Let's be real: my mental health journey

Anxiety/Depression: is it all just a hoax?

I’ve been searching for the answer to this question for many years now. It first caught my attention when I was in school and some of my classmates started not coming in, their grades dropping, the scars showing until I was told they were “depressed”. At this point, I smirked and dismissed the fact they felt or were diagnosed as “depressed”, what could be so wrong at age 17/18 in their heads that they wouldn’t come into school and let their future be consumed by this overused excuse of “depression”. I even remember telling a friend that I thought the more you went to therapy, the more that people said you were depressed, the more pills they prescribed and you took, the more sad you would feel. I used to think these people were pathetic and were just super weak and looking for an excuse. I also remember someone else claiming they had “social anxiety” and couldn’t bear to leave their room and again I mocked it.

As I attended university, I would see this word “depressed” and “anxiety” being thrown about like it was a case of the flu so much that more and more people around me started to experience depression or claim that they did so much so that “oh I’m so depressed” was what someone would say if they were referring to one small minor sad event i.e. “he didn’t text me back”. I started looking for answers, why was depression so common? Why did so many people think it was so okay to say they’re depressed?

I came to my conclusion that either the more people spoke about it, the more mental health awareness, the more people felt like it was something they shared and could relate to the symptoms of depression; persistent sad moods, feeling of being “empty”, irritability, fatigue, difficulty sleeping, difficulty concentrating, loss of interest and the list can go on. Now anxiety is different to depression, much to people’s surprise but it consists of feelings of panic, sweating, cold hands, trembling, shortness of breath, nausea, having a hard time making friends, feeling rejected, feeling self-conscious, over-thinking, over-analysing and everything in between.

Now all these people I have met who claimed to be depressed didn’t show any of these symptoms… Did they hide it well? Or was it just an excuse to being lazy?

I’ve read a few books over the past about what depression is and why we are more exposed/susceptible to it as a society and I barely found any answers.. The one thing I read that thought made some sense was that this increased rate of depression is due to a pressure to achieve in the society we currently live in. The fact that within our society there is this imperative that we need to “be ourselves” and the pressure to “be ourselves” leads to us breaking down inside and experiencing some, if not all the symptoms of depression. I can understand this completely, we do live in this world where we are torn between being ourselves or pretending we’re these people that we present ourselves to be on social media and then dealing with the dilemma of never living up to that “happy” or “luxurious” life we always claim to have… and then we sit and dwell on this and we find ourselves over-thinking the tiniest of details and finding ourselves… depressed.

For the past few years, I’ve always felt pretty shitty but my pride never let me contemplate depression or anxiety as something serious I had. I once felt sad and went to the doctor, he prescribed me anti-depression tablets and despite my mum insisting I didn’t take them as she thought it would make me feel worse… I felt like I was “cool” to even have been prescribed them. How did I think it was a “cool” thing, as if a joke? I never did take them but oh I regret it.

I’m not entirely sure what the consequences are of taking something like Fluoxetine actually are but if it would help with the twists and turns my brain is currently taking, I definitely regret not taking them oh so many years ago. If only I realised back then that things would get worse… For the past few years, I’ve been going through different periods of my life and I first started a blog/vlog in my first year of university because I thought that was one of the best ways to deal with whatever the fuck I was going through. After six months or so, I just felt like it was stupid and whilst some people were supporting my newfound voice, there were other people were making fun of it and I decided to put an end to it. I never really understood it then but people would tell me I sounded depressed and really sad, and I always blew it off as “No I’m not depressed haha I’m just sharing my life it’s about a journey”… So much for that journey…. I really wish I listened to those people then who realised from a video that I was depressed and I couldn’t even figure it out for myself. Through this period of denial, I was in a car accident and I lost all my faith in myself and my friendships and everything social… A few months later, something even more tragic happened in my personal life and it completely shook me… I isolated myself completely from the majority of my friends and I changed.. I definitely changed and it was just another period of feeling like utter shit and I thought the solution was to be social, and go out woo and get fucked up wooooo… It wasn’t.

Now I’m here, on my year abroad, realising that I need help.

They say the advantages of a year abroad are: learning a new language, seeing the world, meeting people from a different culture, trying new foods and “personal development”. I never thought that “personal development” would mean that I would be sat here writing this realising I live in constant anxiety and mild forms of depression and that that was the strongest advantage or disadvantage I can take from this “amazing year abroad”. Everything at the beginning was daunting of course and living away (for the first time) was difficult but I realised recently, my biggest demons weren’t part of that experience but something much deeper.. my mental health.

Let me explain how I identify with anxiety and depression:

I wake up in the morning with no will to get out of bed, get out of my room, go outside … why? Because I don’t want to put myself in any social situation.. why? Because it’s scary and people will laugh at me… They will think oh my god she can’t speak Spanish.. oh it’s that weird girl that tried to be friends with us… What if the teacher asks me something? Oh shit how do you say that in Spanish just in case that guy in class asks me something? Oh okay what are you going to eat? No don’t fucking eat that, you’ll get fat. What are you going to wear? You need to look cool so people ask about your outfit or compliment it… wait if they do I’ll be so embarrassed and I’ll choke speaking Spanish. Oh no I can’t wear that because I’ll sweat so much and everyone will be weirded out… fuck let’s check whatsapp .. oh shit he didn’t reply, he hates me, omg he’s pretending to be my friend, oh shit did I say something wrong? I need to apologise.. oh wait I sent him 6 messages already… what if he’ll never speak to me again? What if he tells his friends? What if they all laugh at me? Wait maybe he’s blocked me… oh shit you fucked this up again.. why do you always do this??????? Or maybe he’s found someone better than you… oh it’s probably that other girl… why aren’t you good enough?

These are all the thoughts that go through my head in the space of five minutes and how do I deal with them? I go straight back to sleep. When I sleep during the day it’s fine… when I try to sleep at night… every last memory, every conversation I’ve ever had, ever message I’ve ever sent comes running back to me, playing over and over again like some broken record and taunting me to the extent I’m panicking in my bed and I can’t sleep. I lay restless until I can convince myself to stop thinking and I fall asleep…. Then I wake up to my dreams/nightmares of myself in all the situations I’ve ever been anxious/afraid of.. Oh how great.

I often say no to plans (unless it’s the people I’ve known for years on end and only people I feel comfortable/vulnerable with). I can’t put myself in social situations without overthinking every possible thing that could happen, and this goes to the extremes…. Every thought process I have is me over-analysing a simple situation and causing myself so much anxiety that I have a tendency to make myself physically sick/burn up with stress and anxiety. I once stressed so much about seeing a guy on a date that I ended up in hospital that night with a stomach bug, fever and an IV pump attached to me… Fuck sometimes I can’t even go into a coffee shop and ask for a coffee without working up a sweat and panicking… Everything has recently turned into the biggest challenge.. Maybe it’s because I’m away from home, away from comfort and I don’t have the people that make me feel safe around me…

I will also always be suspicious of everyone around me… I will doubt our friendship right until the moment I somehow fuck it up and you give up… I will think everyone leaves.. I will feel unworthy… I can’t even explain the depths of how my brain works… I am my biggest criticiser and I will always put myself down, no matter what…

I just wish I could get out of it, and I tried so many times to distract myself with this boy or another or schoolwork or something but I keep returning to this point… And I’m finally ready to admit there’s something wrong that I can’t fix by “cheering up” or “less thinking” and as soon as I get back, I’m going to do something about it.

I admit defeat. I admit I was wrong judging those people when I was in school. I apologise. I know now how fucked up anxiety, depression and this feeling that your mind isn’t in your own control anymore feels.