Hello, I have always thought that sharing my story with the mental health community is important to bring hope to others that are just like me.

I’m a 37 year old divorced mother of two boys. I have been in therapy of some kind or another since I was 7 years old. Mental illness runs in my family as well as substance abuse addiction. I believe I was born with my many disorders that progressed and worsened as I got older, abused illegal drugs, prescribed medication and had my children. In my early childhood I showed all the many signs of OCD. I also grew up in an extremely chaotic family where my mother suffered terribly with her own mental illness that was never acknowledged or treated and an emotionally absent father. My two older siblings coped with this by using and abusing drugs and my older sister was put into rehab when I was seven. My older brother simply moved away and is still an addict today covering up his own mental health issues. My younger sister was extremely emotionally disturbed and would act out violently towards my parents but especially towards me. She would later become a drug addict for many years and thankfully entered recovery 4 ½ years ago.

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My father was a drug addict, paranoid schizophrenic, dealer and hoarder.

Growing up was traumatic to say the least, I ended up moving out at age 15.

Currently I am 28, a father to be, high school teacher and martial arts instructor.

My whole life I have been dealing with depression, anxiety and other mental health concerns.

I found that the best therapy came from writing my story, first in the form of poetry then in a book. Even if you only write for your self, please do it. It will help!

            My name is Lorenzo Aguilera. I am a United States Army Veteran seeking mental health for issues that the Veteran Affairs declares is not “army related”. My goal is to reach out to someone, anyone that can hear me out about my current mental status dealing with life, my financial difficulties, my high stress/anxiety, high levels of depression, and thoughts of suicide, mood swings, constant nightmares, and everyday irritability.

            I first decided to join the U.S. Army upon witnessing on national television the twin towers going down. I remember thinking, “How and why could anyone do this? Something must be done!”, as I sat in my Biology class as a freshman at Riverside High School in El Paso, TX. I knew then that I had made up my mind. After I graduated, I gave college a shot for one year and was successfully achieving above a 3.0 GPA while I was a cook at a local Denny’s Restaurant. I guess the closeness I had to my mother was an attachment harder to let go than I thought however, she confessed that her blessing for my interest in the military was prayed for, and therefore, in August of 2005, 5 days after my birthday, I was on a plane to Ft. Knox, KY, home of Cavalry Scout basic training and AIT.

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I feel like an alien, I don’t belong, I don’t want to be here, I’m not made for this earth, nobody understands what it’s like because you just can’t put it into words and even when you can you feel like a burden or like you’re crazy or attention seeking.
You know everything and yet you know nothing, constantly questioning who you are because once you think you know that illness comes tapping at your door and you suddenly feel lost again.
From a troubled past of bullying and being made to feel so small and insignificant, guilt trips, abuse, neglect, abandonment, death, violence, a broken home and self harm..
Nothing has ever felt like home.
Always thinking about giving up, never being good enough, wanting to fit in and be loved but at the same time all you want it to be left alone and not hurt anyone.
Being completely fine one day then losing control the next.
Locking yourself away and shutting everyone out and then when you’re finally alone you get hit with depression and crave someone to pull you out.
Problems with your self image and having to grow up too quick.
Abusive or unstable relationships where they react in a way which triggers the things you try so hard to keep hidden away.
Begging and crying to friends, family, hospitals, councillors and doctors to please just fix me I can’t take any more of this.

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Navigating a world that often feels cold, insensitive, and unaccepting of mental illness is lifelong work, a healing journey with ups and downs that has no end. As a highly sensitive person who has lived with anxiety/depression/OCD/ADHD since childhood, struggled with self-harm, substance abuse, and eating disorders, and is a rape and domestic abuse survivor, I have sought out many forms of therapy over my lifetime, both traditional and alternative.

One concept that I became familiar with in Dialectal Behavioral Therapy (DBT) is having a toolbox. Every individual’s toolbox looks different and will evolve over time. It is essentially a list of our skills and techniques for emotional regulation, distress tolerance, mindfulness, and interpersonal effectiveness. I would like to share some of my go-to tools for self-soothing and traversing times of heightened anxiety/the unknown: 

