It comes in alignment with some Mental Health work I'm doing with some amazing organisations that it thought it would only be relevant for me to share a chunk of my mental health story. When starting 'Can't Sleep Club', my main aspiration was to create a safe and educative platform for us to talk openly and constructively about our minds, alongside all the other quirky things we all love and hate! So today, I thought I'd share a piece of myself in attempt for you guys as reader to understand where the voice and mother behind the club comes from. Also, I think this is often a positive, empowering space and I am guilty of sharing smiles and rainbows, when in reality I have my own struggles and it's important to share them to ground people and kill off superficiality.
TW: This post addresses anxiety, depression, parental separation + mentions self harming.
As a child, I was mostly full of beans. Obsessed with performing, I attended dance classes five times a week and often performed Hannah Montana concerts to my family on a fortnightly basis in my bedroom. Looking back, I know I was quite co-dependant and attached to my mum and I was definitely quite a perfectionist and cautious of exploration, but no more than a relatively introverted child. I was sociable as I grew older however and just loved to be on stage.
Throughout my teenage years, symptoms of anxiety definitely became more present and were catalysed by my parent's divorce in 2013. When a sudden change happens in your seemingly stable household, it can best be described as an earthquake. There may have been little tremors beforehand, but you can never quite believe that an actual earthquake would happen in your lifetime. Suddenly, my whole life was changed forever and the two figures which I had essentially been reliant on since day one were no longer together. In hindsight, I am extremely grateful for their separation and I have so much faith in everything happening for a reason, but in that period of time, everything felt lost and out of touch. It felt like 'divorce' was a term flung around in society with little exploration and clarity on the extent of how much it impacted individuals' lives and situations. It wasn't until I watched a Zoella video on Anxiety that I started to make sense of my symptoms and actually considered the idea that feeling nauseous all the time and having spells of hyperventilation wasn't normal.
Luckily, I had a really close relationship with my mum (I still do) so by the age of 14 I confided in her and told her that I felt like I was suffering from symptoms of anxiety. For a while, she was the only person who knew, however when things got worse my mum helped me reach out for some help at school. I struggled a lot with GCSE's initially and found the workload unbearable alongside normal teenage angst and unconventional home relationships. Looking bad, I just had a lot of weight on my shoulders in a really pivotal stage of my life and my mental health struggles were extremely valid. I dealt with undiagnosed anxiety and panic attacks and symptoms of depression for the two years of my GCSE courses but managed to somewhat deal with it alongside chats (and numerous breakdowns) to two of my favourite teachers who just listened and always had their doors open for me after my mum brought up my struggles at Parents Evening to them.
However, I think it wasn't until my A Level studies began that I truly understood the extent of what I was going through. When school studies increased even more and I was dealing with teenage pressures and adolescent relationships, I began feeling extremely low. My self esteem dropped, I avoided doing my work, I withdrew, and I genuinely couldn't see a way out of feeling the way I did. I began to find coping mechanisms in recklessness and self harm and it was a really dark stage of my life. 'Self harm' was a term which felt so petrifying to me. For a long time, I was in denial of it and many people now still treat it as a taboo subject. It is such a wide piece of terminology that, for many, admitting to themselves and others that they have self harm tendencies is extremely stigmatised, despite it being a coping mechanism for those dealing with distress. I suffered mostly through it alone, although my mum and close friends certainly noticed a difference despite me not letting them in on the true extent of things. Writing this today fills me with such pain for my younger self because in those moments, I truly did not care for myself or wellbeing at all. My attendance dropped, I hardly slept and was just in a state of avoidance. It wasn't until I forced myself into my sixth form office and spoke up about the extent of how depressed I was that things turned around and I am forever grateful for my actions that day.
I began attending a Girls Support Girls group at my sixth form which was made up of some incredible young women with their own personal struggles and it was created to empower us all and give us a safe space to be our full creative selves. I also began weekly meetings with a sixth form assistant who was previously a counsellor. She changed my life by helping me on my journey of self love and just giving me a place to be open about my struggles and self harming - which at the time was something I was terrified of.
2018 - some of the darkest times
After leaving Sixth Form, my self esteem was definitely in a way better place but I still struggled massively with my anxiety symptoms so I decided to go and visit a GP to see if there was any guidance they could give me. I was offered medication and a spot on a three-month waiting list for Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT). I took both - the medication was Diazepam which was only to be taken in extreme moments of Anxiety and the CBT started as soon as they could squeeze me in. By the time the therapy began, I was suffering with severe panic attacks and anxiety and so I was finally diagnosed with Generalised Anxiety Disorder and Panic Disorder. For me, personally, having a diagnosis was something so insignificant to me because I knew I had been suffering with these symptoms for at least five years and the lack of diagnosis had become numb to me. Although, it was definitely reassuring and prevented me from feeling so invalid.
The CBT was short-term but I found it really beneficial. It allowed me to address a lot of trauma regarding my parent's separation and also taught me a lot about what was actually happening to my body when I was dealing with a panic attack and anxiety. My therapist was a really lovely lady too who empowered me a lot in my path of self discovery. In that same Summer, I ended my first long term relationship and was quite overcome by the array of options I had in front of me. After the break-up, I definitely went "out there" like anyone does after a relationship breakdown. I partied a lot and dated a questionable range of individuals in an attempt to fill the void of being uncomfortable with myself again. The thing about ending a relationship is in one half you feel like a brand new independent person, but in the other half you're empty because you have left the person you gave so much of yourself to. It is a weird unexplainable feeling but also the right one to have felt.
At the time, I was working in a full time job I loved but had a pressing dream of performing. I ended up applying to a Music university with no ties to any places anymore. I was brilliantly terrified of life ahead of me. Meanwhile, after all the exhausting void-filling activities, I vowed to become more self-aware, compassionate, trauma-informed and self-actualised; I started attending long-term compassionate therapy. I also met my current love unexpectedly and he has been supportive since day one of my journey. Attending therapy is definitely a long a$$ wave I've been surfing for a year and a half now. It is interesting, eye-opening and enlightening. However, it also forces us to be scarily vulnerable and open to working through trauma - something we naturally avoid at all costs. A HUGE realisation: I still suffer from Generalised Anxiety Disorder and have waves of depression through major life events.
Therapy does not eliminate me feeling anxious, however it teaches me how to approach my anxiety and speak to my anxious self, which in turn prevents me from feeling so frightened of my anxiety and lows. So when I moved to university in September, I was horribly anxious and low but I managed to cope with it with the support of my therapist and I also started taking daily medication too to combat the low moods, which helped massively. Anxiety will always be by my side but I hold its hand now, rather than running away from it.
I'm hoping to do a post more in depth on my therapy experience, but for now, I think I'll leave it here. As always, remember 'can't sleep club' is a safe place to talk about and investigate the mind and my DMs/email inbox are always open for discussion or a nice chat! If you are currently struggling, please be sure to check out our 'Mind Resources' page here, for useful places to seek professional advice and support. Keep riding the wave guys and know that, no matter how happy somebody seems, everyone has their own internal battles. We are in this together.
Love + peace always x
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