I had my first anxiety attack in my early 20s. I had moved from Denmark to the United Kingdom in pursuit of love and perhaps a little naïve for someone my age, I figured I would uproot myself for while, be happy with this new boyfriend I had not known very long and just settling into my new life for about a year or so - with absolutely no problems.
Looking back I can't believe how ignorant I was and I fully understand the way my parents must have felt. I had never had a boyfriend before, always been a very shy person and I had never lived in a different town from my parents. It was a pretty big move and I had astounded everybody by suddenly going on flights all by myself and doing things I had never done before.
The first few weeks were awesome. We had a great time. I got to see all the tourist attractions in London. We took the bus to Bath. We went to Hyde Park, I spent hours on speakers corner, listening to people raving on about religion and politics. Slowly reality started to kick in and my boyfriend had to go back to work. He worked evenings and in the daytime he tried to help me get some job interviews. I finally got a job at a nursing home and I made quite a good impression at the interview. They had previously employed a Danish girl and they still remembered her fondly. I sort of got the feeling that they have been very sad to see her go. I made it through the first day of work, although I was quite nervous about the whole thing. When my shift was over, I had forgotten where to catch the bus and so I walked home. It took me about an hour to walk the whole way and I was terrified because it was dark outside.
The next morning I was supposed to start at 10 . I was so nervous my whole body was shaking and I felt like somebody had their hands around my throat and was squeezing really tight . I went into the bathroom because I thought I had to throw up and as I got more and more dizzy, I went down on my knees and started to cry hysterically . It was an out of body feeling . I felt like I was watching myself from the ceiling and I was losing my mind . I held onto the edge of the bathtub and my then boyfriend asked me what was wrong . I couldn't answer . He asked if he should call the doctor , still no answer .
He phoned in to work and said that I would not be coming . I'm not sure exactly what phrase he used but I'm pretty certain he did not say I had an anxiety attack because we both did not know what it was at the time .
In the coming months I have several more attacks and I started to hide out in the bathroom whenever we had company . The boyfriend would try to get me engaged socially and he tried to introduce me to people , usually with the result that I was in tears . He would say things like "maybe I should force you to be around people " - I'm sure he meant to help me but words like that just made me angry and made me want to isolate myself even more . I ended up in therapy . Started out with art therapy because I didn't know the words to express my feelings. In the end my therapist agreed that it would probably be helpful for me to be around my family - I was beginning to get suicidal . She would not , however , put me on medication . She told me to go home .
And this was the beginning of years of different kinds of therapy and medication for me . Today I am still medicated , although not as high a dose is as in the beginning . Anxiety and depression is a part of my life and at this point I am quite certain that I will never be completely rid of it . Some days I know how to manage it and I recognize the signs and on other days it just hits me like a ton of bricks and I find myself unprepared for the pain about to come upon me .
I wanted to share my story with all of you to make people aware that many , many people all over the world suffer from anxiety and yet it is a big taboo. Mental illness is something we do not talk about. People who are mentally ill not only suffer from their illness but also from the wall of silence between themselves and "normal" people. Isolation kills many. It is time we start being open about mental illness because there is nothing shameful about it - having a depression or having anxiety is not a personality flaw; it does not mean you have a weak character.
Other forms of illnesses are also hidden from our view and yet we don't have a problem discussing them: someone has heart problems, someone has rheumatism. But people who have depression, anxiety or some other kind of mental illness , these are the ones who need to break the wall of silence. We are the ones.
We are not strange. We are you.
