hey lovely’s it’s hannah! in these slides using the arrows you will find several stories of people’s mental health stories, struggles, what they have gone through and what they are still going through. these are in no way glorifying the struggles they are going through or suggestion bad habits but instead a way for you to not feel alone, connect with other people’s stories and spread awareness throughout our community!

Mental health stories

#mystory

I’ve struggled with mental illness for 6-7 years. I was first diagnosed with anxiety which continued to get worse and worse to the point that I have at least one anxiety attack a day. I was then diagnosed with manic depression after my first suicidal attempt, I attempted suicide 2 more times after that. I recovered from manic depression in the summer of 2019 and now I just suffer with severe anxiety and depression. I was physically and verbally abused as a child by my mothers ex boyfriend, and mentally abused by my step mother. I was sexually assaulted in 2017. I took this opportunity to finally get that out there since this is anonymous.

-anonymous

I have always struggled with my mental health ever since I was young. I was first diagnosed with anxiety and since I was so young I didn't really understand the whole concept of it all and I never understood why I would have so many panic attacks. as I got older I was diagnosed with depression. I have suffered from anxiety and depression for 6 years. I let my mental illness completely consume me to the point where I didn't even want to see my friends and I never wanted to leave my bed. I started self harming as my only method of coping and eventually developed an eating disorder. I kept everything to myself because I didn't want to feel like a burden to anybody, and I suffered in silence for so long. I opened up to my family and my friends not to long ago and now I am finally getting the help I need today. seeing how my mental illness has impacted my friends and family pushes me to keep going and to keep fighting. some days are better than others but i'm glad I could share my story.

The first time I started experiencing anxiety was in grade 9, on Mother’s Day weekend. At the time I was in a relationship and I felt perfectly fine about everything. One night, I just got this overwhelming feeling of sadness and worry. I remember thinking my boyfriend was going to dump me, or that he didn’t have any feelings for me anymore. I had absolutely no reason to think those things and I felt so anxious for months following that. I found myself mostly worrying about my relationship. At the time since I was so worried about everything I would worry about school too, but mostly my relationship. From May-end of June in grade 9 was the lowest point in my life. I was CONSTANTLY overthinking everything. I was so worried our relationship was going to end, and I found myself getting really sensitive. I’ve always been super sensitive and emotional growing up. At school, I would be so sensitive around my boyfriend and the smallest passive aggressive thing he’d say to me would just completely throw me off and have me in tears. At that point, I was barely going to school because I would always just be crying and wanting to go home. I felt so overwhelmed and hopeless. I was trying to convince myself stuff that was so far from true. It was an endless cycle of thinking, and it felt like I was never going to escape. Towards the end of grade 9 there were very few times where I was at school for a full day. Since I was at home so much, I would worry about missing work and doing bad on tests. As a result of my worry, I would over study to the point that I knew everything, and still go into the test not feeling confident. In reality, my over studying did me just fine. That semester I finished with high 90s because I overworked myself to make sure I didn’t do bad in my classes.
Eventually, I went to the doctors and I was diagnosed with general anxiety and I was put on anti-depressants. I found that they helped a lot, but my anxiety was still present. I was also put into therapy, and ended up visiting 3 different people because the firsts weren't successful. I always dreaded going, it felt like a waste of my time. It didn’t ever really help. Looking back, I think it didn’t help because I didn’t want to admit to myself that the reason I was so anxious was because of the relationship. I didn’t want to tell them that my relationship was giving me anxiety, because I didn’t want them to suggest we break up. During that time I was in constant fear that I was going to lose my boyfriend. Shortly after the break up, I thought it was the way my boyfriend was treating me that was causing me anxiety. After dating two other people, I can say that it wasn’t the person, it’s just being in a relationship that makes me worry. It’s so frustrating, because I feel happy in the relationship, but when I’m crying and overthinking, to them it doesn’t seem like I am. Nothing happened in my relationship that initiated the anxiety. It just started-and it sucked.
The following school year, I was able to go to school every day, for the full year!! Not a single day was missed because of my anxiety. There were tons of time where I wanted to go home, but I fought through it and if it meant crying in the middle of class, so be it.
Now, I feel like I’m starting to grow out of it, and also be aware of it. I’ve been able to learn A LOT about my worry process and how my anxiety works. Now that I’m single, my anxiety is super manageable. I’m still taking anti-depressants, and I’m planning on lowering my dose and to hopefully stop taking them in the near future.
I’ve very proud of how far I’ve come. There were so many days where I wouldn’t even be able to get out of bed. I missed so much school, all because my brain was convincing myself stuff that wasn’t true-and I was starting to believe it.

