30 Days of Mental Health Awareness: Day 11

I'm taking part in the 30 Days of Mental Health Awareness Challenge. Every day I'll post in response to their prompts.

Day 11: What is the worst thing in regard to your mental illness(es)?

I feel like I'm missing out on something by not being "normal." It messes with my ability to have a social or romantic life. It holds me back in a lot of things, including professionally.

30 Days of Mental Health Awareness: Day 10

I'm taking part in the 30 Days of Mental Health Awareness Challenge. Every day I'll post in response to their prompts.

Day 10: What is the best thing in regards to your mental illness(es)?

I'm learning self-care and coping, and I think I'm a more empathetic person for what I've deal with.

30 Days of Mental Health Awareness: Day 9

I'm taking part in the 30 Days of Mental Health Awareness Challenge. Every day I'll post in response to their prompts.

Day 9: What are some of the important events in your life, that may have effected your mental illness(es) for the worse or better? (You can make a timeline)

I mentioned yesterday that I was bullied as a child, and that seems to be a common thread in many of my issues.

Journalism school was hard for me. I suffered from anxiety constantly (I know that's normal for grad students, but I had a breakdown standing on a sidewalk in Manhattan, and that's not normal for anyone over the age of 4). I was extremely negative all the time, which I now realize is a symptom of my depression. It was a really rough time.

30 Days of Mental Health Awareness: Day 8

I'm taking part in the 30 Days of Mental Health Awareness Challenge. Every day I'll post in response to their prompts.

Day 8: What age you were diagnosed at?  At what age do you think your symptoms began? (You can make a timeline)

Officially, I was diagnosed in summer of 2005, which means I was 21. But I think I'd been feeling the symptoms for years. I remember a constant sense of anxiety my senior year of high school. A lot of us felt anxious during that time, since I was a senior from 2001-2001, and we all know what happened at the beginning of that particular school year. I also think I felt some of these symptoms in a fledgling form as a child. I was bullied a lot, which I believe was a big trigger for me, so I had a lot of negative thoughts and feelings at that time.

30 Days of Mental Health Awareness: Day 7

I'm taking part in the 30 Days of Mental Health Awareness Challenge. Every day I'll post in response to their prompts.

Day 7: Do you think there are any triggers or patterns to how your illness(es) effects you? 

Yes. There are many, but I'll only share a few. My depression is often triggered by depictions of imminent death, and my anxiety is often exacerbated and triggered by social/romantic situations and times of high stress and responsibility.

30 Days of Mental Health Awareness: Day 6

I'm taking part in the 30 Days of Mental Health Awareness Challenge. Every day I'll post in response to their prompts.

Day 6: Do you have a family history of mental illness or mental health issues?

Yes. My mother has dealt with anxiety and depression, and I believe there are people farther back on my family tree with illnesses, though they may not have been diagnosed because of the era in which they lived.

30 Days of Mental Health Awareness: Day 5

I'm taking part in the 30 Days of Mental Health Awareness Challenge. Every day I'll post in response to their prompts.

Day 5: Do you believe nature (biology/physiology), nurture(environment), a mix, or something else has an impact on mental health?

I believe it's a combination. I majored in psych in college, and we talked about this a lot in my classes. It seems most logical to me that there are some people who are predisposed toward mental illness, and that in many of them, it requires some kind of trigger. This can be a single event or years of buildup.

Of course, there could also be exceptions. Maybe people who get PTSD don't have a predisposition, but the event that triggered it was so traumatic that it didn't matter, for example. The human mind is absurdly complex and we don't come anywhere near understanding it completely yet, so who knows if the current theories are correct, or even in the ballpark.