I Struggle with my Mental Health Too… pt. 1

I know it’s easy to picture your therapist has a perfect little life with a white picket fence and while they may be an expert at treating mental health, they surely don’t suffer with their own at all… Right?? Wrong. In fact, I would argue that some of the best therapists are ones who have been on the couch (or the other side of the screen) themselves. They don’t just know logically, they also know physically and emotionally what it is like to suffer for they themselves are not immune to a difficult life.

While I don’t typically offer a lot of information about my life from the get-go, I do feel it is my duty to de-stigmatize mental illness and struggles whenever and wherever I can. So, I’m doing something a little different this month and leaning into what I often encourage my own clients to do… lead with vulnerability.

The first time I remember having a panic attack, I was about 13. I sincerely thought I might be having a heart attack so I went and woke up my parents. And while they have since come a long way, in the early 2000’s they weren’t quite up to date on mental health struggles and kindly told me to go back to bed and that I would be ok in the morning. And while I was technically ok in the morning, I knew something wasn’t ok. 

It couldn’t be normal to suddenly feel like I was going to die when I was a relatively healthy kid, right? And, what was up with those scary thoughts bouncing through my mind? Why couldn’t I control my breathing? And why did I now feel like I wasn’t a kid anymore? Did something happen?

Those were just some of the thoughts swirling through my head as I came down from that first panic attack. Potentially the worst part about the whole experience was the immense shame I felt afterward. Now I know the answer to a lot of those questions. It wasn’t normal, but it was expected when someone has high anxiety. The scary thoughts were intrusive thoughts that had no footing in reality and my body was reacting as though I was in battle, fighting for my life. And, in a lot of ways, I was. But at the time, I didn’t know any of this so I dare not attempt to mention it to anyone.

For the next seven years I internalized my anxiety and panic attacks and genuinely didn’t know what was wrong until I found myself sitting in front of a therapist for the first time when I was in college. She very gently talked me through these “episodes” (as I called them) and gave me a name for them: panic attacks. Something clicked and I suddenly felt seen in a way I hadn’t before. While “chronic panic attacks” didn’t exactly sound like a good thing, I felt relief for the first time since I was 13 experiencing that first one.

I would spend the next decade working incredibly hard on my mental health. I went to therapy before virtual therapy was a thing and when therapy definitely wasn’t cool. I wrote letters to my younger self and learned what boundaries were. As I began to study the science of counseling, I ended my consistent work in therapy. I had graduated from my own personal journey just as I became a student of this field… or so I thought.