Since I was 14, I have suffered massively with mental health problems, a lot of the time not even realising that I was ill, causing massive strains on many different aspects of my life, especially my friendships, relationships and education. Over the past 8 years, I have realised that accepting that I am ill, and being open talking about it, has helped me to get the help that I need to get better, and want to use this blog to talk about my journey, the many things I have realised along the way, coping mechanisms and many other things to help raise more awareness, and help people who are going through the same as me. I am in no way an expert on mental health, I still have my issues, people handle situations differently and some things may work for people and others may not, but just by starting this blog and talking about it has made me feel better already, and even if this only makes a small impact I want people to know that they are not alone, and not to feel bad or embarrassed in any about talking about what is going on inside your head.
I spent many of my teenage years wondering what was wrong with me, only learning things about mental health online and not really fully understanding what was going on in my own head. From age 14-16 when I was in school, something dramatically changed in myself, something I have only realised recently after looking back on my teenage years. As I struggled to understand what was going on in my own head, and all I could really understand at that age was that I felt depressed and did not want to live anymore, I turned to coping mechanisms such as self harming and not eating. Looking back now, in that time of my life I hated myself more than anything in the world, I saw myself as this person which nobody loved or wanted around (which definitely was not the case), and used to question myself everyday, wondering what was wrong with me and used to use these coping mechanisms to punish myself, as I really thought I deserved it. I started to become an angry person, and wasn’t nice to be around, because I could not understand why I was feeling this way, I was constantly fighting with all these thoughts in my own head. After starting college and moving myself to a new environment, I had convinced myself that all my issues had gone away and that I was fine, I did not need any help as there was nothing wrong with me. Looking back on this now, I wish I could go back and be nicer to myself, at the time when I was so young mental health was not talked about at all, so I did not understand it and did not know how I could even get any help. It has made me realise that mental health needs to be spoken about a lot more, no matter what age, and no matter who to. I wish I had knowledge then that there was so much help I could get out there, and even though I felt like I was going crazy, I really wasn’t. I had counsellors at school but I was so stuck in the mindset that I couldn’t be helped that I didn’t gain anything from it.
As time went on, I learnt that keeping myself busy was key, and surrounding myself with the amazing people that I had in my life at the time was the best thing to get me through. Even though I didn’t feel as bad as I did in the years before, when I was 17-18, I was still using self harm as a coping mechanism and my issues were still there. Being a bit older, I started to understand more about what was going on in my own head, but still at this point I had convinced myself that I was never going to get better and believed that my life was going to be this way forever, which made it hard for me to cope as I felt so weak, and did not know how I’d be able to cope with feeling like I did for much longer. My anxiety started to get really bad and I did not know how to control it, it was effecting my relationships and again, I believed I was going crazy. I was convinced that I was a bad person for feeling this way, not realising how many other people out there struggle with these issues too, even though I had the most amazing people around me, I felt so alone and did not know how to cope or what to do with myself in the situations where my anxiety would get so bad.
As I got older, the way I started to cope with my mental health problems was by pretending they weren’t even there, which was the worst thing to do keeping it all in as if they did not exist. I went to uni to pursue my dream of being a dancer, but found myself struggling there from very early on, to the point where I had convinced myself I was never going to be good enough no matter how hard I tried, leading my anxiety to get so bad to the point where I couldn’t even get myself out of bed to even go to uni. I changed course thinking this would help, and it did for a small amount of time, but then I started to become so anxious and depressed again. I turned to alcohol and used this as a coping mechanism as well as self harm, but I started to realise that once I had a few drinks, all the feeling that I kept inside would come out in the worst possible way and I became a nasty person, a person who I wouldn’t even recognise when I was sober. It got to the point where all I was doing was spending money on alcohol, clothes or make up thinking that these things would make me feel happier, even though they definitely didn’t. I blamed it on the fact that I was homesick, instead of realising that my mental health problems were actually getting out of hand again. After a couple of months I decided that it was time to make a change and that I could not go on feeling the way I was so I dropped out of uni.
