*Trigger Warning: Suicide* I was admitted to the psychiatric hospital for the first time when I was 20 years old. It came after a long period of severe anorexia and malnutrition, progressive dysfunctionality and decline in my physical and mental health. What I didn't know back then, I'm 30 now, was that it's not because [...]
My mental illness feels like a sucking black hole most of the time. On a good day I feel like I have something pressing down on my chest, making it hard for me to breath. That’s my panic attacks. The sucking black hole is my major depressive disorder and agoraphobia. I have suffered with mental [...]
It's been 6 years but the memory of my first panic attack is as fresh as it happened yesterday. It was my first day to my job after graduation and I was travelling to work on the metro train. Suddenly, I noticed my chest was getting tightly grabbed from inside, there was no pain just [...]
TW: Abuse, Eating Disorder, Suicidal Thoughts I am 18 years old, but I feel as though I am just finally figuring out my place in this world and my identity. All my life I have lived with social and generalized anxiety disorders, as well as depression. It was not until I reached high school when [...]
Oops, I Left My Anxiety At Home When you have had anxiety for as long as I have, it kind of becomes a part of your identity. Life without it feels great but strange and unfamiliar at the same time. My most recent episode of crippling anxiety resulted in being prescribed a ~very~ effective medication. [...]
Recovery is Non-Linear Recovery is non-linear. Anyone who says that getting better is a straight line - I want their secret. I want to be stable, but what does that mean? It means sometimes being unstable, wobbly, broken in particular ways. We shatter and come together. We hurt and we heal. We scream, cry or [...]
Prozac stopped my nail biting I used to be a nail biter. I can remember biting my nails from the time that I was a small child (probably only six or seven) I would do it when I was nervous because I needed something to focus on rather than anxiety . But at the time [...]
This summer I turn 29. I have suffered from generalized anxiety presumably my entire life. The panic attacks started in high school as did the bipolar mood swings. I was chronically suicidal but even more so, I was stubborn. Until senior year of high school, I did just enough to skate under the radar. I [...]
I can recall the very moment everything changed. I remember it clearly as if a wire in my brain became unplugged. I was at a friend’s house and I sat down on the edge of the fireplace to settle in for another movie. Except this time was different. Though my body physically stopped moving when [...]
I Am Not My Illness I was drowning. Water was filling my lungs, and I couldn’t breathe. The world seemed to dance around me, but I only saw it through my blurry vision blocked by water. I was gasping, sputtering, coughing; I was trying everything that I could think of to keep breathing. My hands [...]