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1. I’ve had anxiety since 1st grade, depression since I was 11 years old. This was in the 1960’s and 1970’s. Nobody talked about, understood or even knew about mental illness. It was referred to as “growing pains”.
2. Unfortunately, I wasn’t diagnosed until the early 1990’s; also with compulsive overeating, bulimia, borderline personality disorder, relationship/male dependency, survivor of mental, physical and sexual abuse and rape, codependency, PTSD, attention deficit disorder, self harm (cutting), suicide attempts, etc. 
3. When finally diagnosed, mental illness was still not really recognized by insurance companies. Therefore, receiving proper treatment was limited and frustrating. I’m sad and angry that I wasn’t able to get the help I so desperately needed as a child, my life might have been brighter growing up. 
4. I was finally able to receive therapy along with medications to help cope with mental illness. It is still a struggle. Couple of times my medications stopped being effective and I struggled with depression and anxiety. My doctor and I kept trying different medications and ECT’s (Electro Convulsive Therapy) until we found a combination of medications that worked. The ECT’S didn’t help me, but I know friends that find them very helpful. It gets difficult at times, just keep working with your doctor/therapist and there is a light at the end of the dark tunnel.
5. I’m very glad that children and teens are able to be diagnosed early and can get treatment so they have a chance to a brighter future. Even though we still struggle with the stigma of mental illness, times have sure changed since I was a child.

Everyone struggles with something in life. Some struggle for brief periods of time and some struggle every day. I belong to the some who struggle every day. Since I was 5 years old I have constantly struggled with mental illness. I have been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, borderline personality disorder, schizophrenia, depression, anxiety, ADD, ADHD, PTSD, and attention deficit Disorder. My dad, step mother, and Step Father physically abused me for most of my life because they didn’t understand what I was going through and my Mother was the only person in my life to try to help me through everything I was dealing with. Unfortunately I did not trust anyone around me due to how I was treated at home and because I was constantly bullied at school because I was different. Eventually the abuse I was facing at my step fathers house led to me going into a state of shock and I tried to hurt my mother because I was so out of it and thought she was my step father. I was 15 at this point and was detained. 

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TO ANYONE WITH ANY MENTAL ILLNESS OF ANY AGE:

(you don’t have to be in middle school)

Middle School’s known to be some of the hardest years of our lives, between hormones and homework it’s tough enough to make it through without mental health and the stigma it so often carries. As it’s impossible to make it through a class without someone making a joke about a mental illness either a friend of mine or I have, I’ve come to a certain conclusion. Teenagers will be teenagers, it shouldn’t be that way, it shouldn’t be an excuse to kidding about things that people truly struggle with on a daily basis, but it is. Sometimes things in life are just stupid, but we can’t let that get to us.

I’m a 13 (almost 14) year old in the ignorant year of 8th grade, towards the end of last year a few things in life went really, really wrong, and it resulted in a series of unfortunate events (no pun intended). Basically, by the time 8th grade started, I had not only experienced my fair share of panic attacks, gone to a therapist several times, but I had also been diagnosed with depression and an anxiety disorder. I had basically hidden from my entire grade during the summer, so as school started up again and I was struck by a mass of indirect insults towards my mental illnesses, let’s just say there was a lot of tears at the beginning of the year.

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Mental health coverage should be a top priority.  Anybody disagreeing lives in their own bubble.  And that bubble can burst anytime with  family strife/hospitalizations/unrealized dreams/wasted and lost lives, etc.  The monster of mental illness is not limited to the poor and homeless.  It can cause strife and disaster for people in all walks of life.  We need more research for better medications and better treatment and parity coverage with insurance.  Most families know someone in their own family or friends/co-workers/neighbors who suffer from mental illness.  It is vastly widespread  and affects everyone.  The affluent catering to insurance and wall street profits is doing immense irreparable disaster to our population. 

I have been struggling with mental illness for most of my 55 years on this planet. I have seen so many therapists over the years that there is no way I could begin, to remember their names. My diagnoses include PTSD, depression, anxiety, agoraphobia, ADD, and so on and so on. But that is not why I decided to post my story. In 2010 I married my soul-mate who also suffers from several mental health issues. Every day is a struggle, I am not going to lie. But in 2012 I decided to take a huge step forward and return to school. All the way growing up I was a mediocre student at best. Doing the bare minimum of work to pass my classes. So, when I went to take the college entrance exam I figured well, my idea of going back to college would be dead right then and there. But something incredible happened not only did I pass I ended up being placed in the honors classes. I was convinced that this was a mistake, a one time fluke that could never be replicated. Well I was wrong. I ended up leaving the community college because it became too hard for me with my agoraphobia. But the story didn’t end there. I subsequently enrolled at Southern New Hampshire University in their online program. I am not going to lie, sometimes its incredibly hard to stay focused, to keep my eye on the prize. I only am a half-time student and it is taking me a really long time to move through the courses. But the good news is I am more than halfway there and for most of my classes I receive A’s and B’s but I have had one failure which is why my GPA is only 2.72. And I just wanted to say if I can do this so can you, if only you give it a try. Oh yeah, by the way, my major…..Well it’s Psychology of course with a focus on Addictions.

I want to wish anyone who may be reading this good luck with your future too. And remember you can do it too!!!

Kathy