Today is the start of Mental Health Awareness Week. The aim, the bring about more awareness about different conditions, how to help those who are suffering and to break the stigma that surrounds talking about the topic. This is my story.
When I was in my mid-teens I started to develop what I referred to as my “travel gitters”. These were normally reserved for foreign holidays with the family but as I got older it started to develop its way into smaller trips as well. The night before I left for university for the first time I was in the pub with some friends and was a nervous wreck which alcohol and company struggled to calm. For three years I worried about going back to uni when I was at home, and then worried about going home when I was at uni. More often than not, on the day of the trip I would be fine. It was too late to do anything about by that point so there was no reason to worry. Sadly, I never saw it that way in the days leading up to it. It was only a few years ago that I understood that this was a form of anxiety.
2015 was a time I referred to as my ‘Year of Fun’, or my ‘Yes Man Year’, where the only goal was to do as much and experience as much as I could by the end of it. And by the end I was quite happy with the amount I achieved. It was also during this year that I started to develop mild depression and anxiety in other aspects of my life other than traveling from A to B. Little things would start to annoy me more and more with my mood changing in the blink of an eye, taking a couple of day to bounce back to a better mind set. By the time summer came I was starting to struggle. There were several aspects of my life I was not happy with and I felt I had more piling up on my plate quicker than I could sort them out. I still didn’t know what to do with my life, I was still living at home with the parents, my back was damaged, I was single with no relationship in sight, I worked a job I was very indifferent about and wasn’t earning a lot from it. This last one made moving out difficult, and I’m not suggesting women are shallow creatures but I’m sure a selection of these reasons would not have made me an attractive prospect to date. It felt like a vicious circle. Theodore Roosevelt is quoted for saying “Comparison is the thief of joy”. While this is very true and while everyone has their own paths, goals and time lines etc. I am the most competitive person on earth and felt I was falling behind the rest of my friends. They were all slowly but surely moving out, getting girlfriends, getting engaged, getting married and working reasonable, grown up, jobs. I was competing at life in a different league.
I had started a new role at work that involved more responsibility. It was a role I was ready for and while it took me longer than I would have liked to settle, I was good at it. The problem was I started to dream about work. Dream about things going wrong, that I would forget things, that my alarm wouldn’t go off and I’d be late for the early shift. This would keep me up or wake me up several times during the night, especially if I was on the early shift just in case my alarm didn’t go off. I am a compulsive over-thinker. Every situation or event with have a million and one outcomes and I will have considered most of them. This unnecessary addition of stress sent my mind into overdrive. It filled it almost to the point where I felt like there wasn’t any room for anything else. It was during the probation period that I suffered my first anxiety attack. I was meeting some friends to watch a live recording of QI in London but a Head of Department meeting at work dragged on and I was going to be late to meet them at the train station. This added more stress on an already busy brain. Even though I was already running late I had to stop on the way to have a cry in the car and to try and calm down. It was something I have never experienced before and it was quite scary. I had no idea what was going on or what to do about it and I panicked. I was late to the station, we queued in line for the show and missed entry by eight people. This did wanders for me as you can imagine, being responsible for missing the showing. I could tell the guy who sorted out our tickets was annoyed, it was as clear as day, but he was kind enough not to say anything.
This carried on for several months and many innocent inanimate objects suffered fates they didn’t deserve out of anger and frustration before I eventually went to my GP. I was asked to do a mental health assessment questionnaire which confirmed I was suffering from mild depression and anxiety and was prescribed sertraline towards the end of October. Sertraline is an antidepressant that contains serotonin, the chemical associated with feeling good. Taking it was described to me a being an aeroplane. The first couple of weeks were the take-off, where things feel a bit rough and shaky on the way up and that you might feel worse for a while, which I did. Within four weeks you should reach your cruising altitude and it would be smooth sailing from there. I reached my cruising altitude around the two-week mark after taking them and you probably could have set fire to my car with all my prized possessions in it and I would have joined you for a dance around the bonfire. The problem I found was when I forgot to take a tablet it would be like cutting the engines on your plane and you would need to build the altitude up again to the “happy place”. As the tablets were non-addictive I kept forgetting to take them until something annoyed me that day. More often than not by that point it was too late, my mood was ruined and it would take the equivalent of being showered with puppies to dig me out of that hole early.
To start with I only told three people I was taking medication. My centre manager because it made sense to have someone at work know I was on them, one of my cousins because she was on the same stuff and a friend I was going on a stag do with a week after I started taking them. I chose that friend out of the stag party crew because I trusted him to keep my dirty little secret, not to judge me and to look after me should anything happen during this period when I didn’t know how the medication would affect me. As it turns out I was fine during that weekend but it was nice to know help was on hand if I needed him if I started being a bit funny. It was a shame I didn’t tell more people early on to help me out if I needed it. While on them my weight fluctuated quite a lot so I wish I could have told more people it was the pills making my tubby as well.
