May is Mental Health Awareness Month, something that is very important to me. I started writing this article at the beginning of May and it is now several days into June. This article has been healing as well as hard to write. Topics of mental health are discussed. Reader discretion is advised.

I grew up constantly feeling aware of myself, my problems, my failures, and my faults. Why? I didn’t know. I grew up in a loving family in a wonderful community with strong values. So why was I so drawn inwards? As I moved on to middle school and high school these insecurities just grew. I felt so alone and awkward. I truly wondered what was wrong with me. In high school, my mom, being the incredibly wise woman she is, shared with me some of her own resources. She gave me an audiobook to listen to and a book/workbook set called “Between Two Minds”. Through these resources and my mother’s help, I learned about anxiety. Sometime between my Senior year and my first year of college, I went to the doctor with my mom and was diagnosed with Generalized Anxiety Disorder and was prescribed Lexapro. 

I felt comforted yet terrified. There was finally something that I could point to and say “That. That’s what’s wrong with me. When I moved off to college my first roommate dealt with ADHD and took Adderall. I found comradery and friendship there. 

I look back at my journey with my own mental health and see a scattering of crucial moments, people, and places that helped me to come to terms with my diagnosis. Now I am in a place where I feel confident about myself and feel more like me than ever. That did not come easy. Over the past decade or so I have waxed and waned, fallen into pits of depression, gone through many therapists, tried many medications and dosages, and tried to love myself through it all. 

Each of our journeys through our own mental illness is a personal one. This is mine. 

The Darkest Time

In college I was carrying a backpack of past insecurities and fears with me in every new interaction. It made things hard and it made things heavy. Between moving to a place where I literally knew not a soul, was bombarded with class schedules, was forced to make new friends, and didn’t have my family in the next room to rely on, I was lost. A concoction of loneliness and dealing with some very stupid boys, I felt like I was never going to be happy again. The anxiety had welcomed a new friend into the chat: depression. 

As I previously stated, my first roommate was truly a Godsend. I found solace with her in many aspects of my life. My family supported me from afar, and I missed them dearly. During this period I was adjusting to the Lexapro, and I eventually decided to try therapy. (Free therapy through my school was another INCREDIBLE blessing.) 

So, I tried therapy. Then I tried therapy again with a different counselor. Then I stopped for a while. Then I found a different counselor. Let’s just say therapy is like dating. The first counselor is rarely the best fit, and different counselors have been perfect for different stages of life.

In one of these many therapy sessions, my counselor gave me a metaphor. I love metaphors. They help me better understand things, and I’m an English nerd so he really knew how to drive his point home. I had told him how I was having a hard time connecting with friends, family, strangers, and God. He told me, “Gabi, when someone is depressed it’s like they’re six feet under water and the scriptures are floating on the surface. They’re hard to read, and your eyes get tired.” He also related this to everything in my life that I was feeling disconnected from. My family, friends, hobbies, interests, everything was sitting on the water’s surface and I was just trying to get air. This metaphor truly helped me realize that I wasn’t a terrible [daughter, friend, sister, student, fill in the blank] because I felt disconnected. It just meant I was depressed. 

Eventually, my doctor and I realized that Lexapro was not working. For those who haven’t ever been on anti-depressants or anti-anxiety meds, it takes a long time to find the right fit for you. I transitioned over to Zoloft and started at the lowest dosage. Over the next MANY months, it might have even been more than a year, I found the dosage that worked for me. (Zoloft gang baby!) If you are feeling bad about needing medication for a mental illness, one of my favorite quotes is:

“If you can’t make your own serotonin, store bought is fine.” 

This quote perfectly captures the progression that we’ve made around mental health awareness in the past several decades. Even my mother and my journeys are incredibly different.

My Mother’s Journey

In preparing this article, I realized that I knew very little about my mom’s overall mental health journey. I knew that she took medication like me and I knew that she had anxiety like me… but my knowledge kind of ended there. I got my mom on the phone and asked her about her journey. My appreciation for my mother is richer and deeper than ever. Here is a brief synopsis of her mental health journey.

My mother had four kids, me being the oldest, and she had always been a worrier. Around the time of my little sister’s birth (her third child) she started feeling something different. She started experiencing panicky episodes. During these episodes she was scared and didn’t know what was going on. She thought maybe she was having a heart attack. All she knew for sure was that she felt like she was dying.

As you can probably guess, she ended up in the hospital during one of these episodes where she explained her symptoms to the doctors. They told her a variety of things including “It’s just your body.” and “Your hormones are just fluctuating after birth.” Useless answer after useless answer, she felt lost. These doctors and the several doctors she went to after told her variations of the same thing. It took many doctors and several doctor visits where she would explain her symptoms and be met with a nondescript answer. Finally, she found a doctor that gave her an answer that had some solutions. He told her she had anxiety and was experiencing anxiety and panic attacks. This journey spanned several years from around 2003-2008. While it doesn’t feel so long ago, in the world of mental health it was forever ago. For her it took around five years to get proper mental health care. For me, I had my mom as a resource and the first doctor I went to was able to diagnose me.

This doctor of hers suggested getting on some medication that could help her anxiety. This in of itself was a process for her. She had grown up in a home where she was taught that medications were not to be relied on and shouldn’t be taken unless absolutely necessary. So when the doctor told her about medication that could ease her anxiety, she was nervous. But she did pushed through.

My mom is incredible. Getting the proper mental health care is difficult in the first place when battling anxiety and depression, but when the doctor’s weren’t giving her what she needed, she just kept pushing for answers. She kept pushing through her own discomfort to find a solution. During our talk she mentioned how grateful she was for her experience because it allowed her to help me through my mental health journey. This was such a healing experience because I was able to see not only how much my mom helped me through my journey, but how my pain and suffering now can help me in my future.

The ability we have to connect with each other is one of the biggest gifts we can be given. For many of us, we can connect through our challenges and trials that we’ve overcome or are going through. With this perspective our pain has a purpose. Even our darkest days can help us connect and grow in the future.

Resources

• SAMHSA (Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration)
  • Call 1-800-662-4357
• Psychology Today – Great for finding a therapist near you!
• National Institute of Mental Health