‘my body is not my enemy. It just overreacts to things sometimes, and that’s actually okay.’

Author: Holly

TW: This post contains describes my experiences of anxiety and depression. It makes detailed references to self-harm.

If we’re being honest, I probably wouldn’t define myself as depressed. If I was on The Chase, my opener wouldn’t be “hi, I’m Holly, and I’m a 24-year-old depressive from London.” I enjoy lots of things and I have good people in my life. But that’s the thing about mental health: it has a paradoxical duality to it that makes for a very confusing experience. Sound familiar?

The following are true: I graduated from university with a 2:1; I am body confident; I enjoy my job as a teacher.

The following are also true: I struggled through most of my university experience; I have self-harmed; going to work in the mornings can bring on major anxiety attacks.

The majority of what I’m going to talk about here happened during my second year at uni which culminated in starting medication for depression and anxiety. I had experienced emotional ups and downs in first year, which I put down to being homesick – I told myself that this was normal. After all, it was all very new to me; I was further than I’d ever been from home and university is a completely different environment. To my surprise and frustration, this continued into my second year and I was missing home more than ever. Things came to a head when I went home for the Christmas holidays, something which had been keeping me going for weeks. One December evening, I was in the kitchen and I dropped a mug, which smashed everywhere. Instead of swearing loudly or sighing a resentful “what can you do?”, my temper, always bubbling away just below the surface, rose straight away. Easy tears poured down my cheeks and I couldn’t stop feelings of anger and sadness exploding out of me. Over a broken mug. My parents, confused, couldn’t work out why I was reacting like this. “It’s just a mug – why are you crying?” “Stop it, there’s no reason to be so upset!” I remember storming upstairs like I’d just had a blazing row with an enemy. The next day, Mum and Dad posed the question that I’m so grateful for now: “what’s going on?”

I knew then that this wasn’t about a mug and it wasn’t just about missing home. What I was feeling was a deep hopelessness that I just didn’t know how to shake. I constantly questioned myself and my actions. I started to decline invitations from my housemates and found more excuses to miss my lectures and seminars. I had always loved studying, but my grades were dropping; I had barely passed my recent assignments and I couldn’t even find the energy to care. I lived with six others, but I was always lonely. I realised I wasn’t enjoying what was meant to be ‘the best years of my life’. Was I doing it wrong? Everyone around me seemed to be living the dream. I remember sitting at the table and saying all this to my parents, repeating the phrase “I can’t go back.”

But I did go back. I convinced myself that it was the right thing to do, and that I shouldn’t quit, so I got myself on the waiting list to see a counsellor from the university. My first session was a blur (I cried through most of it) but it felt good to get some more of my feelings out in the open. The problem was that students were only permitted a handful of sessions before we were discharged. I couldn’t make a connection with the counsellor and I didn’t see a reason to keep going because I wasn’t any better. Shout out mental health services in the UK – notoriously underfunded and under appreciated. I remember feeling as though no one would understand what I was feeling so I kept everything to myself, a thought which makes me so sad now. If I had looked up from my own despair long enough to quiet that critical voice in my head, perhaps I would have seen an opportunity to speak to a friend rather than feeling attacked by everyone. My poor housemates probably put up with a lot more than I realise, and I’m grateful to still have them as close friends. I felt isolated, useless and I started to think that there was not much point in existing. There is an image in my head that has appeared when I’ve been at my lowest, and the only way I can think to describe it is a grey cloud that repeats the words, “you’re going to die now. There’s nothing you can do or say to change it, you’re just going to die.” I’ve never been afraid of death, but I was completely at peace with that image, even looking at it as a welcome relief that was out of my reach. I don’t remember exactly when I started to cut, but it didn’t start as something I intended to do serious damage with.

I’ve since learned that I used self-harm to cope with overwhelming feelings of sadness and anxiety. I cut short, soft lines on my arms and legs when I was sad, gently pulling apart the skin to see beads of blood. If I was preparing food, I’d hold a knife as tightly as I could or position it just so that the tip of the blade pierced my skin. If I was out of the house, I would scratch the inside of my hands or wrists with my nails until I created scabs that I could pick apart later. Once I’d finished, I’d usually climb into bed, cry, and think about the next time I’d do it. This was unnoticed by everyone, of course; I didn’t speak to anyone about it and my boyfriend and I rarely had sex, so he didn’t see any of the cuts. We’d been together over three years by this point, but it wasn’t a functioning relationship at all. He had cheated on me more than once and I never trusted him again – I lost count of how many arguments we had about my jealousy of his female friendships. We rarely went anywhere just the two of us and I never felt like a priority in his eyes. I still feel sad that we spent so much time like that, just out of habit. When I did eventually tell him about how I was feeling and the self-harm, I felt as though he wasn’t supporting me. At that point, I needed a lot more than he gave and looking back now, I acknowledge that he was also a young person who was struggling to process this, just like me. He didn’t do a lot of things right, but I knew this affected him – he just didn’t know what to say. We broke up when we finished uni for summer. I don’t hold a grudge anymore, but I do regret changing so much of my behaviour trying to influence someone else’s.

