My Mental Health Story

I was diagnosed with major depressive disorder and generalized anxiety disorder my senior year of high school. Having dealt with the symptoms since elementary school, I wasn’t really surprised. I started seeing a psychiatrist and was put on medication, but was still left with a long list of concerns. Would I be okay to start university in the fall? How do I explain this to my friends? Do I even tell them? Would I have to deal with this for the rest of my life?

When classes began in the fall, I fell into a good rhythm of going to class, studying, and occasionally hanging out with friends. I’d even gotten involved with the student newspaper and dedicated the majority of my free time to it. Everything seemed to be going okay until they weren’t.

Around mid-October, my illnesses became too much for me to handle. It felt like I was submerged underwater with a ball and chain holding me down. Getting out of bed in the morning and attempting to go about my day was a chore. I wasn’t sleeping, so it was impossible to focus in class, and I started distancing myself from my friends. The worst part of it all though? The irrational thoughts that played on a loop in my head all day began to eclipse the rational ones.

I started seeing a counselor on campus, and together we tried to pinpoint what had triggered the emotional rut I was in but came up with nothing. Since then, every year around the same time, the rut comes back and hits harder than the year before. Junior year was the worst.

It’s a terrifying thing to hear a voice that sounds like you in your head telling you to end your life. I had a plan and was going to act on it, but I forced myself to contact my campus counselor and tell her what I was going to do. Within an hour, I was back home and preparing to be checked into a behavioral health facility.

I had been diagnosed for three years, was on a medication regimen, and regularly saw both a counselor and psychiatrist, but was not getting any better. It was then that I had begun to think that there was more to my diagnosis and I was right.

After switching psychiatrists this past summer and being reevaluated, I received a new diagnosis. The heightened depression and anxiety, restlessness, insomnia, “hypomanic” episodes: they were all textbook symptoms of bipolar II.

It was such a relief to finally be able to put the right name to the chemical imbalance in my brain. From there, things have progressed on a steady incline. I’m on the right combination of medication now, make time for self-care every day, and I continue to see my counselor on campus once a week.

This year’s rut came a went with a few bad days and some tears, but the good days outnumbered them. Even now there are still some dark moments, but I can pull myself out of them. And the irrational thoughts? They’re just murmurs in the back of my mind.