day 3 // 🍀
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Owning my truth around mental health
What are you working through? I bet you’ll find out that you are not alone.
Sometimes, when you’re doing well in life, you can hide the fact that you’re hurting. Even from yourself. If this resonates for you, know you are not alone.
At this moment, as we kick off mental health awareness month, I am grateful for my emotional strength and security. But I’d be a fraud to pretend I’ve always been this way.
When I sit to reflect with compassion, I recall the decade-plus of impulsive and risky behavior, the deep and loving relationships that were damaged, the escapism through work, sex, drugs, and alcohol, and the neglect of my own well-being as well as the family dynamics that I’d later discover were at the route of it all.
Cultural Compentency ***Trigger Warning***
It is so great to read that someone understands the importance of cultural compentency.
Mental Health Awareness Month
This year has been the year I’ve really worked on my recovery and my overall mental health. From a very young age I was depressed, fascinated with death and constantly anxious. I developed major body image issues as a child that turned into an eating disorder. I grew up with a biological father who was an addict, alcoholic, abusive and mentally ill with Bipolar Disorder.
My Story
It’s mental health awareness month. My mental health is something that looking back on my life is something I have always struggled with it my whole life, I was just not aware of depression being a illness. My official diagnose is borderline personality disorder, major depressive disorder, Generalized anxiety disorder, I’m suicidal and I also have been a cutter. Then dealing with losing my mom when I was just five days away from turning 17 and then losing my Dad at 19 has played apart in my depression too. But even before losing my parents I was depressed, it has been a struggle everyday for me, I have been dealing with thoughts of wanting to killing myself and sometimes thinking I was never good enough, that I was just a waste of life and it went on for what seems like forever. It seems I have always been thinking how my life is horrible and thinking I wish I could die.
I feel that my feelings started to get more intense when I was in high school. I would always look at other people at school and think how can they be so happy, and why do I feel so sad all the time. But I was afraid to tell anyone how I was feeling because I did not want people to think I was weird or crazy. So sometimes I would cover up how I was really feeling by trying to be one else, I would say things that were not true to make people think I was normal, because in my head I thought I was a freak, and because I was so depressed and I didn’t want anyone to know that I was thinking about killing myself everyday or how at night I would cry myself to sleep because I was so depressed and scared to tell anyone. Like most teenagers I just wanted to fit in and I thought if anyone really knew how I felt I would be ostracized. So all the feelings I had, I kept to myself and I would make up stories to tell other people because sometimes I had wished that maybe if I say something enough times even if it was not true, it would come true and my depression and my suicidal thoughts would go away. In high school I also began cutting. It was a way for me to control how I was feel, when I felt everything else was out of control. Even though I knew it was wrong, it was a release. But today I can say I happily don’t cut anymore.
My Journey
Guess what month it is??? Mental health awareness month!! I am always smiling , having fun and willing to lend a helping hand to ANYONE. This is very personal but I have decided to share my story and journey with hopes to help someone else. I struggle with anxiety and depression daily, I bet by looking at me in public you could never tell that could you? Yeah I didn’t think so. All of my life things never came super easy. My parents divorced when I was younger, my grandmother had cancer, my mom was diagnosed with epilepsy, there was addiction in the family, my mom worked two jobs , and my grandmother passed away. It may not seem like much but you NEVER know what someone else is going through because I promise you I made sure that my outward appearance never showed what I was dealing with daily. I held it all in just so I didn’t have to put my problems on anyone else.
ADHD, Depression, Self-Injury, Drugs and… Success?
May is Mental Health Awareness Month and I am so stoked for the opportunity that this gives me to spread knowledge about one of the causes closest to my heart. To kick off the month, I’d like to share my personal story with you as I encourage others to share their stories. For the past couple months, I have been trying to figure out how to describe my experiences with mental illness. This is challenging as I feel that no words will adequately capture the nuances that made my experiences so profoundly meaningful but I will do my best.
In Honor of May Being Mental Health Awareness Month - No One Should Ever Feel Alone. To My Family, Friends and Loved Ones: ‘Thank You’ Isn’t Enough, so Please Accept This From Me
By Allyson McAndrews, M.Ed.
To My Family, Friends and Loved Ones:
Who don’t we thank enough? “Parents” may be a common answer to this question. But for many teenagers, their ignorant response may be a little different (and I am guilty of having been a “difficult” one!).
