Mental Thrillness
Banner by Anna Mac
Words by Anna Mac
Depression, anxiety, obsessive compulsive disorder, PTSD, eating disorder and schizoaffective disorder. These are all labels that have been assigned to me in the past ten years, with each diagnosis chipping away any bit of hope I had at leading a normal life. My teenage years were full of mistakes and mishaps, leading me into a difficult adulthood where I had to learn how to cope and manage these different diagnoses in a harmless and mature way so I could have some sort of quality of life. For years I wished I was ‘normal’, sane even, to live a life with typical teenage problems, rather than one that involved suicide attempts and self harm. Now, at the tender age of 25, I ask myself do I wish I hadn’t experienced all that I have? I have to admit, I wouldn’t change it for the world.
I have a huge love/hate relationship with having mental illnesses (yes, plural, I’m real lucky that way). They suck. They drain the life out of you, sometimes almost too literally. They make socialising difficult and get in the way of almost everything. For years I believed I was an introvert; I spent a huge amount of time on my own, watching television, locked away in my room and distancing myself from friends. Anyone who knows me now will probably laugh at the idea of me being anything but extraverted. When I get seizures or episodes triggered by schizoaffective disorder, I want nothing more than for it to all go away and to feel normal - whatever normal is. I have to remember to take my medication every day. I can’t party too hard or get too tired, otherwise my brain will start acting up. I can’t be in a high stress job or my mind and body will suffer indefinitely. I can’t afford to be anxious, or seizures will occur for days on end. I cannot live vicariously, or be in trauma inducing situations, otherwise food will take control of my day to day life (either eating too much or too little). I have to be careful every single day with how I go about living, a stress in itself because life is already hard enough, mental illness or not. With that said, once again, I wouldn’t change it for the world.
Being diagnosed with depression and anxiety at the age of 16 gave me, I believe, an understanding of mood disorders and mental illness that I would not have discovered had I not been suffering. It was spoken about very little when I was in school (2008-2014) and nobody really knew the severity of mental illness and how it, speaking from personal experience, contributed to isolation, acting out, losing friends and feeling so fucking numb you feel nothing at all. At the time, I wanted nothing more than the feeling of sadness and panic to go away. I did copious amounts of research to try and understand what the fuck was going on, and began intensive therapy to try and help myself as much as possible. As I got older and learned how to cope, I realised the skills and tools I had learned might be able to help friends who were going through something similar. I passed on the advice I received from my therapy to my mates, and started writing about my experience on social media in the hope that people would maybe find shared experiences and advice helpful.
Schizoaffective disorder is a whole different issue from depression and anxiety; a lot less common and a lot more detrimental. Schizoaffective disorder gets worse with time, and trust me when I say it does not get any easier. As I write this article, I am off sick from work because of a seizure from the previous night which led to taking extra medication and as a result, I am unable to walk properly because of the strength of the sedatives. Having this illness breaks my heart every single day. It is a huge burden that weighs me down, and when I first got diagnosed I swear I could hear the earth shattering around me. Schizophrenia is one of the most stigmatised illnesses there is, and when I first heard that I had it, a little piece of me died inside. I believed people who had it to be off the wall, manic, crazy, downright insane, and now I was categorised as one of them. I went through a full grieving process when I was diagnosed, believing my life as I knew it was over. That said, I wasn’t entirely wrong. My whole life changed, I slept endlessly, missed a huge amount of school and college, gained a fuck load of weight due to medication and started binge drinking alcohol.
It was a shit show for a few years. I lost any independence I had and relied a lot on my family to look after me, who I wouldn’t be here without today. One thing I did keep doing was research. Research, research, research. I devoured as many books as I could about schizophrenia, watched every documentary, television show and film could find about the subject. This in turn made me speak about it more, ask questions I would never have thought about had I not had this illness, and most importantly, share my experience with my friends and family. I did - and still do - my absolute utmost to break this stupid fucking stigma about schizos, and I do love that I am able to do my best to educate the people around me about it as much as I can. While I hate that I suffer from it, and all the other disorders with it, I try and do my best to educate as much as I can in order to end this judgement of psychopaths and emos who are “crazy” or “looking for attention”. Mental illness is real and so is the stigma around it. It is not something to jump on the bandwagon about as often it can be, and I hate to say it, trendy to have an eating disorder or be OCD about how tidy your room is. They are real issues that are incredibly painful and just because you can’t see it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.
My love for having mental illnesses come from a place of understanding and empathy. I would like to think that some of the experiences I have encountered can be #relatable or, at the very least, normalise speaking about our brains and the terrible things that can happen with it. Had I not been diagnosed with a million different things, I don’t believe I would have the same understanding towards someone who was going through it. It has taught me a lot about the way the mind works, and that although everyone thinks differently, we are inherently born with emotion and feelings. And they are not to be disregarded in any sense. Fuck the attitude of “it’s all in your head” - of course it’s all in your head, where else would it be? Our minds control our whole lives, so when this is affected badly, our lives will be too, unless we speak and empathise and try to understand what the fuck is going on at all.
Mental illness, I hate that I have you but I love what you have taught me.
If you are struggling with your mental health, please do not hesitate to reach out and seek help.
Some useful contacts are listed below:
Text TALK to 50808
Pieta House: 1800 247 247 or Text HELP to 51444
Samaritans: 116 123
Aware: 1800 80 48 48
Womens Aid: 1800 341 900
Let’s Get Talking Dublin: 01 456 9158
Let’s Get Talking Galway: 091 765 500