After dropping out of uni I felt the most lonely and lost that I had felt in such a long time, and ended up in the most toxic relationship, just because I felt so alone and depressed and thought having him there would make me better. I started working full time and applied to start uni again in the following September and thought at this point I had my life together. The worst thing I done in this situation was to get into a relationship with someone who made me feel so worthless when I was already at my lowest. I was so blinded at this point and was convinced that he would change and make me into a better person when in fact he just made into this weak pushover, who used to cry every single day, and someone who I wouldn’t even recognise now. At this point in my life I was so lucky to have the most amazing friends and family around me, who helped me to walk away from the relationship and helped me to realise that I do not need a man to help me get better, I can do that by myself and need to do it by myself, and that he was not going to fix me.
When I started uni again I was 19, nearly 20, and had suffered from these mental health issues for nearly 7 years. At this point in my life, I felt so happy and excited to be starting uni again. The past 7 years before that had been so up and down, and at some points I felt so depressed I did not want to do it anymore, and at other points I felt like I was going to be okay. This rollercoaster of emotions had me convinced that my depression and anxiety was just a ‘phase’, and that I was fine but I couldn’t have been more wrong. When I started uni my anxiety got the better of me again, where I turned to alcohol and spending stupid amounts of money to cope with it and again, became the unrecognisable person that I was once I had a few drinks. It started to all get too much again and at this point I knew I was ill, but I did not want to accept it.
Accepting that I was ill and that I needed help was definitely the hardest thing for me, I had a massive wake up call and the horrible person that I became once I had a drink caused me to lose someone so important in my life, and that’s when I knew it was time to make a change. Finally, after 7 years of horrible mental health problems, I finally went to the doctors to tell them how I was feeling and got prescribed anti-depressants (being on meds aren’t always the best option for everyone but for me it was the best thing I’ve ever done!!!). As I was on these tablets, I had convinced myself straight away that I was getting better, when actually I still had such a long way to go. I was becoming a better person, but it took me a while to realise that it was going to be a long process and that I wasn’t just going to get better overnight. Once I got into my meds, was surrounding myself by my amazing friends and family, exercising loads and keeping myself busy, I started to see such a change in myself and my mindset, as even though my meds were making a huge difference to my life, my anti-depressants alone were not just going to make me get better, I had to put in the work myself as well and make changes in many different aspects in my life to become this happy person that I portray on the outside, be the person I am on the inside too. There were many times were I would go into depression mode and go back to the person I was before, but this was not happening as much as it was before, and even though it still happened every now and again, it was a change in my lifestyle and was no where near as often and as bad as it was before.
Just when I had convinced myself that everything was slowly getting better, everything got on top of me and I felt as if I could not be strong anymore and took an overdose. The time from being in hospital because of this, and the few months after were definitely the hardest months of my life. Getting back up and going on with your life as normal after you feel so low that you want to take your own life was without a doubt the hardest part of it all, but I was so lucky to have the most amazing people around me, who made me see how strong I am, how far I’ve come and how I can’t give up now. Now, 6 months after it has happened, I am the strongest I have ever been, coming down the dosage on my medication and seeing all the good in my life rather than all the negatives. Talking about it and seeing things on social media addressing mental health issues have helped me so much, I still have my bad days where I struggle to keep going but even though they are still there, they are barely happening which helps me see how much I have grown over the past 8 years. Writing this is one of the scariest things ever and putting it out there for everyone to read scares me, but even though I was scared to ask for help when I needed it, doing it was the best thing I have ever done. Even though I have bad days, they are only bad days and it is not a bad life! It took me so long to realise that, and realise how much I’ve grown. It’s never easy but you should not be embarrassed to talk about it and ask for help, I wish I had reached out for help a lot sooner instead of fighting this battle in my own head for so long and realised that I was not alone, I’ve spent too much of my life letting my mental illness get the better of me but there is no way I’m going to let it do that anymore.
p.s. people have different experiences, I’m not an expert in any way and I’m still learning new things but more people need to know that mental health is not a weakness! You are never alone x
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Gee's Mental Health 