This is an introduction to my journey with mental health and so the very beginning of me realising I needed help seemed like a very good place to start. Prior to my mental health declining and getting diagnosed with anxiety and depression, if I had been asked, I’d have said I never had any mental health worries or struggles. However, once I had been diagnosed it was very easy to think back and recognise signs of depression and anxiety in the way that I coped with events during my life that whilst I was living through I didn’t pick up on. The fact that I didn’t pick up this was definitely due to lack of education on mental health (not just anxiety and depression, but all things mental wellbeing). But that’s another subject for another blog post!
Going to University in a new city and being surrounded by new people in September 2014 is what triggered my significant decline in mental health. However I still didn’t recognise what was wrong or that it was anything worth going to the doctor’s about until my then-boyfriend suggested I should get help as he recognised the signs of what I was going through. I thought it was a transitional phase and just a lot of stress to succeed and that it would eventually pass (spoiler alert, it didn’t). If he hadn’t suggested it, I don’t know if I would have ever gone to the doctors, or how long it would have been until I did. It’s very easy when you haven’t got anything physically wrong with you to feel like the doctors wouldn’t be the right place to go to talk about your symptoms.
Having a diagnosis was a new and scary thing, filled with shame, mainly due to seeing myself as weak. Everyone else was coping with being at uni, or so I thought, so why couldn’t I? When I was first diagnosed, I didn’t know that anyone I knew had poor mental health, but my diagnosis opened up these conversations. However it also made in my past make significantly more sense. For example, there were numerous times during my GCSE and A Level years where, when asked by a teacher if I was ok, I would burst out crying because the pressure I was under to succeed (mostly self-inflicted) was so great. I also had this inescapable need to avoid my Art homework that I didn’t understand. It was something I was terrified and embarrassed of in equal measure. Through lack of understanding of my own anxiety, and the fact I had no diagnosis and therefore no help, I scraped through that GCSE with a lower grade than I was capable of. Before each A Level exam I was filled with a level of fear that I’d never experienced before. My heart would start pounding, I’d feel tears well up, my breathing would change, my palms would get sweaty and I’d most definitely be shaking. Now I know those are the early signs of panic attacks. Before experiencing panic attacks all I knew of them was a very unrealistic portrayal of them in an episode of Coronation Street. The very fact I made it through those exams astounds me.
Going even further back in my life I remember being a very anxious child. I would get nervous about things most children don’t worry about. I remember waiting to meet Santa aged 3. I was acutely aware that it wasn’t real Santa and I was wondering the whole time what you were meant to say to him? Was there a correct way to greet Santa? If there was, I didn’t know it, and I was very worried about saying and doing the wrong thing. I also became very anxious about telephone calls (even now I hate it if it’s someone I don’t know). I would avoid them like the plague, or rehearse what I was going to say in my head so that I wouldn’t stutter and look stupid. I guess you could say Anxiety is in my DNA.
Depression was something I had less experience of but I definitely did experience about 4 months of depression following the break-up of a relationship. I don’t think it was solely down to that, I was also studying for my GCSEs. But I do believe it triggered it. For about 4 months I wasn’t present when at school. I don’t remember how I behaved at home, knowing me I behaved perfectly normally to hide what was going on. Throughout this time I felt emotionless; there was no sadness and no happiness. In all my lessons I found it hard to concentrate, I didn’t chat to those around me and I kept myself to myself. I didn’t even recognise it in myself until the fog suddenly lifted one day. I slowly felt present again and found joy in the small things again.
Once I had been diagnosed I looked back at my life up until that point and saw all the moments when I should have picked up on the fact that I was struggling. This blog isn’t an exhaustive list of those moments; there are many more instances from my childhood, of anxiety in particular. Something I always wonder is if others who have been diagnosed with anxiety and depression in adulthood had signs of it in childhood and is something I have tried to search but have not found any article discussing.
Depressed Historian 