My 8-year battle with anxiety and depression
By Talia Bina
Trigger warning: This article mentions topics relating to depression, anxiety, suicidal thoughts and self-harm.
As a psychology major, I know that we can’t quite recall events that occurred before the age of three. I don’t really remember what age I was when I started feeling the emotions I feel, and I’m still piecing a lot of it together, but I think it began in early childhood. I seemed to always feel abandoned, judged and unprioritized.
Once my brothers were born, I felt downgraded. When I was in preschool, I would often be the last one to leave. Sometimes, my mother would be so late to pick me up that I would be brought by my teacher to the teacher’s lounge and would be watched by her and the other teachers until my mother showed up. I remember my teacher looking at me, asking if I wanted a bagel and me shaking my head just waiting anxiously for my mother to show up. And now, as a young adult, I’ve been told stories about how I sat at the door of my preschool classroom crying the entire day until my mother came to pick me up.
Insecure attachment was a part of my life and I didn’t notice it until I began taking psychology courses in college. It explains a lot of my anxiety — my fear of abandonment, my inability to trust anyone completely and my hesitation to believe that anyone could actually care about me.
Since then, my anxiety has been a massive part of my life. I was always the quiet girl in class, the girl who wouldn’t speak unless spoken to, the girl who sat in the back of the class and didn’t raise her hand even though she knew the answer to every question. Little did I know that my fear of eating in front of people, avoidance of people and new situations and rapid breathing and shaking I felt every time I was called on was a symptom of undiagnosed anxiety. I feared things that weren’t supposed to be scary, such as using public bathrooms, eating in front of people, and speaking to anyone outside of my close circle.
My mother was a Tiger parent, strict and controlling, while also being physically and emotionally absent. When she found out I wasn’t eating my lunch in elementary school, she told the lunch aides to not allow me to go out for recess unless I had finished my lunch. Although I don’t remember why I wouldn’t eat, I do remember how small I felt when all my friends would go out and I wouldn’t. I remember how embarrassed I felt being watched by the adults and being continuously told to eat. Although my mother had good intentions, it did more harm than good. I always felt eyes on me. I was burned to the core by judging eyes and I swallowed shame like water.
Thinking back on school, I can never picture myself as a happy child. I can’t remember a time where I felt confident or comfortable. While all the other students played with their friends and played all the fun games, I just stood on the sides watching. I was always afraid that I’d fail, that I’d be bad at something and that I’d get picked on or laughed at for it. For that reason, I simply never tried. In gym class, I always did poorly on purpose and acted like I didn’t care. This way, if I actually failed, it would just be seen as “she doesn’t care,” and that was always better than “she sucks.” If people picked on me about that, it was okay. I could handle that, as long as it wasn’t the real me.
When the bullying first began, I was oblivious to it, or perhaps I turned a blind eye. But I’d be lying if I said the words didn’t hurt. My yellow Toms were called “highlighters,” and the people I considered my closest friends would laugh and whisper to each other as if I couldn’t hear. I remember one specific memory— I was at the public pool with my “best friend” and her siblings and she kept doing this fake, horrendous laugh. I kept asking who she was imitating and she wouldn’t answer, she would just look at her sister and laugh. It wasn’t until years later that I realized they were imitating me.
And so it began, the raging depression and suicidal thoughts that accompanied my anxiety as I felt unwanted and judged in every part of my life. Neither home nor school felt safe, and I found myself unable to leave my bed or do my homework, sitting alone in the cafeteria, feeling hollow inside. I began my self-harm journey that carried from eighth grade throughout high school.
In high school, I threw away the opportunity to be an A student. I acknowledged that in order to find my happiness, I needed to prioritize my mental health while still striving to do as best as I could in every other aspect of life. I began self-therapy, a concept that doesn’t exist in depth but should. I began journaling, meditation, digging into myself and my past and writing down anything and everything I could. It wasn’t a straight road — I relapsed many times and attempted twice, but I seemed to be functioning relatively normally, doing everything a “normal” student would do. But I learned how to notice signs of my depression seeping back into my life and I began embracing the cycle between “normal” and “depressed,” figuring out how to manage it before I got to my lowest point. However, it was hard since I was never formally diagnosed.
Even to this day, I can’t say a doctor has ever verbally diagnosed me. My therapist of three years failed to notice my shattering social anxiety and every time I declined her suggestion for group therapy, she told me I was “asking for a band-aid when I really needed a cast.” One doctor suggested I go on antidepressants but my parents were against it. That was the closest I got to a diagnosis. Through informal diagnosis and self-diagnosis, while not recommended, I figured out that I most likely have depression, social anxiety disorder, panic disorder and generalized anxiety disorder. However, even through all these anxiety-reducing practices, my anxiety never stabilized.
In college, the crippling anxiety got worse. I sat in the back of the class and never spoke to my professors. I couldn’t even order a coffee without having a panic attack and refused to join any clubs or organizations because they were anxiety-inducing. I remember my close friend saying to me, “It makes me sad that you don’t put yourself out there.” The truth was, it made me sad too, but it felt beyond my control.
The thing was, I was an A student. I got every assignment done on time, held a social life and functioned like someone who didn’t have depression or anxiety. That’s when I learned that there was a term for my depression: high-functioning. Depression doesn’t always mean staying in bed all day, not eating, crying too much and not being able to get anything done. Sometimes, depression means the signs aren’t there, but the symptoms are. Inside, a person with high-functioning depression struggles just as much as someone with low-functioning depression, but it’s not as noticeable by others.
In my junior year of college, I was reaching an ultimate low and let my best friend in on me struggle. With her help, I accepted the option to endure a panic attack in order to see a school counselor. I had gathered the courage to talk to a counselor — I had told her about my social anxiety and depression that had progressed over seven years, and she suggested a yoga class. I’ll never forget the tearful walk back to my dorm room that afternoon and the towering feeling of betrayal and hopelessness that consumed me.
Only a few months later, the pandemic hit and I found myself at the lowest I had been in years. It got to the point where I had to reach out to professors to tell them about my situation because I physically and mentally could not function — and I was the girl who never asked for help, never spoke to any professors and almost always faced high-functioning depression. This time, I needed help urgently.
I decided to endure anxiety attack after anxiety attack and speak to a psychiatrist through Talkspace, an online therapy company that is more affordable than conventional therapy. Within 30 minutes, I was given a prescription for Lexapro, a type of antidepressant that helps to restore the balance of a certain natural substance (serotonin) in the brain to treat disorders such as depression and anxiety. It was my saving grace. It felt unreal and too good to be true, and I accepted that it may be a long journey. Unfortunately, not everyone’s medication management journey goes as smoothly as mine did, and many people have to try different medications. The first two weeks were horrendous, with nausea, headaches, dizziness and an array of other symptoms that wreaked havoc on my body. But it worked. I have been taking it for the past nine months and all I can say is that these nine months have been the happiest and healthiest time of my entire life.
I can smile again without forcing it. I can laugh without remembering that my laugh was once made fun of. The cycle between depression and normalcy has become absent and I find myself expressing gratitude for the little things in life. I’ve found myself ordering coffee without panic attacks, making phone calls for doctor appointments, applying for jobs without hesitation and finally stepping out of my anxiety-free comfort box. While my heart feels full every day, I can’t help but feel saddened that it took eight years to get the proper treatment. For those who feel lost and hopeless, remember that the answer is out there, somewhere, it might just take some time to find it.
Header photo (@sivanphotography_ on Instagram)
