Hi All,
Firstly, I just wanted to thank everyone for sharing there personal stories as well as the staff involved with this platform. This is my first time coming across this and I think this is a beautiful platform to allow people to share and learn and to confide in, which is awesome and will help break this stigma of mental health!
I’m currently working through depression and anxiety. For the past few years I’ve suffered from low moods and lack of energy to do anything and only really looked within myself this year to try and discover why I was never feeling happy.
I would often not have the energy or drive to do anything, never really happy, just existing.
Having been raised by a good family, had good education I often think I haven’t made the best use of my circumstances. Reading and hearing about other peoples circumstances often adds to the guilt I have inside and I’m often fighting a battle with my mind on a daily basis. I’m my own worst enemy and I am regularly negative to myself, and find myself putting obstacles in front of myself which can snowball into really severe low moods.
In my younger years I used a lot of drugs such as marijuana and pills etc for many years and often used to justify it to myself that it helped me. What made it more difficult was that while smoking weed I’d often be a high functioner which led me to use for many years. I would often say to myself I’m funnier, more active when I was under the influence.
Luckily I had the courage to reach out to a therapist and seek the help that I urgently needed. It took me time to reach out after many typed messages I would often delete them, but I thankfully reached out. After some self reflection it’s clear that I was self medicating to help ease my internal pain for the traumas I’ve experienced.
I have been in a long relationship over 8 years and have been cheated on more times that I can count and I’m still currently in that relationship to this day working things out.
I’ve lived in shame and isolation for many years because of this and cut off most of my friendships because I couldn’t deal with people telling me to leave. My partner has since changed a lot for the better and only once I started to look into myself I realised that she was abused verbally for her whole life by her mother. This doesn’t justify her behavior but gave me an understanding of why she is the way that she is. She did however introduce me to my current therapist and we are still doing relationship therapy together.
On a positive note, having faced into these demons I face, my eyes are now open and I’m aware of these things and I am actively working on putting certain actions in place so I can heal and cope the best I can, Whilst quitting the drugs/vaping and being more open about my struggles has helped me.
I never wanted to talk about these things because I would think I would be weak but I truly believe we need to break this stigma and talk about our issues and this is part of the reason why I wanted to share part of my story here today. Reflecting, people who share their stories I believe are in fact very strong for sharing their stories and it takes a lot of courage to express their vulnerability.
I never really felt anxiety in my earlier years, probably because I would self medicate and dissociate with these feelings, however anxiety is something I battle with daily. Good news is that I’ve learnt ways to help with this, but as you all probably know it’s an ongoing process which will improve with time and practice.
I’ve been working in finance for the past 10 years the high volumes only adds to my anxiety currently and I know now this isn’t a job I want to pursue for the rest of my life. Sure the money is good but I really want to start doing some work I’m passionate about which led me to look into peer work and how I stumbled across this page.
I think mental health is a really important area that needs to be addressed and it’s really apparent there are many people suffering, I hope and i’m glad there are people such as yourselves who will help break this stigma one day and help improve peoples lives for the better.
Lastly, I’d like to add that it was really helpful to me to open up to my family about the depression I was facing. It actually led me to understand my father also suffered from depression in his years and led to conversations around traumas he had faced and still facing with his father.
I think it’s really important to have support systems in place to help us with our journey. We are not alone!
Thanks again for reading my story and look forward to us all recovering from this!
cheers
