The question is simple: How do you support someone struggling with mental illness if you, yourself have little to no experience in them?

 First of all I know I have been absent from here for the past week. The reason is that I have been coming off of my antidepressants, and it has probably been one of the toughest mental challenges I have faced in a long time.

I've been trying to find ways of writing this post for several days now. I've written a whole post, scheduled it for upload and now here I am, rewriting it for about the fifth time, just trying to find the right words to describe my experience. I don't think there is a right or wrong way. So I'm just going to tell you a little about what's been going on the past few months.

I've mentioned in my 'My Story' post that I was sixteen when I was diagnosed with anxiety and clinical depression. Although it was pretty bad and I was self-harming I was told that medication wouldn't be a good idea for me as I was still young, and if there was a chance I could get through it on my own, that was to be encouraged. I took that mentality with me through the following years and always managed to get through dark times on my own. It would take a lot of willpower and a lot of help from friends, but I would always come out on the other side smiling just for the sake of smiling and enjoying how good it felt to actually feel genuine happiness without the onset of guilt for said happiness.

October last year came around and My GP finally (after a couple months of regular mental check-up appointments) decided that I should start on antidepressants and see how I go. Considering how badly my anxiety was affecting my job at the time, it seemed like a good idea. I wanted my life back and if it meant I had to succumb to medication to get there, I was at the point where I didn't mind so much.

I just want to point out that although I may talk about how much I hate taking medication, it by no means I'm against it. I'll tell anyone to take painkillers for a headache but the only reason I'd take painkillers is if I'm in so much pain I can barely move and nothing else helps. I'm in no way against medication - if it helps, then it helps and it should be accepted. It's just a personal thing.

I started taking my medication and instantly felt the side-effects. Something I was sure wouldn't have started until a couple of days into taking them. The first day I felt sick, there was this acid reflux lump in my throat all day and that in itself lasted a couple of weeks. My mental state almost instantly went to hell. Again, I was expecting this, I had been warned and one of the most known side-effect of antidepressants is depression. It's mad, but I'm sure there's some weird logic in there somewhere although I don't exactly know how it works.

After about a month/five weeks I began to feel better. The lump in my throat was gone and the edge was completely gone. I felt a little more confident, and people could tell. I was happy, I thought although I still wasn't feeling amazing, it had still only been five weeks and I could still improve. But it didn't.

I started having panic attacks again, I started to feel anxious over tiny things again and my depression started to rear it's ugly head again - something I'd somehow managed to avoid up until this point. I spoke to my doctor and she told me to start doubling my dosage. I obliged, having heard the same warning again - that I would probably feel quite bad for a little bit while my brain readjusted yet again to the hormone changes. For these few weeks that I was on the higher dosage I turned almost psychotic. I was causing arguments out of nothing, I was snappy and tearful and not a fun person to be around. I turned into the girlfriend I never wanted to be and I turned into the daughter/sister from hell, just hiding in my room all the time and shouting like a little gremlin when someone wanted to talk to me. My night sweats also got bad and I started having nightmares every single night again and all of my self-care just went out of the window. I was a horrible person.

When I brought all of this up with my GP she suggested I come off the medication as clearly it wasn't having a desired affect. It was taking the edge off, but it wasn't helping nearly as much as it should have, otherwise I would have been able to apply for a job without having a mental breakdown. She warned me for the third time telling me that coming off antidepressants isn't easy because of the hormone changes. They're not addictive so you don't get cravings or technical 'withdrawal' you get what's known as Antidepressant Discontinuation Syndrome which is where your brain kind of 'WTF's' you and the sudden drop in serotonin. 

There are different types of antidepressant and each one comes with their own discontinuation or withdrawal symptoms and after having looked on google I'm glad I didn't get the worst of it. 

I suffered from Vertigo so bad I thought I was going to throw up just by going up or down the stairs. I was scared to leave the house alone in case I keeled over or threw up. Mentally I felt completely numb. I'd never felt so disconnected with myself, the people around me or the world around me. Everything just existed and I didn't have any feelings towards any of it. When you're depressed the thought of feeling nothing seems quite appealing but when it actually happens, you'd be happy to feel anything, even if it sadness. During this week all I wanted to do was sleep and eat, the more carbs the better. I napped a lot and ate a lot and honestly I didn't care about any of it. What I cared about were the last two weeks where I have been a mental mess again.

