I'll preface this by saying this is partially me venting and partially asking for advice. I guess its hard for me to really explain what's going on without going into all this backstory so sorry about how long and rambly this is. 

I just took a leave of absence from law school because of a severe anxiety/depressive episode before my first semester finals (will have to restart next fall) and have been back home with my mother for the past week. I feel defeated and completely devoid of all energy and motivation and I guess I'm wondering what others have done to climb out of mental holes like this? I have nine months to fix this. 

I guess it all started when I was a teenager. I had pretty bad IBS as a kid and no one was able to diagnose it for years so whenever I would get really bad stomach cramps, I would wind up having an anxiety attack. The flare ups would go on for months at a time and would usually leave me somewhat depressed and scared to go about my daily life/interact with people. I did well in school but I thought something was seriously wrong with my body and I was 17 when I finally got diagnosed with just IBS which was a massive relief. Since then, the IBS has been pretty mild because it was linked to my stress levels and my own stressing over the stomach pains. Without stressing over it, the pain virtually never happens. I'll have the occasional flare up once every few years that doesn't affect me for more than a few hours. But the whole fiasco with my IBS throughout childhood put a lot of stress on my parents and (I think) contributed to blowing up their marriage. I also never really had a chance to date anyone as a teen and my self-esteem was so low that I couldn't look people in the eye. 

At 18, my parents started a really messy divorce process and dragged me into it. They used me as a middleman and unloaded all of their emotional baggage onto me. My family had up to that point, been my emotional bedrock. I was extremely close with my parents and home was my sanctuary from the stressors that triggered my IBS. But I went off to college (and never got homesick because I was just glad to be away from them at the time). I also became very emotionally closed off. I've always felt bad about it because my parents are very caring but I couldn't bring myself to be open with them. 

College went great for me. I loved every minute of it and did really well academically. I also had a good group of friends (some of whom I still keep in touch with). I came out of my shell and wound up taking on leadership roles on campus. I also developed pretty strong organizational and communication skills. I went through college with my eye on law school, self-studied for the LSAT, graduated near the top of my class, and had a paralegal job lined up at a cool law firm. I did continue to struggle with dating, but I also devoted very little energy to it and didn't really trust people enough to really be open. 

First year of the job was generally pretty good. I moved back in with my mother to save for law school (NY area, too expensive to rent on my salary), which was a bit of a challenge because she was still stuck in the angry post-divorce phase, but I was out of the house around other people most of the day and spent a good chunk of time working abroad. I started to feel like I was finding my groove and professional identity right before the pandemic hit. 

First month or so of lockdown was okay, but then I really started to feel the effects of being isolated. I was stuck in my room working 12 hour days, work became very unfulfilling to the point of being draining, and I pretty much only interacted with people through text/email and the occasional painfully awkward zoom call. I developed a pretty strong aversion to phone and zoom calls and would avoid them at all costs. I noticed myself losing interest in hobbies and activities I used to love and avoided interacting with neighbors and friends when I had the chance. I also had a really out of whack sleep schedule, partially because of the long hours, but also because I had little motivation to wake up earlier than work started. All I did for myself was focus on law school applications. When I got into law schools I had dreamed of attending since college, I didn't feel any joy. That should have been my first warning sign. 

I wound up working remotely for 15 months and by the end of that time I was pretty much a recluse, had no self-confidence, felt like I'd lost my ability to form complex and coherent thoughts, and felt like I'd lost a good deal of my ability to speak. I felt worse than I'd felt when I was dealing with those stomach issues as a kid but I chalked it up to burnout and figured starting law school would help me find my motivation and confidence again. I found a nice apartment by the school and moved out of my mom's place. I'd also picked up exercising which helped me feel a little less terrible about my body. And I started dating again for the first time since the pandemic started. 

This brings me to the past few months of my life. Law school itself started off okay. I quickly made some new friends but the academics were challenging. I felt like I was learning a new language for the first month and a half or so and was really unconfident in my abilities. Things improved as the semester went on but I noticed I still lacked confidence. I was deathly afraid of answering cold calls in class even as my friends and classmates started to figure it out. I also noticed that my writing skills felt like they were deteriorating. I felt like my own personality, opinions, and intuitions were being erased because I suddenly stopped being able to make my own judgments from my life experience and I struggled to communicate professionally or network. I was also eating pretty poorly (not enough) because I was too busy and stopped exercising because I had no time. My sleep schedule was still shit. Then the pressure of exam prep piled onto it and three weeks ago I had a crazy panic attack while trying to study for finals because I felt like I couldn't process information I had been comfortable with a few weeks prior. Since then, I've had terrible brain fog (I couldn't drive for a week) and slipped into a depressive state. I made multiple attempts to get back to studying but could not focus and had to pull the plug on the semester when I realized I couldn't even think or write coherently enough to pass exams. I visited the campus psychological services who pretty much went straight to pushing SSRIs, but I'm wary of them. 

Now I'm back at my mom's place for the next month feeling like I crashed and burned. I can't wake up before 1pm and have no motivation or energy. It takes me 30 minutes to respond to a simple email and I tried raking leaves today but it felt like running a marathon. I have had time to reflect on everything and it helped me realize just how bad of a mental state I started law school in. I'm also committed to going back and getting through it because I can't envision doing anything else, but I never want to put myself into such a mental tailspin ever again. I don't even know where to start to climb out of this hole and I feel pathetic and unable to function like an adult.