A few weeks ago I suffered an extremely bad mental crash of which the extent surprised me, so this blog entry is my way of retracing the steps I took and the gradual progress that it took for me to recover within a week.
Timeline of Events
Before the incident
I was a little stressed that week since there was a practice presentation run on Tuesday, where I learnt I had to rewrite presentation slides from scratch for a one-day conference on Friday.
Tuesday’s incident seemed to have thrown me off sufficiently for me to forget taking my regular morning medication (including my antidepressants) on Wednesday morning. I was able to duck back home to take my medication after a training session in the morning. From past experience, forgetting to take my medication is a pretty clear indicator of a shaken/unstable state.
That same week the household was preparing to host a big party on Saturday evening, so most days that week were generally noisier and chaotic.
Friday 20/06/2025 – The Incident
That day there was a one-day conference. I had to rush myself a bit that morning since I needed to catch a train to get there.
For those who don’t know me, I’m hard-of-hearing, and generally for conferences I require the speaker to wear a microphone that either transmits audio directly to my hearing aid (as I can’t hear very well over distances) or to my phone/laptop so that I can get automated captioning, which is useful for when I’m tired from listening to others.
The invited speaker mistook my microphone as the one that broadcasts to the whole room, of which is not the first time someone had incorrectly assumed, but I hadn’t figured out how to deal with this misconception.
After morning tea, some other person (obviously an academic, but not part of the initial group of organisers) took the reins to introduce the next PhD student without giving me an opportunity to outfit the next speaker with the microphone.
I was somewhat frozen at that point, since the speaker had already started and the majority of the audience was paying attention to the speaker. It didn’t seem right to interrupt, so I went back to my seat and ended up tuning out until lunch time. The upset feelings were festering pretty badly so I left the venue at the start of lunch period (around 12pm).
Upset is probably an understatement. I don’t want to say “triggered” out of respect to those with legitimate C-PTSD, for example, but it’s safe to say that the incident hit a cluster of existing fears/insecurities in my psyche:
- Feeling abandoned/alone even though within company
- Needing someone to help me, but no one else noticing and responding
- Realising that my hearing loss really was something keeping me from “being” normal, and from participating normally.
I got home, treated myself to an AB/HSP, and spent the afternoon doomscrolling and napping, since there was so much noise in my head. That noise finally subsided at around 9-10pm, and I thought of retiring to bed early, but couldn’t sleep until 1am because whilst the noise had subsided, the very angry voice in my brain was coming up with profanities and insults that I wanted to yell at select people.
To attempt to channel some of that energy into something constructive and helpful, I wrote a LinkedIn post making achievable recommendations for hard-of-hearing people.
Saturday 21/06/2025
I woke up that morning and my brain was still screaming. I realised I needed two things: to go for a walk, and to have a journalling session.
(For context, I only really journal when I have a lot of feelings/thoughts/emotions that I need to process, it’s usually not a daily thing)
So I did just that, took a walk around the lake, and halfway there was a picnic table/BBQ area where I sat down to journal. The whole session took 2-3 hours because I kept procrastinating on facing my feelings, but I managed to retrace most of my steps from the past week and as a result I felt better. I ended up napping that afternoon.
That evening was my landlady’s partner’s 60th birthday celebration. After hiding out in my bedroom my landlady ushered me out and I had a good time chatting with my housemates and other guests. Even though I had recovered a bit the event did strain my mental reserves a little.
Sunday 22/06/2025
I don’t remember anything about that day, nor have I written anything down. I can only assume it was a typical uneventful Sunday “let my brain do what it wants” day since Saturday was taken up by things I “had” to do.
Monday 23/06/2025
I realised I was having anxiety opening my work laptop. After a bit of focused deliberation I managed to get it open.
I also realised I was having anxiety in wanting to go outside. Nevertheless, I managed to walk out to ALDI and do some shopping, but throughout the walk I was mentally absorbed and mostly talking to myself the whole time, even while shopping at ALDI.
Tuesday 24/06/2025
I had a scheduled blood donation that morning where unfortunately my blood was low in iron, so a donation didn’t happen, but I used this as an opportunity to ease myself onto campus and paying attention to my feelings of anxiety and panic. I managed to sneak into my office without anyone noticing, but there was a low feeling of constant panic while I was sitting in my office. I had to close the door and sit in my office, pacing around a bit, to just feel out the panic and reassure myself.
That evening I took my regular kava capsule, and realised that it helped wash away some anxiety and panic, making me feel more confident in confronting future anxieties. Was also recommended by Lewis to take more going forwards.
Wednesday 25/06/2025
Wednesday is usually my WFH day, but I have nothing on record in my journal. However given that my regular supervisor meeting was on Thursday and cut short to 30 minutes, I realised I wanted to properly debrief my supervisors. So I spent a stretch of that day writing up everything in the shared meeting document.
Thursday 26/06/2025
I was pretty nervous walking into my supervisor meeting but they all listened, and there was no malice. My primary supervisor waved to me like usual.
The last thing on that list was working through my emails, given my presumed Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria. I procrastinated a lot but managed to get it done before going home.
Other Thoughts
The thing I wanted to avoid the most was blowing up at someone else, because that’s what I’ve otherwise always done: bottle up my emotions until things hit a tipping point. This behaviour comes from my mother, and it’s safe to say that older Asian culture does not do conflict resolution in the same way that emotionally healthy (presumably Western) people do. There’s a lot of implied language and actions that have to be interpreted correctly, but for someone like me, raised by Asian parents but in Western culture where things are markedly and subtly different (on top of my being hard-of-hearing and probably mildly autistic), I did NOT figure this out for a very long time.
If anything I’m lucky I’m in an environment where I could manage my own craziness and have the flexibility to assert my own space and control my own actions, without being overly beholden to other commitments.
One other thing that also helped me that week was that I had some external contract work (proofreading maths textbook material) with an approaching deadline that gave me something to do, and my brain off work which would’ve otherwise given me significant anxiety in approaching.
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