I’m sorry this one isn’t funny but I will make up for it with more blogs about my arse if you read it

Anxiety is a bitch and everybody experiences it in some form in their life. I was diagnosed with GAD (general anxiety disorder) in 2011 just after I started University. It didn’t start with the symptoms of anxiety that you would be familiar with. I developed IBS (Irritable bowel syndrome) the day I began University, completely randomly and to my absolute horror. It is extremely common for the symptoms of IBS to begin around the time of extreme stress and change. I had never really experienced either of these things until I moved away from the family home.

It took a couple of GPs and a fair bit of time to figure out that the two were related, and my mental health got worse with the IBS. I think in a way my stomach problems were my body’s way of coping with everything and my brain chose to worry about this rather than the things that were making me feel nervous.

 I haven’t exactly widely advertised the problems I have had. My close friends know about my stomach problems because it does affect me quite often. Thankfully the bad symptoms have gone as my mental state has improved but I still get awful cramps in my abdomen and I don’t eat gluten as it makes my digestive system hurt like Jesus’ sandal blisters (but I’m not a coeliac). People are often surprised that I have had issues with my mental health and especially anxiety because I am an extremely social and chirpy person. I am generally really hilarious but I do use my humour as a coping mechanism. One friend, when she knew I was on antidepressants said ‘no you aren’t! Don’t be silly. You don’t need those!’ It really wound me up because it made me feel like people couldn’t understand that I could be myself but also have anxiety. It was like being told ‘stop it’ to something that had complete control over me.

I have never really got to the bottom of what it is that makes me nervous. I love meeting up with people but sometimes for no logical reason I will panic about it beforehand. I lie awake a lot at night because this is usually when my brain decides to panic; the other night I was so wound up my brain kept decorating rooms in my mind (not a metaphor, like brain style Changing Rooms.) They looked suave but I was so tired in the morning. I think I, personally, am prone to getting stuck in vicious circles. I feel nervous so I feel ill, and then I worry about being ill. Or I find myself daydreaming or imagining worst case scenarios in my head over and over, and then I feel so adamantly that they will happen that I panic.

The route my treatment took was antidepressants/ anti spasmodics- mental health referral- CBT (cognitive behavioural therapy)- sorting myself out. I never found antidepressants helpful. I was on them for four months (they take a few weeks to even begin to work anyway) and I felt nauseous, guilty and a bit bat shit crazy. I came off them (stupidly with no direction from my GP) and after the initial turmoil I felt like a huge cloud had lifted. I know that I am a rarity and often pills do help but it needs a lot of trial and error to find the right dose/ tablet.

In terms of therapy, I didn’t last long with that either. I was referred by my GP to the mental health service after a particularly bad month when an anxiety test showed my nerves were classed as pretty much the worst you can describe. I was avoiding University and sitting in the middle of a lecture theatre was pretty much unbearable. I found the NHS mental health system long winded and frustrating. The space of time between my initial consultation and my first CBT was about four months. In this time I tried to do all that I could to help myself. I moved out of halls of residence and into a flat with one other lovely person at the beginning of my second year and I swear it was the best treatment. I figured out that a lot of my health issues had been from a serious lack of sleep- halls are like sleeping through a Stomp show a lot of the time- and isolation, really. I found that keeping busy and surrounding myself with people I was comfortable with helped infinitely. Jodie Kidd told You magazine ‘I was so desperate to crack on rather than dwell in the panic’. It helps me if I avoid spending a lot of time by myself. If I feel like I have purpose I really enjoy my own company at the end of the day, and sleep a hell of a lot better.

