Anxiety & Depression - The Nice Part

Little did I know that moving back to Enstone was going to be the beginning of my new life.
Throughout my teenage years, I had an obsessive, repetitive, compulsive, almost pathological fear of turning into my Mum.
Moving back home gave me the sudden realisation that I was indeed going down the same route as my mother. A cold sweat covered me from top to toe, and I started shaking. After the shaking came an uncontrollable feeling of anger. After the anger and the demolition of my bedroom came tears. After the tears, I got straight on the bus to Oxford (45 mins duration) and went to the Jobcentre. I didn't die, I didn't throw up, I didn't even have a panic attack.
I can remember getting off the bus with an overwhelming sense of achievement. The buzz was unreal. The first thing I had to do when I walked in the door was to tell my mum. She didn't look as proud as I had imagined she would. If anything, she looked a bit pissed off. I mentally told her to piss the fuck off go away, and marched back to my bedroom, where I remained until mum called me for dinner.

The years went by, my independence grew, I was taking more risks, and I was in control of my depression. I'm not saying that I never had a panic attack during those years, I did. It was how I dealt with them that changed. I had to retrain my brain not to fear the panic attack, because that would be enough to trigger one. Once I could go about my day without fearing the fear, I had to learn to deal with my panic attacks in a controlled way.

• Breathing Techniques - I took up yoga to help me learn the correct way to breathe. That sounds ridiculous, but it's true. I also looked ridiculous, but most of the time we all had our eyes closed, so we couldn't see each other.
• Mental Ear-bashing - When I felt like I was going to have a wobble, I'd give myself a good telling off. I'd say things like, "Come on, you're like everybody else." or "You're not going to die, have a sit down and rummage through your bag or something."

I had discovered comedy, although I had probably discovered it at school. For someone with an anxiety disorder, I was very confident at standing up in front of everybody and playing the clown. Comedy made me happy, and I was good at it. The world was mine.

I was travelling to all sorts of places with work related things. After buses came trains, then I got a car!

I can't expect to live the rest of my life without feeling anxiety, but I know that if I do, then I have all the ammo and experience to deal with it.

That's it.

I'm 25, and a completely normal person in society *twitch*.

Thank you for reading.

Anxiety & Depression

Near enough everybody, at somepoint in their life, will experience some sort of depression and/or anxiety. It may impact their life quite profusely, whereas some people might just see it as a temporary inconvenience.

My first memories of depression and anxiety started when I was 10, and I got a diagnosis at 14. At such a young age, symptoms can easily be mistaken for "terrible teens".

I grew up with my Mum, a single mother who suffered from terrible depression and awful anxiety herself. Agoraphobia had crippled her life from a young age, and I grew up thinking that staying away from social situations/public transport/outdoors was normal behaviour. It was only when I started Secondary school, I knew that this behaviour was not normal.

I was shy, really shy, just like my mum. I would only speak when spoken to, and would keep myself to myself at all costs. I was relatively "normal" to a few close friends that I had, but I knew that I was very different to them in some way.

Age 11-12 I grew as a person. I had become more outgoing, my sense of humour flourished, and I enjoyed school. I look back on these years with a warm feeling in my heart.

At 13, things started breaking down at home. My Mum had drinking "issues" and couldn't take me to the dentist, or the doctor. The thought of going to these places on my own had filled me with so much fear. The resentment directed towards my Mum started here. I wanted to know why she couldn't do these things with me. I tried talking to her, but I would get snapped at, and the conversation would grind to a halt.
I was so angry as to why I was "turning into my Mum". I tried fighting it, but the more I fought, the more fear would overcome me. There were times where I would wake up on a school morning in a cold sweat and a headache, and leaving the house was just NOT going to happen.

I started missing school days here and there, and I was a wreck. I slept during the day, and was wide awake during the night. At that point in time, I didn't care what people thought of me, I hated the world, I hated myself, and I took it out everything that I hated.

I find it very difficult to put into words the reasons why I self harmed. I was in control of the pain that I was giving myself, and it was the control I lacked so much in my life. I enjoyed the routine of cutting myself, cleaning myself up, and bandaging all the wounds. It was comforting.

People started noticing the scars on my body at school, and I would get teased. I was lucky that I never got "bullied" in the sense that people weren't nasty to me. I suspect this was mainly because I was called "Psycho" at school. I don't blame them for calling my Psycho - I used to go out of my way to freak the boys out by stabbing myself with a compas. Quite funny looking back at it now..  no it's not funny. It is.

By GCSE time, I was rarely at school. I had a home tutor, who I told to fuck off most of the time.  My subjects were cut to English Literature, English Language, Maths and double award Science. It broke my heart. I was a good student, and my projected grades were great before everything fell apart.

I saw a child psychologist, who was as much use as a condom in a nunnery. I could talk for England about my problems, I just wanted the answers. I was given all sorts of antidepressants over the months, a lot of them gave me horrible side effects like hallucinations. I remember one hallucination in particular, everytime I moved my eyeballs, I saw spiders in the corner of my eye!
It turned out I had to find the answers myself. So I did. So I thought I did.

At 16 I decided to leave my cosy village in Oxfordshire, to move in with my 25 year old boyfriend in Tottenham, and to stop my meds! At the time, it was the best idea I ever had. I thought throwing myself into the deep end was the answer. I spent 3 months there, only leaving the house twice on my own, and that was a minute walk to the shop where I would be overcome with panic attacks.

I didn't revise for English Literature, and got a C. I did half the coursework for English Language and got a D. I did half the Maths exam and got a D, and I went through the Science exam in 5 minutes and got a C C. I got my results while I was in Tottenham. I cried for a solid hour. After an hour, I realised how well I had done, for doing so little. That was a comfort.
Getting a D for English Language.. HA, I'm a writer. I don't put that on my CV btw.

I had reached 17, and the fun was about to begin!

                                                   Part 2 to come.. How I fixed myself.

Jobs

I'm far from a lazy fart, but I have come to the conclusion that jobs don't like me. Especially ones that involve the general public.

Jobs from working experience onwards

Care Home Assistant

I think you have to be made of special stuff to become a good care home assistant, and I have the utmost respect for them. I am not made of that aforementioned special stuff, and I don't do vomit.

Website Designer

I very much enjoyed the 8 weeks I spent working as a website designer. It was very unfortunate that I was asked to work overtime and got felt up by the boss against my will.

Petrol Station Assistant

Only lasted about 6 hours. An old drunk man shouted at me, and I cried. Never going to let that happen again.

Sexual Health Clinic Assistant

Best-job-ever! I enjoyed every single second working in that cramped, smelly, and diseased building. There was something so intensely satisfying about lecturing informing uneducated adults. I learnt one thing while working in the clinic: don't initiate eye contact while swabbing jap's eyes.

Waitress

On my first night I had a complaint from a customer about her food. The cheese in her ploughman's lunch was mouldy. I wasn't sure how to deal with the situation, so I asked the man in charge, and he told me to fob her off and say that the cheese was meant to be that way. I apologised to the woman, got her a replacement, walked out, and never went back.

Ghostwriter

Got paid to write about food, and somebody else got the credit for it. Easy money.

Comedy Writer

I wrote some top notch stuff, and somebody else got the credit for it. Wait.. what? (Feel free to ask me about this)