Last night, I sat in The Great Hall of the
University of Newcastle watching an interview with Australian writer, Tim
Winton, when I was catapulted to just under 30 years ago – a time
when I sat in The Great Hall for the first time. It was my first day of uni and
I was there to become a journalist. It was also the first time I had
experienced a panic attack.
Mental health disorders were not a ‘thing’ in
1995. Clearly they existed, but no one talked about them, or really understood
them.
I had been heading down, what I now realise,
was a really rocky slope since mid-1994 when the pressure of the impending HSC,
my perfectionism, and the lack of my perceived post-school options collided in
an almighty shitstorm. I spent months studying until midnight, waking up at 4-5am
with chest pains and a vomit or two before heading to the loungeroom to manage
the angst with hot tea and re-runs of Neighbours. There were no special
considerations. No one at the school knew. The day my HSC finished was the day
my chest pains and vomiting stopped. Now that I could eat again, I celebrated
with a bottle of Coke, and some Jatz with French onion dip. Little
did I know that the end of this chapter would be just the beginning of a
lifelong skirmish with fluctuating mental health ‘issues.’
Things got a little dark when I moved from my tiny
country town of 3,500 residents to a city with around 300,000. I gave zero
fucks about being accepted into uni even though it was all I had aimed for
after slogging it out to achieve a magic number. I was flatlining, which by
today’s standards would’ve been diagnosed as depression. Then there was the
panic attack on day one that snowballed to 3 years of panic attacks.
My first panic attack was like nothing I had felt before.
I had to get the hell out of that Great Hall, immediately, and take refuge in
the bathroom. With lightheadedness, thumping chest, and gulping breaths, it
was the epitome of fight or flight. I’d dived off a cliff and it was on like Donkey
Kong. I was now in a long-term battle with myself.
My parents tried to help by sending me to a psychiatrist
and a hypnotherapist, but it was a different time. The medications were hard
core and there was no language around what I was experiencing. I didn’t tell
the uni – I didn’t even know if it was an option. I couldn’t let my friends
know – the shame would’ve killed me. Instead, I decided I would manage it
myself – no medication, no therapy, no telling anyone. I developed workarounds
and stealthy avoidance tactics. I had some healthy coping mechanisms such as
digging my fingernails into my skin if I felt the panic rising in order to shift the
focus from my thoughts. I kept showing up to classes (mostly!) and held down a
number of jobs. I was a high functioning lunatic. Was I thriving though?
Absolutely not! I was languishing and just scraping through.
God knows how I finished my degree as there was so much
effort going in to appearing ‘normal’. But I finished it, graduated, and
created more and more coping mechanisms (not always ideal) that allowed me to
live a pretty good life. But the way my brain is wired means that the ‘crazy’
would keep rearing its head at the most inopportune fucking moments. It was
becoming inconvenient, irritating, and exhausting. I’m sure it affected (and
still might) every part of my life – from my career choices to my
relationships, my parenting, and my motivation (or lack thereof).
As the years went on, I spent quite a bit of time ‘in
therapy’ but it wasn’t until I said enough was enough at the age of 35 that I
finally gave medication another go, and what an epiphany that was! With anxiety
taking more of a back seat, I began to flourish, and even when shit went down –
and it did go down (as it does for everyone) – I could keep my head above
water.
Is it a perfect solution? Not at all! I’ve had to accept
that my anxiously wired brain will always throw some curveballs. There’ll
always be a niggling little voice inside that second guesses something I’ve
said in a conversation or worries that I’ve overplayed a strength. There will
always be an underlying fear that I’m simply not ‘good enough’. There will be
times when people may need to talk me down from the ledge if I think I’ve upset
someone. There will be a tendency for me to default to the ‘safer option’
(particularly career-wise), and I’ll still need to take the odd Gastro Stop
tablet before I board a plane. But, time, age, experience, medication, and a
sense of humour have been great healers. They have helped me to embrace my
unique brand of ‘crazy’.
I can’t go back and be kinder to 17-year-old me, but I
can now sit in The Great Hall, albeit still not a professional writer and still
looking for escape routes.
I can now sit in The Great Hall and stay.