Writing this now as an independent 28-year-old, all I can say is this: If I could go back in time and actually listen to one thing you said, it would be to “trust you.” You were right. I wasn’t going to understand you then. In fact, anything you said sometimes went in one ear and came out the other with the exact opposite meaning. But I needed to trust that there was a method to your madness. There was a reason you raised me the way you did.
Having a child in psychotherapy takes a toll on an entire family. It takes a toll on everyone in their lives. Looking back, it must have been like having two kids for the price of one. When I was a child and experiencing OCD, there were good days and bad days. And the days changed so quickly you probably wondered, “Where did my child go? Where did my sister go? She and her bubbly self were just here yesterday.” Now, I wish I trusted you through every up and every down and believed you when you said, “This, too, shall pass.”
#mynameisdawnandiambipolar
May is National Mental Health Awareness Month. There are several awesome hashtag # initiatives floating around the internet (#endthestigma #whonotwhat #mentalhealthmonth #stigmafree), and I’m really pleased to see that the national spotlight is finally on the need for awareness of the ‘invisible illnesses’ that so many struggle with. Celebrities, artists, authors, and so many others who have large, influential public platforms, are joining the movement to speak out about mental health. The wave of change that can follow these national awareness movements, could save lives, repair families, and give hope to those struggling alone with what is likely something they don’t understand, or perhaps are too ashamed to ask help for. The shame of mental illness, is often as damaging as the illness itself. Mental illnesses can be treated, very successfully, with medications and therapies. Shame, on the other hand (a result of stigma), is something that is more difficult to treat, and can have a devastating impact on a person’s ability to move beyond the messes that undiagnosed mental illnesses can cause. Through these initiatives and awareness campaigns, we can remove the devastating impact of shame and open doors of hope.
Not only awareness is needed though. An end to the stigma and shame that so many face, is only going to happen through people being willing to stand together, bravely, and share their testimonies.
I’ve waited all month for just the right time, and the right words (and the courage) to share this. For many of you reading this, it may be surprising, but for others, you’ve known and kept my ‘secret’. So, here goes.
Anxious Abby
October is mental health awareness month and anyone who has been touched by mental illness has an important story that needs to be shared. There are people that need to understand that these issues are okay to talk about and feel all the feels.
I feel compelled to share this story about my anxiety and depression because mental illness took the voice of a friend of mine and countless others when it doesn’t have to. It’s a journey, but there is hope.
“I have a chemical imbalance in my brain. I did not ask for it, nor did a diabetic ask for their illness. Yet, you stigmatize me for mine and call me crazy yet you give compassion for the other.”
That chemical imbalance for me, according to a psychiatrist, is generalized anxiety disorder and depression. Before the diagnosis, let’s go back to December 9, 2016 at around 3:30 in the morning when I was literally catapulted from my bed and my journey began… I jumped up as if someone was stabbing me in the heart. I thought for sure, this is it, I’m dying. Not realizing that I was walking around and pacing in order to decide what I should do next. Needless to say I wasn’t dying… I decided after calling my primary care doctor that I should go to the ER. They pulled me into the room right before the ER pretty quickly after getting there as they often do with unexplained chest pain. They took an EKG of my chest and sent me back to the waiting room. After they took me back to the ER they went through chest x-rays, physical exams, multiple doctors and nurses, and then they said you’re not having a heart attack. We only treat you for what you came in with so we’re sending you home and just follow up with your primary care doctor. What?! That’s it?! Do you people not realize I am actually going to die? Spoiler alert- I’m still here.
I Never Dreamed This Would Happen
May is mental health awareness month. It would make sense that as a former licensed mental health therapist I might write something for mental health awareness month. That’s not why I’m writing this. In fact, I never dreamed I’d be writing this.
I never dreamed that when I looked in my nine-year-old daughter’s school notebook, I’d find this written among her school notes and assignments: Sometimes I wish I was dead. My beautiful, bright, sensitive, compassionate daughter wishing she was dead. Nine years old.
She was raised in love. We were a family who read to our kids every night, had snuggle time and sang lullabies. We made time to play together, to eat together, to take walks in the woods, bike rides on nature trails. Our daughter laughed and loved and played and could light up a room.
I never dreamed that my ten-year-old daughter would quit eating after a girl in her dance class made a comment about her body being thick. Weight fell off of my daughter’s tall frame, exposing ribs and hipbones. A ten-year-old starving herself.