                The CBT session that I went to was just… well fucking awkward really. I know I am shallow but my therapist was a really handsome bloke and I didn’t feel comfortable at all. He didn’t ask any personal questions after initially going through my psych file, the observations were very general. I think that by the time I attended a session I had actually managed to deal with a lot of my problems by myself, so I didn’t really want to tell a stranger anything. I rang up to cancel my thread of sessions and my therapist rang me soon after. He wanted to find out if it was anything to do with him that I had withdrawn. I felt strongly that I had been made to wait so long for sessions that my treatment wasn’t relevant anymore. I am so lucky that a change of circumstance helped my recovery, but I have two friends who both have life hindering mental illnesses and their treatment plan has gone exactly the same way. They both feel that the system has failed them.

I am not saying that CBT doesn’t work for some people. One of my favourite journalists, Eleanor Morgan, once said that CBT is a thing that needs sticking to. Looking back, although I was a lot better, I think I felt extremely embarrassed to be talking about some of the things I had to. I lied a lot in that hour about my mental health. The generalisations were probably an introduction to the method and I didn’t have the balls to stick to it. However, a lot of the issues the therapist was trying to address were based on my original consultation with a separate psychologist and weren’t relevant anymore. There are flaws in the way the system works. I had got a lot better, but what happens in the in-between time for those who get a lot worse?

I wish that I had known about Mind charity when I was going through my bad phase. There really needs to be a third party organisation- like them- that provides some on-going support either throughout the wait to be treated or to help sustain a comforting presence in particularly bad times. I know we live in a modern country, and attitudes to mental health are changing, but I still feel a stigma there. I feel this because through guilt and embarrassment I never gave any solid details to anybody but my best friend with regards to what I went through. I think a lot of people didn’t take me seriously as it was going on because I probably didn’t show any symptoms whatsoever to anybody. If you asked anybody who sat near me in a lecture they would have had no idea that those hour long sessions were complete torment. My whole body would go through hot- flush like panics and I would have to focus on breathing and sitting still so I wouldn’t have a freak out. But I feel like I was insulting my companions a little by not being entirely honest- I don’t think that any of them would have judged me or treated me differently… So why was I so secretive!? I think I felt afraid that they would stop seeing me as confident and funny.

I still have bad moments occasionally, but I feel so much better in myself now and it makes me sad that there are people who haven’t had a recovery due to failures in the mental health system. One person I know could only be given a certain number of therapy sessions because the budget for the service in the area she lives in couldn’t afford to give her any more. Millions are affected by health issues, and there is help out there, but it’s going to take some serious man- power to allow for some serious change. I think it would seriously aid those with anxiety/ depression or any kind of mental health issue for it to be treated as openly but delicately as possible. I didn’t even realise that a lot of what I was doing was wrong. I totally ignored my GPs advice on so many occasions; I took too many anti- spasmodics in an exam period once because I was trying to conquer my nerves. It affected me so badly that I froze in bed for an hour feeling like my muscles were falling apart. I didn’t tell anyone until it was over. I only realise now that getting through so many different tablets to help my IBS was really dangerous. It only occurred to me that I had a problem with the medication until… today really.

Mind charity is an organisation set up to generally support those with a wide array of mental health issues and to establish respect for them. Time to Change aims to banish the stigma linked to mental health issues. It is encouraging talking about the problems so that they are more widely understood. I think one of the best things about their campaigns is their effort to create knowledge of what to do if you are suffering. I didn’t even try and find anything to help me; I was helpless and guilty about my anxiety. I felt so bad that I was allowing something to affect my life and studies that I just let myself suffer. I eventually, last year, went to a student coordinator within my University to let them be aware that I have GAD and IBS. When your mind is under stress you are prone to all sorts of medical issues- I developed a skin condition called Urticaria on top of everything else that made me still face some mental hurdles last year. I told the coordinator everything and she laid down all of the options for me. My University could provide support during exams, an understanding of my occasionally missing classes and most importantly, east my guilt. I didn’t ask for help in the first year because I genuinely felt like it was my fault I felt the way I did. The more people talk the easier it will be to live a normal like with a mental disorder.

@MindCharity

mind.org.uk

@TimetoChange

time-to-change.org.uk