catiesmentallife-blog

[catiesmentallife-blog]

[catiesmentallife-blog]

How it all started.

Hey, I’m Catie & this is the story of my crazy life.

You may be wondering why I’m explaining my story, or you might be thinking that I’m doing it for attention; I’m not. I enjoy writing, and I find writing as a stress reliever. I’m also writing this in hope that it may help someone, in anyway possible.

It started at the age of six. You would never expect the sweet, innocent-minded, brown-eyed kindergartener to have anxiety, but a lot was going through the little mind of mine. It was toward the middle of my first year of elementary school when I started acting different. I would scream and cry before going to school, I would never want to leave my parents side. Finally, after weeks of acting like this, my parents decided to take me to my pediatrician. They weren't sure of what was going on in my crazy little brain, and I’m sure I was also unaware of what was going on. After the doctor asked questions and did some screening, she diagnosed me with the first of my mental illnesses: Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD). Of course at that young, I had no idea what “anxiety” was, or even why I was acting the way I was. After that doctor’s visit is when my parents began to buy me books on how anxiety worked, and ways to deal with it. I read all the books that they gave me, and I listened to all the lectures they gave me, but I still had no idea how to fix it, or even why I was feeling that way. As I grew up, I found ways to calm myself down when I got that anxious feeling of being away from my parents, but my anxiety decided to pop up in different ways. It started making me worried that I would get locked in a store, it would make me anxious when I didn't know what was to come, it would even randomly pop up every now and then at school and I found myself in the principal’s office many times because “Caitlyn couldn’t focus in class”. These worries faded away as I grew older, but even now, things aren't all sunshine and rainbows with anxiety. The difference between my anxiety now and then, is that I now know how to deal with it if it pops up. I now have my handy little “mental tool box”, that I have acquired over the years, that I go to when an anxiety attack occurs.

For the next part of the story, I get to explain the second bump on my path, which began to show during late middle school/early high school years, but wasn’t actually taken care of until my senior year of high school. My ENTIRE life, since as early as I can remember, I have always been negative. About everything- and when I say everything, I mean everything. Every event, every moment I should've been happy about; I was always upset, and I never quite knew why. I was always told “just be positive and positive thoughts will come along!” I thought that would work for awhile, until I found myself just forcing a smile on my face. 

Senior year of high school comes around, and I had to experience a friend of mine passing away due to suicide. I couldn't believe it. Before this event, I've had thoughts of worthlessness and I even questioned my place on this earth, but I was in complete shock that she took her own life. I couldn’t believe that her mental illness pushed her to that point. Not only did the feeling of grief kill me, but also the worry that I would too get pushed to that point by my mental illness. When this worry begun, that’s when I knew I had to speak out, I knew I had to tell someone about the constant sad feeling I had. 

I decided to first go to my psychology teacher, as he probably knew more about my own mind than I did. I explained to him how I was constantly sad and how no matter what I did, I couldn’t find a way to get over this negativity. He had me take a depression questionnaire and what did you know! There was actual paper proof that I had depression. I was terrified. For a split second, I was afraid of my own mind, which I didn't even know was possible. I started by telling my boyfriend about my new discovery; he didn’t take it so well. He didn’t know how to “deal with it”, so he ended up ending the relationship, making my situation even harder. (Don't worry, we got back together and he knows how to handle me AND my mental illnesses.) After I told my boyfriend, I decided to tell my parents, which wasn’t easy at all. I had to watch my own mother worry and cry night after night about my well-being, and I had to watch my dad be in complete denial about the situation, telling me to “just get over it and be happy”, which I wish could’ve happened. After I decided to tell my parents, they thought it would be in my best interest to see a therapist. I was mad at myself, I was frustrated that my mind was at that low of a point that I needed to go talk to a stranger about my feelings. Going into my first therapy session, I was beyond nervous. How the heck was I going to tell a stranger my problems when I could barely tell my own parents my problems? I went into therapy open-minded, and came out of therapy shocked, shocked as to how beneficial it was to talk to a person who doesn’t know me. To this day, I still experience episodes of depression, and I still seek therapy for my depression. Even after 3 therapy sessions, I learned coping mechanisms to get passed these episodes, and I learned how to challenge these negative thoughts if they should occur. Kate Rhodes, if you're reading this, just know you're a blessing and will forever be an angel in my eyes.

The third bump in my path leads me to the problems my body has with food. Ah yes, when I tell you I love to eat, I am not joking around. I could eat my entire fridge and be extremely happy while doing so. The problem that came with my eating habits, was the feeling I got after I ate. My senior year, I worked hard during homecoming week, as I was on the dance team and we performed that Friday at the football game. During that week, I was so stressed that I barely ate. By not eating all week, I noticed how thin I became and I enjoyed how I looked. My mind eventually drifted to, “maybe if I continue to do this, I will lose more weight and REALLY like how I look”. This thought became an obsession, and a thought I couldn't seem to push away. I started to not eat the week before big events, such as my birthday or prom or holidays. I liked how I was becoming so skinny so fast, but I was miserable at the fact that I couldn’t eat, which didn’t help my depression either. I continued this bad habit, until freshman year of college came around. As soon as I was on my own, I started working out. Like a lot. As I started to lose weight from working out, I thought that maybe eating less would help me lose weight too, which I started to do. Soon after eating less and working out more, I felt guilty for every single thing that went into my body. I felt guilty about a piece of bread, a sip of coffee. Shortly after this guilty feeling started, I began counting calories and I started cutting down my calorie intake to under 500 calories a day. Yep, a girl who was 5′6, normal weight was 142, was running at least 3 miles a day was eating UNDER 500 calories a day. Within a week, I was down to 125 pounds. I LOVED how thin I looked, but I was completely miserable. I was nauseous every day, my body was run down from running- I knew I needed help, but I felt embarrassed. First, I turned to my parents, who were in complete shock. They wanted me to start commuting so they could see everything I eat and ensure that I was actually eating. They decided to let me keep my suite at NIU, but I did have to send them pictures of every thing I ate. Then I turned to Kate, who helped me understand my eating disorder. Kate helped me to make sure I was eating, forced me to cut down on running and texted me once a week to check up on me, as I was an hour away from her office. 

All in all, I have a crazy mind, but I love my crazy mind. Its apart of me, and it made me so much stronger than I was before. So, by creating this post, I hope I’m helping at least one person to understand that mental illness is NOT easy, but it is manageable. If you got down to this point, congratulations. Thanks for reading about my mental life, and I hope you enjoy the many more posts to come onto my blog :)