I started getting panic attacks two years ago when an ex caused some very bad emotional trauma. My first one was when I was out with friends and I broke down, broke out in hives all over my chest,arms and neck. I couldn’t breathe and actually had to use my inhaler. I had two more the following two days, I’m now able to identify the symptoms and stop it most times before i get that bad. My tip is super basic and to just focus on breathing, try the 5-3-7 method! If you don’t know what that is : inhale for 5 seconds, hold for 3 and exhale for 7. Hope this helps someone

I’ve always lived with anxiety but as I grew older and experienced heartbreak and trauma within my social circle it got worse. My first relationship break up was probably the hardest thing I’ve ever went through. My ex and I were together for almost two years. I was very deeply in love with him, he was my everything at the time and my world revolved around him. I came to realize as my feelings grew stronger that there was a very real possibility I could loose him and that scared me tremendously. It effected our relationship a lot along with his own mental health issues. It ended up becoming toxic, and my anxiety became too much that he ended up breaking things off which absolutely destroyed me. I was so blinded by my feelings and the manipulation that when he would come back I would fall right back into his arms, just for him to leave again. This was on and off for months...I was in tears everyday (no joke) and every time I’d see him in the hall i would panic and breakdown. This caused me to loose focus in class and miss many days of school. Nights were absolutely terrible I would cry and scream until I was to tired to be awake. One day we were in his car and he was telling me he is ending it for real this time, obviously I started to breakdown and couldn’t breathe as I tried to get out to catch my breath of he wouldn’t let me and I felt trapped and went into a full on panic attack. He became a different person who abused me mentally on a daily bases. It was around this point I started thinking about how bad the heartache and pain I felt and I didn’t think I could live with it and taking my life crossed my mind. I felt so stupid because I knew people have dealt with so much worse and that’s what I always tried to tell myself. But now I know it doesn’t matter how small you think your problem is, it’s big to you, it’s important to you and that makes it okay for you to be upset about. Time passed by and he started seeing other people so he stopped coming back for awhile. Although still heartbroken, I surrounded myself with my positive friends and people who had my back, I pushed myself to go out on the days I could while also giving myself days to grieve the absence of him. I focused on myself and my eyes slowly started to open again, and I started to see all the “red flags” and manipulating words he said to make me feel like I was a terrible person. I stopped crying everyday, and things got to a point where I had good days and bad days. I became happier with myself, and met someone who understood me in ways that made us connect so easily. My ex did not like this and saw my happiness and came back to tell me how horrible of a person I was, while also saying he wanted me back. I was able to see it clearly now and I finally was able to say no I’m not letting you back into my life. To this day he still tries to come back every once in awhile..I’m so happy with the person I met, who supports me amazingly as someone who lives with bad anxiety. I have my nights where my overthinking tears me down but I have way more better nights that overpower those bad nights and make me so incredibly thankful I’m still here. Heartbreak is not easy, but I swear to you you aren’t as alone as you think you are, and once you find a proper support group it will help.

Mental health issues has been something I have struggled with for years, but it got really bad 4 years ago.

For some reason, still not sure why, my life felt like it was crashing down 4 years ago. I became very depressed, starting self-harming and just wanted to disappear. Only thing was, I was so good at hiding my emotions no one had a clue how bad I actually was doing. A couple months went by where I was self-harming consistently, not a lot a lot, but at least once a month... I was in grade 8 when this started.
Going into grade 9 I got better, I was happier and wasn’t feeling as crappy about life. Half way through grade 9 I met my boyfriend (now of almost 3 years) and he helped keep my as happy as he could. But going into grade 10 I started to feel down again. I started hating how I looked, wishing I was skinnier, or prettier. This caused me to not only start harming myself again, but I also began skipping meals. First it started with not having lunch, then it became no lunch or breakfast. Of course this made me feel worse, because now I was always tired, and having to try and look happy, while hiding my wrists and not looking so tired.

Grade 11 I finally reached out, and talked to a councellor, who helped me pick up some coping skills to relieve the feeling of needing to harm myself. (I would feel a tingling in my wrist when I felt very down, which would lead me to cut) I got back in the habit of eating lunches, and put on a few pounds that I had lost. I got happier and was able to get cleared by my councellor.

Now with all this said, I will also add, that I definitely still have my days where I am feeling so upset and down, that I am tempted to harm myself, but what helps me the most, is reminding my self of how many people I hurt, as well as how I was hurting my own body. And along with the days of wanting to hurt myself, I will admit (since I know this is anonymous) that I haven’t been doing as amazing lately, and am still unhappy with my body, so I’ve started skipping meals again, but I can promise anyone reading this. That I am trying my best, and if that’s the best you can do then just keep doing that!