I've thought a lot about whether to write this or not and how to approach it, but I think it's an important thing that needs to be talked about and I wanted to share my experiences with it. I apologies for the way it is written and for any errors in grammar or spelling!
Over the last (I'd guess around) year and a half my emotions have been very up and down. My mam has always said to me that I always seem to be either right up or right down, I never seem to find a middle ground. In the last 8/9 months I have been slowly getting worse and worse, to the point that I have started having panic attacks, something I have never had before. I feel lost, alone, like I didn't know who I am or where I am going in my life, that I'm not where I should be and it is extremely overwhelming. More often it has been getting harder and harder for me to even pull myself out of bed on a morning, I spend most of the day just feeling like I want to cry and to just curl up in a ball and sleep for as long as I can or wanting to huddle up in bed with a load of food and eat myself into a food coma.
My self esteem and confidence are shot to shit. I worry and overthink constantly about every aspect of my life; my work, money, relationships, the way I look and act, I know that my life is very good, I have a hell of a lot going good for me, which makes me feel worse about how I think negatively about everything. I'm constantly exhausted as my mind is always going and on top of that my sleeping has gotten worse. Eating has been my crutch but has ended up making me feel worse as I've been eating so much that I have put a load of weight back on, which is then affecting my self esteem and body confidence in a very negative way.
I have always been a very outgoing and social person, but have found myself becoming more of a recluse and not wanting to leave the house, even to see good friends who I love dearly. I am greatly lacking motivation to do many things, even things that I enjoy. It might sounds silly but one of the only things that has helped me is building Lego, it's the only time that my mind is completely focused on that one thing and my head doesn't feel like it's going 100mph! It's a way for me to clear my mind, almost like a kind of therapy.
I ended up opening up and chatting on with a client I had in the shop, she was wonderful to speak to and encouraged me to see a doctor about it, so the next day I went and made an appointment. At the time I made the appointment I was at a low point, I'd hoped I'd be able to get an appointment that day but I had to wait until the next week (around 5 days) .
On Wednesday the 4th of May I finally went to the doctors about it, on the day I was feeling a lot better in myself and was a bit worried about how I would explain how I'd been feeling. It's a hard thing to describe. As I tried explaining how I'd been feeling I broke into tears. I was told I had depression. I actually felt better, knowing that there's a reason I've been feeling the way I have and I'm not going mad. Perhaps best of all was knowing that I wasn't alone and that there was help there for me. The doctor has referred me for counseling and given me websites to visit to help in the mean time.
I am in the very early stages of understanding exactly what is wrong with me and trying to improve how I feel about things. All the things I have detailed above that I have been thinking and feeling are still there, sometimes they're just low whispers in the back of my mind and other times they are screaming at me so loud that I can't hear anything else. But I have taken the first step in helping myself and I am so relieved that I have finally seen about it.
xXx
