10 years ago this week, I had a mental health breakdown and my life completely changed. Suddenly I was seeing the world through a whole new lens and I didn’t know how I was going to survive it. But here I am, 10 years later, living a life I am so grateful for. So what’s new? What’s changed? How did I turn my breakdown into a breakthrough? I’ll be answering those in a moment, but first…
What is a breakdown?
A couple of months ago, I was talking about my breakdown with a friend from zumba when she said “I know a breakdown is a bad thing, but what exactly is it?” Well the reality is they look VERY different to everybody. For me…I had a triggering event at school, I ran out, and didn’t leave my house for months.
I was so tired. I’d been fighting my phobia alone for 2 years. I’d just recovered from a fever and I was back in school for the first day… and I was met with a phobia trigger. I just couldn’t do it anymore. I’ve been asked a lot recently what that feeling was like and truly some of it’s really blurry and while I was afraid, what I really remember was being so, so tired. I don’t think I’d had a full nights sleep in over a year and I didn’t have the energy to do it anymore. It felt too hard. So I gave into the fear.
I’ve spoken a lot on the podcast about what those 3 months were like for me. About my supportive family and my partner at the time, about continuing to work and staying determined to get through to university, about therapy and my continued journey of recovery. So I’m not going to go into that again here. But what I do want to talk about is where I am at now, what tools I’ve not spoken about before and the promises I’m making myself about the next decade.
What Remains…
After ten years, I’m not “healed” from my vomit phobia. It’s still there. It will likely always be there in some form because the associated OCD has a tendency to reoccur with triggering events. However, what I will say is that my triggers have changed and I have a much higher tolerance than I did before. I am no longer phobic of my fur babies getting sick. Leora got sick a couple of weeks ago from a medication she was taking, and I stayed super calm. I don’t have any issues with baby sick at all. Basically what it comes down to is, if it’s not illness related or contagious, I am pretty good. Coming from someone who wasn’t even able to say the word “sick” ten years ago, this gives me so much hope for what’s possible in the future.
I am still in treatment. I will continue to do the work and push myself with exposures. My therapist and I have come up with a plan for more exposure therapy in 2020 to continue to fight the phobia and OCD tendencies. Imma be honest, this is still as scary as it was ten years ago. But I know what it feels like to have a day without fear and nothing could be more worth it.
I still feel like a burden sometimes. It’s really hard to enter into new relationships, lean on friends and be truly authentic in every sense. But I’m getting better at being authentic and speaking my truth instead of hiding it, at work, at home at zumba etc and that congruence has lead to a much more peaceful existence.
The importance of music. I never really spoke about this, but a huge way for me to process my emotion is through music. Jose Gonzales got me through years of fear with his acoustic albums. I remember the first week at university going for a night out clubbing and someone threw up on the dance floor and I just couldn’t bare it. I ran out, and got a taxi home with my friend. When I arrived, I locked myself in my room, put on Crosses by Jose Gonzales and sketched a drawing of a cross on a hill. His music just anchored me in these moments of relief, where I was able to breathe and see the world for something beautiful. And these songs in particular are still incredibly healing for me.
New Breakthroughs…
This year brought a plethora of new mental health challenges for me. I started having a new kind of panic attack which left me nauseous much of the time (which for someone with a vomit phobia could not be more ironic). This lead to me turning to medication for the first time. I’ve always been sensitive to medication, so I really tried hard to stay away from it, but the reality is that there weren’t any other tools that could control these attacks and quite honestly, there’s only so long you can last being triggered at a high level before you start to break. I want to be very clear that there is no shame in turning to or needing medication. It’s just that for me personally, I found it really scary. I am now so grateful that I am able to manage these attacks and I’m also grateful for my primary care provider who listened with empathy and compassion.
I’m trying different forms of healing…brain-spotting, massage, EMDR, yoga, ayurveda, reiki. You name it. I’m going at this with a more holistic approach and it’s been fascinating so far.
I’ve been making choices to find alignment in my life so I can make space for healing every day. I can’t speak about this too much yet but there are some super exciting things happening for me in 2020 that I can’t wait to share with you!
I am able to move through the darkness into the light much more quickly and with more clarity because I now have so many more tools to pull from. This is HUGE. Weeks of being triggered are now just a few days, and my life is so much more full of the light than it has ever been.
What I will tolerate from people has now changed. I left an unhappy marriage this year and started being more intentional about who I was spending time with. Because of this, I now have an incredible network of friends and family, in both the US and the UK, who love and accept me for who I am.
This year, I turned the pain into fuel. One of our recent guests said “I’m not saying what kills you makes you stronger, but the pain can be an invitation to find positive purpose or meaning” and that’s exactly what’s happened for me. With the podcast, working with Leora, having space to dive into other people’s stories, has been so liberating and such a gift.
I now celebrate every year this date comes around…this time it’s going to be me, my girlfriend, Leora and her wife and we’re gonna down some champagne, sushi and chocolate to celebrate that I’m here.
So my one piece of wisdom at this point? Healing isn’t linear. Mine certainly isn’t anyway. I’m going to be walking alongside my anxiety, phobia and OCD probably for the rest of my life. But by embracing them, acknowledging them, actively working on them, and celebrating the wins, that’s how you move out of the dark and into healing.
For ya’ll in any stage of recovery, day 1, month 10, year 50…
I see you.
You are brave.
You are strong.
You are worthy.
You are not alone.
TOOLS
Medication - working with a psychiatrist rather than my primary care provider, to come up with a long term plan.
Finding purpose - turning the pain into fuel.
Celebrating the small wins with those I love.
Music - Jose Gonzales and Linkin Park in particular really helped.
My Tattoo - serving as an emotional anchor in a memory of healing.
