I suppose I’ll ask if anyone has any advice regarding this problem as it has been plaguing me for a little while now, and I’d be really grateful if I could get some suggestions.

Has anyone else suffered a bit of depression revolving around something involving Japanese at the time and had a hard time getting back into Japanese afterward because of that?

Any time I hear/read/think/say/type certain phrases or words (or even tones of voices/characters from certain stories), I am reminded of that time and it sorta makes me revert back to that same state. At the same time, I have a hard time avoiding Japanese altogether, because at this point I feel like I’m missing out on something, perhaps even a part of myself now, if I avoid it for a certain period of time. However, I catch myself reading a couple pages and not being able to continue any more and putting it down. I’ll find myself subconsciously taking longer and longer to respond when having a text conversation to sorta have it die off. Normally these are things that I have enjoyed in the past, but a good portion of the time it just makes me feel terrible now. There are still times to where I can sit for several hours straight and read a novel or a few volumes of manga, or spend all night browsing blog pages while talking to someone, but they are few and far between.

And music too… My music collection used to always put me in the right mood, but I’ve caught it upsetting me lately too. It doesn’t happen as often with my music as much as it does with reading, but it still happens. Perhaps I need to expand it again, or take a break from it for awhile…

I’m out of the situation that initially caused the depression, so I’d hope that I could get over it and just move past it. I don’t feel avoiding Japanese entirely is really an option for me at this point, and I feel like I’ve taken long enough of a break from it already at this point. Does anyone have any suggestions on how to avoid, or minimize, this recurring problem?

Any suggestions, short of just quitting Japanese, would be appreciated at this point.

PS. This probably isn’t completely coherent, so I apologize for that. =p