EMILY | The war in my head: When anxiety and depression compete

23rd August, 2022    |    By  Beyond Blue    |     642

It has taken Emily most of their life to accept that they are worthy of living. A story about anxiety, depression and learning to love your true self. Read more about Emily: https://www.beyondblue.org.au

This story was filmed on Wurundjeri Country, and we pay respect to the traditional owners of these lands. Produced by Good Grief Productions.


Also check the related topics:  

Depression Anxiety Suicide What is it like getting help?

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EMILY | The war in my head: When anxiety and depression compete

When you’re little and you fall down, people ask you, “Where’s the graze? Where’s the bruise?” Nowadays, it’s like, “What do you point to—your head or your heart?”

It’s really hard for me to remember my parents saying that they were proud of me. Sometimes, I’d be so scared of letting them down that I just wouldn’t come home. Sometimes, I would go and sleep on park benches or stay in the school library, hiding behind the bookshelves until the librarian went home.

Well done.

I felt this growing emptiness inside of me, and it was like a sink that could never be filled because, at some point, I lost the plug. No matter how much I tried to fill it—with friends, with family, with studies—it just felt like it could never be filled. I just felt like I was a burden to everyone. So, if I couldn’t change the situation I was in, I would just, I guess, remove myself from it.

When I was 14, I tried to end my life. Not many people knew. I just put the mask right back on and went back to school.

For me, there’s like a wall of masks. I’ll go into different situations, and no one would really see the real me. It was so weird experiencing anxiety and depression at the same time because my depression made me want to stay in bed all the time, but my anxiety would make me so anxious about not doing anything. Or, I wanted to sleep all the time, but my anxiety would keep me awake with these “what if” thoughts.

What if that person who said they liked me the other day was actually lying?

It’s this awful second thought—that everything you believe to be true is not actually true.

A few years later, I started uni. I’d been in therapy the whole time, but I was just so tired, you know? Fighting that unwinnable war in my head. So, when I was 18, I tried to end my life again.

I didn’t necessarily want to kill myself. It was just more that I wanted the pain to stop.

When you Google depression or anxiety or anything like that, it comes up with a million articles written by people who might not have experienced it firsthand. I went into this really big deep dive on what someone else actually feels like. Like, are the weird emotions that I’m experiencing—the colours, the heaviness—is that just me?

I discovered these online forums where people were sharing their different experiences and stories of mental health. I can’t really tell you how healing it was to find out that I wasn’t alone. I felt genuinely motivated to actually get better.

Creative stuff has always been really important to me in my healing journey. Video games are one of the few places where I really felt like I could be me. I can shape the world and myself to be the person I believed myself to be, not who everyone else wants me to be.

There’s so much stuff I would want to tell my younger self. There’s nothing that you need to do or be. Just being you is enough.

For me, that was the game changer.

I’m okay where I’m at, and I’ve built a life that I want to keep living.

Video by BeyondBlue