Dr. Haas

Photography by Mason Schlopy

If you’re reading this, know that you are not alone.  

This letter was supposed to be completed 6 months ago, then 5, then 4, then 3…  

As the days ticked by, I struggled with the guilt and anxiety of letting someone down, someone I’d made a promise to, and someone who was counting on me for help. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to write the letter, it was that I couldn’t. I was struggling through the deepest depression and toughest anxiety that I have been through in a long time and all the while trying to keep that mask of a professor who has it all together.   

I’ve struggled with depression and anxiety for most of my life. My teenage years were fraught with the typical teen angst but were also plagued with regular thoughts of self-harm. There was no one that I felt safe around in general, let alone safe enough to try to explain how I was feeling.   

That’s the thing about depression and anxiety, though: they convince you that you will never be good enough…which can keep you from even trying. They steal your energy and any semblance of self-confidence you might have. They will sabotage your efforts to do what is best for you. They will convince you that no one can be trusted with your feelings, especially if you’ve also experienced abuse. Depression and anxiety will convince you that everyone is like your abusers. The feelings of loneliness, of being alone, can be crippling. Just getting out of bed can be too much to manage. Continuing to breathe can feel like an impossibility. Managing any kind of actual workload is an impossibility. But if you’re reading this, you probably already know all of this.  

If you’re reading this, what you might not know is that there is a light. It might be a pinhole-size light, but it’s there. And it’s not even at the end of the tunnel. That light is all of us on this side of an episode trying to help you find your way. Trying to show you that there are people you can trust, people who are not only willing to help you, but truly want to help you. People who have been where you are and because they saw their own pinhole light, have found their way through. People trying to show you that there is so much more life to live with joy once you get there.  

I suffered through most of my adult life doing the best I could alone. It was only about 10 years ago that I started medication and about 5 years ago that I started regularly seeing a mental health professional. As a professor, I believe that it is part of my responsibility to be someone that my students can trust. I make it a point to tell my students that their mental health is just as important, if not more so, as their physical health. My students know that I go to therapy, that I struggle with depression and anxiety, that there will be days I have to cancel class because I just can’t. I’m open about my own struggles with my mental health so that my students who are also going through a tough time can see that they are not alone, so that I can be that light guiding them to the other side as so many have done for me.  

You are not alone. 

Dr. Haas, Syracuse University

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