7 ways having an undiagnosed mental illness affects your college life

Everyone is always advocating to eat right, do exercise and to be healthy. But when they talk about health they mainly refer to physical health. And while your physical health is important, mental health plays a good part of your health as well. People, mainly students, often neglect their mental health. And at times they may even be suffering from an undiagnosed mental illness and not even know it. Some are more severe than others but nonetheless it affects their lives.

1. Affecting school performance

Teens in school

Those who are in college know that the workload can be very overwhelming at times. Now imagine that but feeling like that all the time. And on top of that 10 times worse. You often find yourself wondering “Why am I not understanding the material like everyone else?” You begin to doubt yourself and start beating yourself up for it. You go to office hours, spend late nights studying, and you’re still struggling in class. The cycle of struggling continues. No matter what you do or the effort you put in it seems to never be enough.

2. Handling a Job

help wanted sign for teens

Many college students are not given the option to do school full time. They go back and forth switching between being a student and a worker. And it can be very overwhelming to juggle those two especially when you do not have the motivation for it. You struggle to get ready for work and just the thought of it exhausts you. You do it because you need to provide for yourself, but it is a constant struggle to keep up with school work and actual work. You give your all in both and always end the day tired.

3. Does my social life still exist?

party sign

Going to social gatherings is supposed to be fun, especially if you had a week full of homework and meetings. Then, it starts to feel like a struggle. You end up going out with friends/family thinking to yourself "maybe this is what I needed to feel better." And at first it works. You are in good company, you are mingling, having a conversation with everyone, and it hits you suddenly. It's like your social battery ran out. You begin to feel small, you overthink and don't want to be there anymore. You'd rather be at home instead, even if 5 minutes ago you were having the time of your life.

4. Simple tasks become challenges

empty bed

Waking up, taking a shower, cleaning your room, simple things like that for example are supposed to be easy for you. It is something you do every day. But those small simple tasks that you do start to become one of the most challenging things. Waking up begins to feel like such a chore, getting out of bed is a discomfort. And do you even bother to take a shower or get dressed? The last thing you want to do is leave your room. You just want to linger in your room a bit longer before the day begins.

5. Let the isolation begin

a girl alone

After class, you find yourself being alone a lot of the time. You slowly stop catching up with your friends and, you answer back to messages slow too. You begin to only ever leave your room to do 3 things, go to classes, the bathroom and to eat. Besides those three reasons theirs no reason to leave your room. As a matter of fact you don't want to leave your room. Your room is where you would rather be over anywhere or with anyone. Your room is your only happy place and your bed is your new best friend.

6. Cleaning? I don't know her

dirty room

As you lay in bed and spend most of your time in your room, it starts to gradually get messy. That wrapper that has been on your nightstand has been there for a week now. The bottles of water that you have under your bed do not exist to you if you cannot see it. Your favorite shirt is now the only shirt you wear now because real clothes feel so uncomfortable against your body. Which also means there is dirty laundry everywhere. Your plates and cups start to pile up because you don't even bother leaving your room anymore.

7. Hitting rock bottom

This is it. This is your all time low. You are looking at your room, the clothes everywhere, you dirty dishes piling up. You feel so exhausted and weak from waking up. You don't even go to classes anymore. You attempt to do the work, but you can't even seem to focus on it for more than a minute. You don't know why you feel like this. You don't want to feel like this. You don't like being this way. You want to explain to someone how you're feeling, but you're afraid they're not going to understand.

Conclusion

Dealing with an undiagnosed mental illness really takes a toll on your life. People battle with these struggles in their day to day lives. For many people, they think it's being dramatic or being lazy. But that's far from it. It's a constant battle for many students. Especially for students who don't even have an idea that they might have a mental illness but feel this way. They just learned to normalize it. A lot of students don't even have the resources to understand what they are feeling. They want to understand but don't know where to start. They feel overwhelmed, and it's an ongoing cycle to this never ending feeling for them.

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