Where It All Began

I am a straight forward, no bullshit kind of girl. You’ll learn this soon enough so I figured I’d start my first blog post getting straight to the point. I'm here because I struggle with mental illness.

I was diagnosed with OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder) and Anxiety when I was just over 10 years old. I spent 2 years before my diagnosis going to doctors appointments, missing school, not sleeping, and overall just trying to figure out what was wrong with me. My biggest fear as a kid was throwing up, I knew that nobody liked puking but for some reason it was all I could think about. I would wake up almost every night thinking and feeling like I had the stomach flu and that I was going to throw up. For a while we just assumed something was wrong with my stomach; I had blood work done, ultrasound, x-rays, diet changes, allergy tests, etc. When nothing changed or showed up after almost two years my parents thought maybe it was something to do with my brain. We went to a child psychologist that worked through the local hospital, he was super friendly and easy to talk to which made things easier. I don't remember specifically when things became clear because I was only 10 years old but at some point after meeting Dr. Vandercoy, I realized I have a mental illness. Now what the hell does a mental illness mean to a 10 year old? That's a great question. I don't recall feeling like I was “crazy”, I don't recall feeling out of place or abnormal, all I remember feeling was a sense of relief that we figured out what was going on.

After we realized I had a mental illness, we (we being myself and my parents) began looking for therapy treatments. By this time I was experiencing more symptoms than just feeling sick; I would constantly worry about throwing up to the point that I wouldn't go near anyone that could possibly make me sick, I wouldn't eat certain foods because I knew they could possibly make me sick, I wouldn't go to school on a regular basis because kids there were sick and I didn’t want to be in the same building as them. It was excessive. I remember obsessively biting my nails when I was anxious, which looking back is funny to me because there are so many germs under your nails and I would just actively chew them off? Anyways, I remember feeling like I needed to scratch my skin off and constantly move my body when I was anxious. I washed my hands religiously. I thought hand sanitizer was my saving grace. There are so many things looking back that at the time I didn't even realize were not “normal”, I knew my friends didn't worry in the same way but I didn't see it as something that was a problem. I went to therapy for approximately 5 years. It helped me discover myself and gave me tools to help myself. Therapy was a great thing for me and something that again, I didn't realize isn't normal for a kid to be attending once a week. I’ll get into therapy more at another time, for now all I’ll say is that it was a huge help in my adolescence.

I remember my childhood being filled with tension, anxiety, and frustration. I remember pushing my parents to the point of crying. I remember my little brother crying because our house was a constant battlefield. It seemed like every day we were all collectively trying to defuse a bomb, that bomb being my panic attacks. It was tricky for all of us because we were all learning how to cope. Since I was so young I still relied on my parents for basically everything, my mom especially. It was tough for them to see my struggle and not be able to help me. It was frustrating for them to see me give up on myself and it was hard for them to understand that I was trying even when it didn’t look like it. I would have panic attacks almost nightly from age 9 to 14. It was exhausting, it was mentally and physically draining. I’ve always been very vocal with my anxiety, I would tell my parents every thought, feeling, or worry that came to my mind because for some reason that was how I felt safe. While it was exhausting for me to be thinking all of these things, I can also see how exhausting and frustrating it would be for my parents having to hear that I don’t feel well 25 times in 20 minutes. They were taught by the psychologist that reassuring me didn’t help me, it only fed into my worries and overall would make me rely on their reassurance instead of helping myself. They really tried to follow that but they were still my parents, they wanted to be able to help me and take this away from me so it was frustrating for them when I would constantly ask for reassurance knowing they couldn’t give it to me even if they wanted to. Looking back I realize now how much my mental illness affected my family. My mom lost multiple jobs because she would be too busy taking care of me and picking me up from school 3 times a week because I was panicking or felt sick from panicking. My dad struggled with his frustrations, he meant well and tried his best but he's a very logical thinker and anxiety is anything but logical. He couldn't understand why I couldn't just believe I was okay or why I couldn't just calm myself down. My brother grew up as the second priority because I took so much attention and energy, he also witnessed a lot of yelling at 3 in the morning because I would wake the whole house up with my panic attacks and wasn't doing the things I needed to in order to calm myself down, our house would turn into a yelling match out of pure exhaustion. My dad would yell at me out of frustration for not dealing with my anxiety, my mom would yell at me some days for the same reason and the others she’d be yelling at my dad for yelling at me, and my brother would yell at them both because he just wanted it to stop. It breaks my heart looking back at that time in my life, it hurts me that I hurt them.

My family and myself did a lot of learning in those first few years after my diagnosis. Most people know what anxiety is, they know what a panic attack is. Not a lot of people truly know what OCD is, they use the term OCD to describe someone who is a clean freak or someone who doesn't like germs, it's so much more than that. For me, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder has two parts to it; the obsessive part and the compulsive part. For myself, I find the obsessive part means there's a specific thing that I’m afraid of and it consumes my entire world, when I was a kid it was getting sick, now its drug exposure and germs overall. The compulsive part is what happens as a reaction to the obsession, it’s things that I do in my everyday life that I feel like I need to do in order to survive. My compulsions vary from washing my hands 40 times a day, to counting to 8 while I'm in the shower, to washing my bed sheets once a week. They are the things that make me feel like I'm safe from the things I'm obsessing about. It was easy to understand that I was having panic attacks, it was hard to understand why I had to check the door 4 times and step into my kitchen a certain way every time I would get up to go to the bathroom at night. It was even more difficult to realize how my OCD was attached to my anxiety, I knew I was anxious about getting sick and I knew that I would do everything to avoid that but I didn't realize that it was my OCD that made me worry specifically about getting sick or that it was my OCD that made me avoid eating certain foods with the possibility of getting sick. I realize now how they tie together and it makes sense, I'm very aware of what my mental illness is and how it works now that I’m an adult but as a child I really didn't understand it. My parents didn't understand it much either, they were trying to figure out what this all meant all while trying to learn how to help me in the best way possible. It was a lot for them and it was a lot for me.

Looking back I think of how blessed I am that I had my parents to help me through this. I was just a kid, I should've been outside playing in dirt not worrying about the germs the dirt carried. I was helpless and confused and honestly at times, so were they, but they continued to support and love me and I wouldn't be here without them. I view my childhood as a huge learning experience, I discovered a huge part of who I am. I navigated and I struggled and I grew so much more than I thought I would or could. I’m still learning and struggling and growing, this is something I will deal with my entire life. That's a lot to take in but it's been a part of me for most of my life, it's not something that I took on and can never let go of, it’s something that’s a part of me and something that's brought me so much insight and for that alone, I'm grateful.

I know this post is a lot of information at once and may seem overwhelming but I think that's kind of the point. I’m doing this as not only an outlet for myself but also just to be a voice, to be someone that has experienced mental illness and to talk about it to help end the stigma around it. People don't typically like talking about or hearing the bad stuff in our lives, with social media today you see a lot of pretty and a lot of perfect, this isn’t that. I want to be real and vulnerable and open with the people reading this. I want to be able to speak on my experiences without shame or embarrassment, and most importantly I want people to know they aren't alone in their struggles.

If you’ve made it this far, thank you. I’m excited to continue to share with you all.