August 2nd, 2025
The summer is stupid hot. Daily temperature doesn't go below 35-40°C (95-105°F) and I'm confined to sit in the room. Mobile internet doesn't work properly in Rostov anymore: it's been jammed by the military for a couple months now (Rostov is the closest big city to Ukraine). I download everything and screenshot all important info before going out.
Aside from physical signal jamming, most of the Internet is now blocked in Russia. I need a VPN to access almost any foreign website. Usually, that’s not an issue, but I can’t play Splatoon on my Wii U anymore because Pretendo is blocked. It’s not that they targeted it specifically, of course — they are blocking entire server networks and this was a random casualty. I need to route all my traffic through a proxy to play Splatoon now, which is annoying.
To everyone who asked me how this year of my math degree went for me — I developed an anxiety disorder and I'm in therapy for panic attacks now. My previous session with the therapist canceled because she didn't have internet; when we were finally able to have a call, she apologized and explained the situation, and I replied with "Don't worry, I'm from Rostov, here we don't have internet for days". She got excited: "See, I'm not used to the internet not working, so I panic, but you learned how to deal with it and developed tolerance. You are going to learn how to do the same with your anxiety!"
This year in university was honestly going really well for me in comparison to the previous one. I got much better at planning and organizing, so I missed less deadlines. One of the huge highlights of the year was a subject in which we studied the assembly language, memory management with C and Unix. Writing programs in assembly turned out of be one of the most fun things I've done in the university, I was even praised by the prof. Another highlight was my course paper, I chose a very interesting topic and got lucky with the supervisor, who praised me on my work, too. I'll write my graduation paper on the same topic and with the same supervisor. It all went relatively well, until probability theory has started.
I don't want to go into a lot of detail, but the prof for probability was the worst professor I ever encountered. At first he all of a sudden publicly humiliated me in front of the class — told me I'll be a failure, not a mathematician, and that I should become a garment factory worker instead — among other insults. I haven't lost my composure and wasn't upset — I felt the support of all of my classmates and I thought to myself: this person holds a position of authority, and if he lashes out at a defenseless student like that, I’ve already won, because he’s exposing himself as a truly awful person.
I started recording him after the incident. He insulted a bunch of other students later and I have it recorded on audio, not like I can do a lot with it, though. Although I was taking it well at first, I started dreading attending his classes more and more every time. He really did make my semester hellish. In the end, every time I had to interact with him, I had to do grounding techniques before talking to him to calm myself down. I had two huge meltdowns after having to interact with him, one of them after he failed me on the final exam and called me a loser. I'll have to re-do the probability exam in September and the mere thought of having to speak to this person again sends shivers down my spine.
Exam seasons are always extremely stressful events for me, but this time it was even worse, thanks to this professor. I am more resilient than letting one shitty teacher push me into a mental health crisis like that: he was more like a cherry on top rather than the root cause, I've had some more stuff destabilizing me during the past couple of months. I think that after spending a long time under intense stress, I began to feel generally unsafe and started instinctively looking for threats in everything, which triggered severe health anxiety. I'm on the break for a while already, but my anxiety is just starting to calm down. The world feels dangerous and I don't feel safe in my body anymore.
I think it's very ironic that I have health anxiety, because I know I live a very healthy lifestyle. Recently I went to the hospital and had many tests, all came back perfect — my doctor told me I'm a cosmically healthy girl and she'd never seen such perfect results. She also said that I have remarkably high level of iron — much better than an average woman would have. Meanwhile I'm thinking that I'm going to die any second...
I told a few people in my circle that, after realizing I couldn't manage my new condition on my own, I decided to seek professional help. Some of them responded with skepticism, immediately saying they didn’t really believe in its effectiveness. That was insensitive at best; the decision wasn't easy for me and I’d rather not be put in a position where I have to explain that I searched for a therapist who practices cognitive-behavioral therapy — a method that is scientifically proven to improve the quality of life for those dealing with anxiety. I had done a lot of research on how to apply this method on my own, so I was already doing many of the exercises I'm now doing with the therapist. But I lacked structure and the most important part of the treatment — exposure.
The work of therapist is to create controlled situations that trigger anxiety and guide the person how to cope with it, eventually retraining the brain to stop reacting with fear. I had tried to practice exposure on my own before seeking help, but I didn't know how to do it in a way that wouldn’t just trigger a panic attack. Without proper guidance, it's hard to do this effectively or consistently, which is why working with a therapist makes a big difference.
Despite all of that, I have a lot of certainty that I'll deal with my issues and live a good life. I still think of myself as of a happy person. I can experience a panic attack, but then I hug my significant other and feel happy. I do my hobbies and feel happy. I spend time with my friends doing physical activities and feel happy. I try to see the whole situation as an opportunity to learn the new skill of managing anxiety in relatively friendly conditions, rather than as a random hardship I was burdened with.
A couple of days ago I received an email asking about my quest toward the mindset described in the Happiness Manifesto. I replied that I've been severely depressed and borderline suicidal since 12 years old — I think it had to do a lot with the fact that I had to live through a chain of traumatic events. Things started to shift to a more positive direction toward the end of my teenage years. There's a journal entry from that time that reads something like "ah shit, I can feel another depressive episode approaching me. gotta do something about it quickly, I don't want to be so miserable again". So I searched for ways that made me feel better.
Recently, I was told about a method for dealing with stress: provide a person with measurable feedback, such as their pulse rate, and give them the task of lowering it on their own. The person can't control it directly, but they find ways to influence it. I think I did something like that, but with depression, and I succeeded. I don't know how much of it was due to my conscious work versus me naturally springing back to my true self after coping with traumas, but that's what happened — I learned to enjoy the world around me, be grateful for the small things and feel happiness that comes from within, not from external sources.
In the end, how you experience life is a representation of what you believe about it. I think it's simply suboptimal to feel down. You can do everything in your life better if you're feeling good. It's not an ideological question or a question of the meaning of life. It's something that the person can control to a certain extent and it makes no sense not to try.