Finishing that long year felt anticlimactic and disappointing – I was home, but I was still depressed. The dawning realisation that it was me, that I was the problem, made me feel worse. I was due to head out to Spain for my year abroad in September and I couldn’t think of anything I wanted to do less. How could I cope living even further away from home and my parents, for a much longer period, feeling the way I did? In an effort to prepare myself, I arranged to work as an au pair for a month over summer in Bilbao. I often made conflicting decisions like this – I didn't want to socialise properly, but I chose to au pair for a family I’d never met. I couldn’t bear being away from home, but I chose to do this in a separate country. I couldn’t make sense of my own thought process.

During that summer, I cut myself quite seriously on the leg and a small nagging worry told me that this was beyond me. A few days passed, and it didn’t improve; looking back, I feel lucky that my clumsy medical care didn’t yield an infection. I should have had stitches in the cut, but I had left it too late and would be left with quite a wide scar. I knew I couldn’t carry on like this and I did the best thing possible: I asked for help.

Telling my Mum was hard because I knew how upset she was (though she never shed a tear in front of me). I also knew, however, that I had done the right thing because she did what she has always done: she looked after me and loved me unconditionally. The saying ‘a problem shared is a problem halved’ really does make sense – Mum was a shoulder to cry on, but she also gave me nudges of encouragement when I needed them. I had admitted how unhappy I was and it’s a lot harder to fall back into bad habits when someone is checking up on you. I started taking antidepressants and came off the contraceptive pill to help regulate my emotions. In September 2017, I took the plunge and moved to Spain, which turned out to be the best year of my life so far. Who knew that sun, 12 hour working weeks and amazing food could be so good for your mental health…? I was doing something that was all mine and I was doing it well.

Fast forward to now and we find ourselves in a global pandemic, where every anxious or grey thought was, of course, exacerbated by restrictions on socialising and leisure. I know so many people will relate to like there has been nothing to look forward to, and lots of us have felt the absence of things that would normally give us a boost on a down day. It has been a difficult year and I don’t cope very well with uncertainty, but I haven’t been as low as I was in second year until recently. In November 2020, I made the decision to come off my antidepressants. I was doing okay, but I wanted to check in with my emotions without the presence of the regular serotonin boost. All seemed well (pandemic aside) and I soon forgot that I used to take them at all. In January this year we headed back into national lockdown – cheers Boris. Schools closed once again and working from home became the new normal. The saving grace was that this was new territory for us all and I certainly wasn’t alone; I carried on going into school to keep up a routine and tried to keep my workload at a minimum.

However, for an anxious person like me, the thought of going back to normal teaching and learning made me want to cry. What if I’d forgotten how to teach in the classroom? How could I manage the behaviour of children who’d been out of routine for two months? Once again, I felt self-doubt and dread consume me. I told myself it was only four weeks until the Easter holidays, that I could get through that. Three weeks after schools opened again, I was putting myself under so much pressure that every day started with some sort of panic. I was hardly exercising or sleeping, a complete recipe for disaster. One morning, a friend at work asked me if I was okay and that was it – I broke down, sobbing and hyperventilating. I couldn’t greet my tutor group who were waiting outside. I was sent home for the rest of the day and I immediately requested a repeat prescription of my antidepressants. Although I didn’t harm myself, I pictured doing it in my head and even imagining doing so is not a healthy coping mechanism. For me, I know that’s why I need the tablets – I cope better with depressive episodes and anxiety when I take them regularly.

In my experience, dealing with my mental health comes from accepting that I can, and should, change a situation if I’m unhappy. It comes down to the realisation that I wasn’t enjoying life, and people around me noticed it too. I had become exhausted from the effort it took to put on a brave face every day and didn’t notice how miserable I became as soon as I left work every day. I have a lot to change going forward because that isn’t a way to live and it isn’t a way to start off a career. Above all, ask for help; change situations that you can change; share what you’re feeling with people who will listen without judgement.

Last year I read a book by Maggy van Eijk called Remember This When You’re Sad and one of my favourite quotes was this: ‘my body is not my enemy. It just overreacts to things sometimes, and that’s actually okay.’

Here is Holly's beautiful, personal print which will be available to purchase from Thursday 26th May on our Etsy Store (linked below). 10% of all profits made from this piece will be donated to a charity chosen by Holly -Mind Charity https://www.mind.org.uk/ which supports those with mental health problems, and gifts guidance and education to all regarding mental health.

Etsy store Link

www.etsy.com/uk/shop/wyldnwomanli