I was about 16 when I was diagnosed with depression, my doctors think that it stemmed from my parents
divorcing and struggling with school really. It all started when my father died when I
was at high school. It all started in university during my final
year. It all started when I was 16, I came out of
a relationship I was in at the time and I started purging and self-harming.
I first realised I had a mental health problem when I was 15. I was cutting myself every
day and crying all the time. Soon after the attack happened I started to
feel throes of anxiety, panic attacks started creeping in.
I first realised that I had a problem when I really wanted to stop all the things I was
doing but I just couldn’t seem to stop no matter how badly I wanted to.
I was suffering from hallucinations which at the time were really scary because I didn’t
know what was reality and what was my imagination. At my worst I felt like I was absolutely worthless,
alienating and destructive with no help of recovery.
I felt like I had this black cloud hanging constantly over my head and it’s just a
feeling that stays with you and you can’t seem to get away from it all and you feel
completely alone. I felt like this was going to be it forever.
I felt as though I’d never reach any of my ambitions or my goals.
I felt like I was in my own bubble hearing muffled voices of people around me.
When I had my first mental break, proper mental breakdown and I decided to run away from home.
I felt like the world will be better off without me.
My mental health problem means that I go through many highs and lows which I struggle to control.
Sometimes I just want to hide away. I feel that I have to my make everyone else
happy and every day is a struggle but I just remind myself that I’m strong.
My mental health problem means that sometimes the world can be a very scary, very dangerous
and very dark place. Everyday tasks can become the most mammoth
missions that seem like you’re never going to be able to do them.
My mental health problem means that a life is hard.
The hardest thing about having a mental health problem is people not realising that there’s
something wrong with you and that you can be really ill even if you look absolutely
fine. I think especially having an eating disorder people assume that you’re going
to look a certain way or be a certain size or shape or you know they imagine certain
stereotypes that aren’t necessarily true. Like the social and in my case like the cultural
stigma associated with it. If I’m having a bad day, no matter how small
it is, it feels like the whole world is crashing in on me and things just keep getting worse.
Just trying to get the people around me to understand what I’m going through when they
haven’t gone through something like me is probably the hardest thing.
Social situations in particular can be really difficult. I sometimes can’t commit to what
we’d call sort of normal everyday activities. The word schizo, I think it has a lot stigma
attached to it, I really don’t like it. What really reassured me was knowing that
there are so many other people out there who have got the same diagnosis as me and that
I’m not alone. Having my two rescue dogs to look after and
to take care of because I know that they need me around and they always happy to see me,
so no matter how bad my days is how awful everything seems to be, I know that they need
me and they always make me smile. Having such a great network of friends, family
and people who are out there who can help. I’d look at how far I’ve come and everything
that I’d gone through and realise that I am still standing.
It really helps me when my friends treat me the way they did six years ago before this
all started. I was the happy laidback person and that’s the person I want to be and aspire
to be again. It really helps me when people just treat
me normally. I’d like people to treat. To treat me like,
like you would your own mother I guess. That’s, yes, I think that’s a good way to treat
people. I don’t want people to tiptoe around me.
I’d like people to treat me like any other normal person but also just to be a bit more
sensitive around me, not to, pre-stigmatise depression and everything and telling me to
cheer up and everything. I wish I’d known how much I was going to
grow and learn as grew up and grow older. I wish I’d known how much therapy was going
to help me and how much I was going to gain from that. And I wish I’d known that it
was possible to meet people who would love me for all of me, including my mental illness.
That I didn’t have to feel so alone and that there was a lot of support out there.
That there are people out there and organisations that can help me.
I don’t regret having mental health problems because it has made me who I am today.
I wish I’d known just how supportive people can be once you tell them what you’re going
through. People are accepting, they’re not going
to walk down the street and cry, you mental case, they’re not going to, you know, they’re
not going to do anything like that, everyone’s incredibly understanding and if they’re
not, bleep them. So the best piece of advice I’d have to
give would be just getting over that initial fear of coming out to people about your condition
because once you talk about it, it really does help.
Best piece of advice I ever got was just focus on today. Because you can’t change what’s
happened in the past and there’s honestly no real way of predicting what’s going to
happen in the future. I know it’s hard but be yourself and be
brave and you will recover. Take each day as it comes and even if that’s
too much break it right down to just five minutes at a time, I find that that really
helps. Just ask for help, just make that step and
ask anybody, you know and they will be supportive for you.
Everybody has scars, some people have them in the mind and some people have them on legs,
like I do. Just basically be yourself, that’s simple
enough in what might be a bit cliché but I guess it’s true.
It’s okay to be mental and that most people are just not in the same way as you but there
are ways to get help. Even if you think that things can’t get
better, that you tried so many times and you’ve kind of, you fed up and you’ve had enough
of trying, things really can and you can get better and you can recover.
So, don’t give up on yourself.