good job, I questioned everyone who tried to be there for me, I hated myself for getting a B- on one exam, and so much more. And for about two weeks, I would only eat one snack for the whole day because I had lost my appetite.

I finally had the courage to seek professional help.

I went to a psychologist in my hometown. I still remember my voice and fingers trembling as I told them how I got here. I answered a lot of questions, and my results were quite severe. They told me I had depression, but I needed to go to the psychiatrist first, or else therapy wouldn’t work.

It took me a few extra weeks to get an appointment with a psychiatrist who specialized in depression. I was soon prescribed antidepressants to manage the ‘chemical imbalance’ that inhibited me from thinking normally.

I thought antidepressants were like psychedelics — they weren’t (or at least not for me). I wasn’t instantly happy. I felt extra fragile for the first three days every time they increased my dosage before I got slightly better. After a few months, though, I felt numb. I couldn’t process emotions as I wanted to, like having a good, normal cry when I’m sad. Instead, I just felt empty.

Once every two weeks, I would have a check-up with the psychiatrist. I was told I had cognitive distortions, which are, according to Peter Grinspoon, MD, on Harvard’s blog,

“…internal mental filters or biases that increase our misery, our anxiety, and make us feel bad about ourselves.”

Every session always started with a question such as “How are you feeling today? Did something upset you in the past two weeks?”

Whenever I told them there were a few moments in the past where I felt upset, they would vigorously type everything I said in my report.

But they barely typed anything when I told them stories of feeling better.

After missing a few appointments, I also found myself waiting for my psychologist and psychiatrist to reach out to me.

But they didn’t.

Talking to a professional is not like talking to a friend. I realized that I was just another patient. Like how they give you cough syrup when you have a sore throat, but they don’t really need to hear it when your throat’s normal now.

But that doesn’t have to be a bad thing!

They did their job by giving me medications and thought exercises, and it’s my responsibility to want to be better — to take my medications and practice my exercises regularly.

I was given ‘assignments’ to write down my thoughts as a part of my Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT). I had to make a table whenever I had negative thoughts: Date and time, situation, objective, response, consequence (with my feelings labeled from the Gottman Institute’s wheel of feelings), and alternate response. My psychiatrist didn’t even remember they gave me homework; that’s when I realized the homework was for myself.

An example would be:

• Situation: My best friend didn’t respond to my text. It has been four hours since then.
• Objective: To update my best friend on what happened today.
• Response: Maybe I did something wrong. I don’t think she wants to be friends with me anymore. I don’t think she cares about me.
• Consequence: I feel anxious, sad, unwanted, and forgotten.
• Alternate response: Can any facts back up my initial thought? Maybe she’s busy with work and just hasn’t had the time to check her phone.

They said that depression can’t be cured, but we can learn how to cope with it.

It has been almost two years since I was first diagnosed. I no longer take antidepressants anymore. The distorted thoughts are still there, but with practice and time, I’ve identified them better when they start to get irrational.

My psychologist taught me that whenever I feel consumed by intense emotions, what I should do is:

1. Distract myself. Let my emotions settle down. When I’m in an alarming state, the part of my brain that makes rational and objective judgments can’t do its job quite right. When I feel like my thoughts are racing, I quickly do something else completely unrelated, and I imagine these thoughts as pages in a book that I skip through.
2. Write. Writing helps me structure my thoughts. I would write the situation chronologically alongside all the detailed emotions I felt.
3. Reassess. Once I’ve calmed down, I can see the situation more clearly. I would highlight specific sentences where I realized I was acting irrationally. Is this an assumption or a fact? Is this worth taking action for? Or should I just let this thought pass? Most of the time, thoughts are just thoughts. I might not need to act on them.

I recently found that writing on Medium helps me assess things objectively, zooming out on the situation and reading it from a third-person perspective. Having my writings out in public makes me think twice about whether how I felt and acted towards a situation was rational.

And to anyone struggling with something similar — healing isn’t linear. I have had and still have slip-ups where I find myself falling back into old patterns once in a while.

But that’s okay.

What matters is that every day, we continue to try our best to be better.

Thank you for reading a piece of my life. If you enjoy my content, you can hit the follow button to show your support or buy me a cup of coffee! :)