Personal Narrative: My Depression And Anxiety Story

I have come to the conclusion I do not like where I am in life anymore. I believe it is time to jump down the rabbit hole. For most my life I have been coping with depression and anxiety. Based on my struggles I consider depression and anxiety to be the most difficult diagnosed mental disorders to combat against. I’ve been working through my depression since my senior year of high school. To be frank, when I first started college in the summer of 2015 I was so mentally exhausted to the point where I did not want to leave my bed in the mornings. I was numb to all excluding a constant feeling of despondency. My family is always fighting with each other, to the point of willingly putting down each other to make themselves feel better.

When I was in my freshman year of high school, I remember my friend, Maddie, have an anxiety attack. She was frantic, couldn’t catch her breath, and dizzy. I didn’t know how to help her. I didn’t know what was wrong. I tried to calm her down the best I could. She eventually calmed down, and went home. A few days, she told me that she had bipolar disorder and one of her symptoms was that she suffered from anxiety. I thought it was a joke, I have some rough days and issues being decisive, that doesn’t mean I’m bipolar or that I have anxiety. I thought she was being overdramatic, as I knew Maddie to be sometimes.

There are times in everybody’s life when they feel down, worthless, or question themselves to a point of insecurity. With clinical depression, these feelings of insignificance are perpetual rather than circumstantial.

Going through something terrible wanting to make a change to make it better. For your own food, fresh starts can have lots of meanings to it. For example, starting a new school, having a hard time with family and friends, others or wanting to change for making bad decisions. It can have multiple meanings to it ; in other words, what you believe can make it a good thing.

that was years ago. when the best part of my day was still waking up to see your face. the year when the snow covered the ground at easter and we spent all night sat in out blankets in the cold, watching shitty rom coms and tv series. i used to have no worries or fears because i k new that wherever i was, you’d be there with me so i would never face my fears alone. there were times where i was so scared. maybe due to my social anxiety or maybe do to the depressing thoughts that made me numb. but you were always by my side.

Anxiety is a difficult subject. There’s no doubt about it. It’s often unspoken of and all too frequently its legitimacy is diminished. For a long time, I’ve struggled with anxiety. I have never officially been diagnosed by a medical professional, mainly due to my lack of sufficient funds, however, it is an all too present force in my life. I would be lying if I were to say that talking about it didn’t make me uncomfortable or nervous whatsoever. Despite the contemporary movements to destigmatize mental illness, it remains something that is very difficult to admit or discuss. So writing this piece, honestly, makes me a bit nervous. However, I would like to share a brief glimpse into my experience because I feel that it really has shaped who I am today.

Throughout my life, I’ve had to deal with a common but challenging condition. My junior year of high school I was diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder and depression, but I had been suffering long before that. For as long as I can remember, I would get horrible stomach aches and headaches frequently for no reason. It wasn’t until the start of my senior year that I really learned to overcome it. Living a normal teenage life became literally impossible for me. I wa too afraid and uncomfortable to do the things I used to love, such as stay at a friends, go to the movies, or even attend mass of Sunday mornings. I would have panic attacks often and would be embarrassed and insecure because people didn’t understand why I was so worked up.

For the past couples of days Karen have been crying. One day, one of the staff member brought Karen to my office stating that she does not know why Karen have been crying. The way her body movement and her facial expression was I knew something was wrong. At first she did not want to say anything when I ask her a question, so in my best interest I had to let her sit and wait for her to speak on what was troubling her. So, it took a while then I ask her how she was feeling and she respond by saying she does not know. The problem I have notice in Karen was she was dealing with depression because she stated that she have not been eating and her mother had passed away. By Karen being sad and crying about the things that may be triggering of her

Childhood is a fantastic time of crust-less sandwiches, imaginative play dates, and few worries. In preschool, most everyone learns about the alphabet and how to pronounce their letters, as well as nursery rhymes and what colors are. It is a brilliant time of the most simplistic knowledge and creative games. Nobody cared what you wore, what you looked like or who your friends were; happiness was solely dependent on being around intellectual peers. The whimsical conversations about Pokémon, Power Rangers and Lord of the Rings, sustained by my overactive, sugar-filled mind, only fueled my grandiose belief that I could be anything I wanted when I grew up. Harped upon since my earliest moments of coherence, the hardest quandary I ever quarreled with was this ever-forced notion that I could be anything I wanted. And although the mantra has been appealing it simply can’t be true and its falsity is generating a society of emotionally inept individuals.

My dread was palpable in the way my face went pallid and my knees shake. I was always the type to never raise my hand in class when I knew an answer. I used to struggle to even make phone calls, dialing the phone only to hang it up when it began to ring.

I’m sitting in Rhino Market & Deli struggling to write. I am also hosting an open mic (well, I’m sitting by the P.A. making sure it doesn’t feed back as random people and friends take turn singing and playing guitar: I am loosely orchestrating the event). I might also be keeping an eye on the PFO Slam Poetry GroupMe texts. I catch myself and smile: I remember vigorously complaining about having too much to do back when I wasn’t doing half as much as I am now. How did I get here? Well, in a way, depression.

My depression is not YOUR depression. Your thoughts are not the same as MY thoughts. Your behavior has nothing to do with MY behavior. Your body does not feel the same as MY body. YOUR solution to the problem is yours not mine, nothing works the same way for everyone. You have no clue what I go through, the emotions that drown me, they may share the same label or name but they are not the same. You speak to me as if you know? What do you know? You only know your own experience, thoughts, moods and how they are drowning you, not me. People are quick to just speak without any real emotion or thought behind their gibberish. My mind is my home and your mind is your home; they may share the same structure and/or materials used to build that home but they are setup completely differently, understand yet?

I wake up to see the morning light i’m now recovering from depression I get up even with my normal mental state i’m not fully recovered i’m trying though. I head downstairs to see my mom “Morning Lizzie how was your sleep.” she tries to make me smile make me think she really cares. “Fine I…...I guess” I eat my breakfast ignoring everything else I then head off to school for another ignorant day of taunting by my peers. I have no friends I……..I have no life. I get to school and head to class I have ELA first hour so I began to write “Help I need help due to my mentality it is all so real I feel like i’m going to hurt myself one

Throughout most of my life I struggled with social anxiety, which made it extremely difficult to feel comfortable in group settings or when interacting with people I’m not acquainted with. This happens often when I’m talking with a stranger or someone I don’t know extremely well, and it feels like I’m hitting a roadblock when trying to come up with things to say and keep the conversation rolling. However, when discussing this fear with my group, it was relieving to hear that other people had similar problems as well. For the most part, the fears all related to interactions made with others; one member said he found it challenging to express his emotions, while another had difficulties interacting with officers. It was more comfortable exposing these vulnerabilities when others were doing the same, and my fear itself seemed less eminent and substantial the more I spoke about it.

When I was at Merced college I met the most wonderful person in the world. She was so easy to talk to and so relaxed and caring. We talked about so many topics through the two years we had classes. We talked about family, money, our education, drugs, and previous relationships during the breath of our relationship. She disclosed so much information before I really started to disclose intimate information about myself. As we got closer and closer going more in depth in the conversation and the amount of disclosing as well as how personal the disclosure was which in turn gave me anxiety. What really stopped the relationship from going to the next level was my high anxiety and vulnerability about certain topics. Do to this level of anxiety and