By: Anonymous, 24. Panic disorder, depression, OCD
I have struggled with anxiety since childhood. When I was five, my parents divorced and my father moved to another state. I lived with my mother, who also struggled with mental illness that she had inherited from my grandmother. After the divorce, she lost a part of herself. She’d go to work, come home, watch the news, and heat up a ready-made dinner, but couldn’t do much else. She had gone to a session or two of counseling but, being uncomfortable with sharing emotions, she soon dropped that pursuit. Out of a fear of being hurt again, she refused to date or even make any friends in our new town, so we were constantly isolated and the house was perpetually lonely. She was there physically, but not emotionally. As an elementary schooler, I was left to navigate much of the world – from social interactions to handling difficult emotions – on my own. The world felt big and unsafe, and I felt small and scared. I had frequent nightmares about my house burning down or people breaking in to hurt me. When I stayed home alone, I hid in my room, interpreting every noise downstairs made by the cats or a creaking door as an intruder.
I soon began to withdraw from school and from friendships. Once a boisterous and bubbly child, I starting having intrusive thoughts about what others thought of me. By the seventh grade, I was so quiet that people told me they had forgotten what my voice sounded like. Preoccupied with overwhelming anxiety that consumed nearly all of my mental energy, I stopped handing in homework and assignments. I had always been a bright kid – I had learned to read at age four, and breezed through elementary school, picking up new topics quickly to the point of growing bored with the level of my classes. My teachers were shocked by how terrible my grades had now become, and they called my mother in for a meeting to tell her that I was smart but inconceivably lazy. I felt like a failure. Not once did someone consider that I was struggling with a now crippling mental illness and suggest that I be evaluated and treated for it.
It was around then that the OCD started. I didn’t know what it was at first, because I had heard it described as being obsessed with locking doors, washing hands, or checking that the stove was off, and my OCD didn’t look anything like that. Rather, it manifested as counting, primarily words and syllables to find phrases that added up to ten. Once a speedy and avid reader, I was now reading and re-reading paragraphs multiple times, because I’d be so caught up with counting that I’d completely miss the meaning of the words. I stopped reading for pleasure, and reading for schoolwork took so much longer than it ever had before. I was frustrated and confused, but too humiliated to let anyone know what was going on.
I had my first panic attack at fourteen, on the couch in my study late one night. I remember being curled up into a ball, shaking and hyperventilating as the world spun around me. I felt like I was choking, and my vision grew dim and blurry. I had no idea what was going on but didn’t even have the breath or wherewithal to call out for help. After what felt like hours, but was probably a matter of minutes, it was like a snake that had been squeezing every inch of me suddenly let go, and my entire body relaxed. My mind went numb; it was as if a completely blank white aura settled in. This would be the first of many panic attacks that would leave me with a racing heart, nausea to the point of often vomiting, and an overwhelming feeling of dread and fear of imminent fainting. It was truly hell.
Finally, one snowy winter night, I told my mom what was going on and that I couldn’t take another day of living like that. The next night, we drove through a snowstorm to the doctor’s office, where I was prescribed Prozac and given a list of therapists in the area. I started the medication and bounced around between a few cognitive behavioral therapists, but felt frustrated with their assumption that my behavior and thoughts were the main problem without delving into the issues from my past that caused those behaviors to surface in the first place. I went away to college across the country, leaving behind my counselors, and stopped taking my medication, as it made me feel numb and I thought that being in a new place would help. I was okay for a while, rarely having panic attacks despite what I now recognize as social anxiety causing me to turn down invitations and preventing myself from making meaningful friendships.
During my senior year of college, I got married, and moved to his country to live with him after graduation. I was far away from home, with no family or friends, in a culture vastly different from my own, surrounded by a language that I couldn’t understand. Still, I had traveled the world solo and felt as if I could handle this new endeavor. Soon, however, my husband became abusive. It started small. He would listen to my insecurities and then use them against me, telling me that any doubts I had about him were due to my own anxiety and negative thoughts. Soon, he began to insult me and scream at me, first in private and then eventually in public. He would call me terrible names, throw things at me and knock over heavy objects, kick our cat, and threaten me. He grew paranoid about me cheating on him and would hack into my social media accounts to look through my messages and photos without me knowing. He stole money from my bank account, sexually assaulted me, isolated me, put me in danger by starting violent fights with strangers on the street after drinking heavily, and even used my own computer to make a Tinder account and cheat on me.
After two years of being in the abusive marriage, I got out and moved back home with the help of my family and friends, taking my cat with me. My anxiety began to subside a bit – I was no longer throwing up multiple times a week or feeling afraid that I was having a heart attack or stroke and dying – but I fell into a deep depression. I couldn’t work or do much of anything besides lie in bed, and worst of all, I didn’t WANT to get better. My friend recognized what was going on and told me that I seemed like I was depressed. When she said that, something clicked inside my head, and I made an appointment with a psychiatrist. One week after my friend made her comment, I was picking up my antidepressants from the pharmacy. At the same time, I had found a wonderful psychotherapist who specializes in EMDR, a new form of therapy designed to help trauma victims process their experiences. Every session, we dove deeper into the things I had never told anyone before – my relationship with my parents, being bullied as a child at school, my abusive marriage and the belief I held that there was something fundamentally wrong with me that gave others the right to treat me badly. With the combined medication and counseling, I felt as if I were coming out of a fog, like a bear coming out of a long hibernation. I was waking up and finally beginning to feel like myself, only stronger.
I’m still in the process of recovery. I take antidepressants and occasionally anti-anxiety medication, and I see my therapist once a week. I’ve come to realize that with the way my brain is wired, anxiety may very well be a part of me for the rest of my life, but it doesn’t have to limit me in what I can do. I can’t stop the phone from ringing, but I can stop answering it. I’ve been able to finally, once and for all, properly process traumatic events from my past and reframe them so that they no longer haunt me in my current life and relationships. I haven’t had a panic attack in months, and I no longer suffer from OCD either. I’ve opened up to friends and family about my battles and through hearing my experiences, they’ve found the strength and motivation to seek help for their own anxiety, depression, or other mental illnesses. Now, I’m planning to get a master’s degree in Mental Health Counseling so that I can dedicate my life to helping others, and this is the first time that I’ve felt hopeful and excited about my future. If I can use my pain to educate and support others, then nothing I went through was in vain. Mental illness is just as real as a broken leg or a heart condition, and by sharing my story, I hope to break down the stigma surrounding these issues and inspire others to come forward and seek help if they need it.