I was on the sertraline for roughly seventeen months and during that time I went to workshops in secret, saying I was visiting a friend as my excuse to leave the house at the same time every Thursday for eight weeks. There I leant different techniques, methods and coping strategies to manage my feelings. By the time I came off them in February 2017 I had only told about five or six people. I decided to come off them when I felt the dosage I was on was not making much difference anymore and after I saw a documentary where a doctor was trying to reduce the number of possibly unnecessary prescriptions by finding alternative methods to improve their lives. One of these people was a lady suffering from depression and he took her wild swimming. The idea was that the sensation of getting warm after swimming in cold water released the same concoction of dopamine, serotonin etc. that will improve your mood naturally along with other biological improvements, rather than using pills to do so artificially. That combined with the physical act of swimming, aka exercise, which has known and documented mental health improvements made for a winning combination for her. It would probably do the same for other and might have done me. I nearly went to an organised open water swim session, sadly I couldn’t motivate myself to go.
Motivation is something I struggled with massively during this time. I’d find myself just lying in bed for hours doing nothing. I didn’t want to watch tv, didn’t want to play games, didn’t want to see anyone, didn’t want to do anything. The only time I would get up would be to the loo and even then, I considered the consequences of the alternative course of action. One of the questions on the mental health assessment questionnaire was if I was suicidal. I wasn’t, I can’t state that enough, but I was in a place where I didn’t see what my existence was contributing to the world in a positive way. Would it make a difference if I was there or not? I wasn’t convinced I was anything beyond a user of resources. The biggest issue I struggled with was guilt. There were millions of people far worse off than me and I had the audacity to be depressed about what was essentially first world problems and I hated myself for it. It would be easy to blame modern societal expectations on where I should be in my life at a certain age but that is a weak excuse. Studies suggest that depression is more likely for those is western civilisation and that there is a correlation between depression and social media use. With that in mind I took a two-month hiatus from all forms of social media as an experiment to see if it effected my life in any way. I really didn’t miss it (but missed several parties I didn’t see invitations for), the endless scrolling to see what fun stuff everyone else was up to. What’s important to remember, especially with Instagram, is that social media is a highlights reel of all the good bits. Behind the lens 99% of these people we aspire our lives to be like have the same problems, responsibilities and requirements of life that the rest of us do. They just have a better cameraman.
I was a couple years late to the game but I eventually discovered Pintrest and a thing called upcycling. I started spending time in the garage being productive instead of the bed doing bugger all. Admittedly I bought more things than I found or acquired to upcycle but it got me out the house and motivated for something, a feeling that had been missing for months. This starts a positive domino effect. You fine new hobbies, passions, projects and interests just through getting out and about, which could lead to talking to someone or meeting someone, which could lead to new suggestions or information, which could lead to experimentation, which could lead to others joining in. Repeat.
I have now been off the medication for almost as long as I was on them for and it feels like a long time. During this time, I have learned to manage myself the symptoms better. While I still have the occasional dark day, rather than circling the metaphorical drain of depression and being stuck in bad mood for days I am able to pull myself up and out much quicker. Upcycling has taken the back burner for the moment and I’m still trying to find my perfect wild swimming alternative but I have a bigger and better support network to keep me busy and my mind looking forward and on the positives. Since I opened up about my struggles I have heard from other friends about their struggles they kept under wraps. The more we get people talking about it the less of an embarrassment it will be for everyone. Contrary to popular belief it is not a sign of weakness to suffer from a mental health disorder or to talk about it. If you were to break a leg or have an eyeball hanging out of its socket you would probably find someone to fix it, or at least someone to get some advice from. Let’s try and get fixing the mind just as easy and nonchalant as fixing the body. As a result of going through this I would agree with other who have gone through similar experiences when they say it makes you stronger person. If I can cope with what I went through I can cope with the struggles of the general day better than those who haven’t.
More and more people from the world of celebrities are starting to emerge with their mental health struggles which helps create awareness and support and more mental health charities are starting to become more mainstream. While I have since left the leisure centre that angered me to the point of badly damaging my thumb destroying more unsuspecting squeegee handles I still work in leisure and I’m sure that claim will be put to the test sooner or later. Until that point look after each other. If you think someone is struggling, talk to them. You never know what is going on inside and you never know just how helpful that gesture will be. It might even save someone.