When I was disconnected I hoped that I would just wake up one day and be able to say I felt something again. And I did, to a point at least. I felt something, but it was so dark and painful and depressive that part of me wished I could go back to feeling nothing at all. I felt like my face had been slammed into a wall. I felt like a failure, that I'd let my parents down, or I'd disappointed my boyfriend. That I was never any good at anything and I wasn't important enough to be cared about. It led to several mental breakdowns, it led to me crying my eyes out because my boyfriend pretended to be sad that I didn't give him one of my chocolates. It involved me laughing my head off in one second and then the next crying again because I felt so bad for having spent that long being happy. I was in a really dark place and there was so much temptation just to start taking my medication again, but I persevered and here we are. 

Then just as quick as it crept up on me, it vanished. I'm not saying i'm completely cured of all mental illnesses, but I sincerely believe that I can do this thing with no help from medication. Of course if my GP disagrees then I can understand that, but from now on I definitely want to change things on my terms.

For now I'm happy.  There are still things I couldn't do if you asked me, and there are still things that I get very uncomfortable with but I'm getting there. I'm starting therapy in July and of course I'll keep you updated with that as well. To be honest I just really want to start living my life again. I know I have to be resilient and usually I'm okay at that part but there are still things I'm working on.

On that note I've already dozed off several times typing this so I'm going to leave it here so I can go to sleep.

My intentions with this post was not to put anyone off medication. both of my parents, my step mum and my boyfriend and his sister along with many other people have taken or still take antidepressants and have found them insanely helpful, so while I'm saying that so far I've had a bad experience with them, I'm not saying they're bad. Like I think I've said before, if something helps then it helps. There's no harm in trying something new, and there's no harm in taking medication.

Also if you are currently on medication - this is your daily reminder to take your pills. You're welcome.

Anyway, I will update you all on Friday with how I'm feeling, along with hopefully going back to my normal style of posts. I just wanted to share a little bit of what's been happening in my life the past few weeks.

Until next time,
-M x

I’m a hypocrite. I fully admit that, and I’m not happy with it. The truth is as much as I preach about therapy and how much I encourage people to go, I’m not so great at accepting that I need it myself.

I just referred myself to wellbeing. It was difficult to do because I’d convinced myself that I could do without it for so long. I can’t. It’s not nice feeling so out of control that you have to bare your soul to a stranger in order to help yourself.

My boyfriend asked me why I didn’t like doing it. I answered honestly; I feel like I’m asking for attention. I feel like by getting help I’m making the problem real, and I can no longer just say it’s just something I’m going through, and that I’ll be better on my own terms in due time. By referring myself for therapy I’m admitting defeat, and admitting I’m weak and sacrificing the ability to deal with my depression on my own.

While this is all true, I’m genuinely a huge advocate for therapy, and I do strongly believe that it shows courage and acceptance (as mentioned in my previous post) to admit that you need help. I’ve never been good at taking my own advice, and I know that’s not exactly a good thing when I run a blog that’s supposed to strongly advocate self-help.

I decided to write this post with the previous post in mind, particularly when I mentioned I should write when I feel shit. I feel like I should be ‘relatable’ in a sense for anyone to take my advice seriously. So yes, I completely understand how difficult it is admitting that you may need help from a professional and yes I do completely empathise with everyone struggling to come to terms with it. No, it’s not going to be easy for me to go into therapy again and completely bare my soul to a stranger about things that I still don’t fully understand about myself but the important thing for us all to remember is that these people you’re talking to want to help.  Why else would they go through all that training?

I want to help people understand the hardships of their mental health. I want to let people reading know that what they might or might not be feeling is normal, and others feel it too. So yes, I will continue on my mission to advocate positive mind-sets, but I also want to aim to make everything seem normal, for people to read things and think ‘thank god I’m not the only one’ even if I risk exposing myself as the only one who does something or feels a certain way about something.

Hope you are all well, and please remember that it’s okay to feel defeated when asking for help, but try to remember that ultimately it’s going to help, and there’s truly nothing wrong with knowing when you can’t handle something by yourself. It shows a certain strength I feel.

Until next time,
-M x