Video Transcription
Study strong: Alex talks about anxiety and getting support
I felt overwhelmed, stressed. I couldn’t think straight. My heart was palpitating; the anxiety was kicking in, really.
I’m Alexander Peasley. I’m a proud Rader and Waka Waka man, and my mob is from Cherbourg, Queensland, where I grew up, and also Dubbo, Gilgandra, and Condobolin.
I felt that it kicked in at 17. You’d get the anxiety sickness—you’d want to throw up, but you never would. Feeling very tired, achy. There was a lot of overthinking thoughts. You were shaking a little bit, and you couldn’t really sit still. So there was a lot of those symptoms.
Those attacks required me to kind of go out of class. My original learning officer noticed me showing up late to school, and I wasn’t really a person to talk out at the time. I had my dad, obviously, I could talk to, but I just felt like, being an Aboriginal man, you didn’t have that. And especially as a man, you don’t really speak out.
She found out that I was going through this stuff, and she set me on the path to go see a psychologist. I’m very thankful for her, and she’s the reason why I’m here today.
I understood why I was getting this stuff and what these were, because I couldn’t really understand until I saw the psychologist. It helped me with my HSC. I was put in special provisions—I could have five-minute rests if I needed to step out, get a drink of water. Having that really changed my last year of school.
During the anxiety attacks, you’d get all over the shop, like you couldn’t really think. You were trying to calm yourself down, and so the breathing really helped. A lot of music, going on jogs, playing basketball, or taking a walk if needed, just to calm myself down—those were the techniques I was taught.
I think breathing was the main thing for me, to help get my thoughts back to being clear and just to calm my nervous system and my whole body down.
I hope kids can understand that there is support. And especially as Blackfellas, we are the highest in suicide rates—they need that support.
High school isn’t the be-all and end-all, as they used to describe it. There’s other ways. There’s TAFE, there’s early entries, you can do apprenticeships. I got to uni, and I didn’t have a great ATAR, and I’m doing the degree that I love.
You don’t have to worry about stress. There are other ways.
Video by Reach Out
