The Spiral Down

Mental Health Awareness Month

The Spiral Down

Warning!!!: Before we get started here, I just wanted to give you a fair warning that I'm about to share my story surrounding mental health and if you aren't in for a serious topic or something that might be shocking or saddening to you, just go ahead an click away and maybe come back later.

So let's just get it out there... brains are dumb! They don't always do the things that the are supposed to do correctly.

As you may or may not know, coming on 2 years ago, my boyfriend and I split up. We had been together for about 5 years and its probably pretty clear at this point that this was something I was pretty upset about. At the same time, My friends and I were leaving college and I was pursuing a different career path than I had before. The culmination of all these big life changes, in such a short amount of time, pretty rapidly led me into the dark hole we all know as mental illness.

It was a pretty quick succession from sad about a breakup to not functioning as a normal person anymore. I had a pretty nice portion of depression with a side of anxiety. Luckily I had some helpful people in my life as well as some pretty great mental health professionals.
I can't really recall anymore, how I spiraled to the point that I did or when I realized it was more than the "normal" amount of sadness for the situation. (Maybe that's the terrifying thing about how insidious mental illness is... Its hard to pinpoint when you need to seek help until you're well past it.) All I know is this was a sadness and unwillingness/inability to function unlike anything I had ever experienced before.

I lost 15 lbs., I wasn't going to class, I was crying for hours on end almost daily. I would dig my nails into my shoulders and arms leaving red welts and scratches, sleep for all hours of the day that I wasn't working or crying. I was failing to feed and bathe myself properly and I genuinely wished that I wasn't alive.

If this isn't something I've told you about before let me reiterate:
At that time, I would have rather died than continued to live on feeling the way I did.

By some miracle, I managed to get ahead of the game and had signed up for one on one counseling sessions with a grad student in the university's mental health facility. After a meeting with my counselor she suggested a class that one of the psychologists was offering. You may have heard about this new trendy thing going around called mindfulness. What I was doing was a class focused on mindfulness and emotional regulation. This was probably one of my saving graces from this time period. It gave me a lot of coping mechanisms for handling my emotions when they got too overwhelming.
I didn't really think anything about meditation before this, and kind of thought it was over-hyped. Now I know that ITS NOT. What I loved about this class is that it gave me many different techniques to help me. It was a group setting so it was interesting to me to see that not every method worked for every person. Breathing meditations worked well for me but not for others because they couldn't focus their mind on the breath. "Chicken breathing" didn't work for me AT ALL but others LOVED it. Guided meditations were a really great solution for almost everyone. They're super easy to find on YouTube so I still use them if I or someone around me is feeling anxious, and I highly suggest them to others.
I also enjoyed learning a little bit about the chemistry of why these things were helping. It was about taking in more oxygen and tipping your body chemistry so that it could handle and wade through the rush of hormones and other chemicals in your brain. We also learned about some coping mechanisms and self soothing methods that really helped. One I wish I had known before was holding an ice cube in your hand when you are feeling compelled to hurt yourself. I also really benefited from the concept of grounding all 5 of your senses to your surroundings so as to move out of your head and concentrate on the world around you. When you are in that moment of intense emotion it feels like it will never pass and that is your world. It was nice to recognize that eventually your body will break down the chemicals causing you to feel that way and it will pass.

Well anyways, here I was, taking proactive steps to help myself feel better but not really seeing any improvement. Really, I think these counseling sessions slowed the progression of my depression but couldn't handle the immense task that I was asking of them.
Don't get me wrong, they really did help, especially for short term / in the moment situations, but they couldn't carry the overall weight of what was going on in my head.

This is where I was extremely lucky to have people in my life that understood mental illness. I had multiple people supporting me but I had one person in particular that stood by me and helped me through the darkest parts.

This person was none other than......



my ex boyfriend!


I know, crazy right???
This person sat with me while I was upset and understood that most of the time I didn't know or understand why I was crying. He made sure that I ate and that I didn't hurt myself. He actually removed any kind of pills from my room and hid or got rid of sharp objects. (This actually led to one incredibly frustrating time where I needed to cut a piece of paper and had to call him so that I could find my scissors.) Needless to say, I was in a pretty bad place.


This all came to a head one October night. I had sobbed for hours after getting home from work and eventually, I went completely numb. To me the sadness was always better than the numbness because at least you were feeling something compared to feeling nothing and feeling like nothing mattered. Well, I'd went through the whole thing, the crying, the scratching, the feeling worthless and like no one cared about me and eventually I turned numb. It was like a switch had been flipped in my brain.

I wasn't sad.

I wasn't... anything.

The only thing I felt was a very strong and uncontrollable compulsion to walk out in the chilly air to the Hocking river and get in the water.

So I did.

...Kind of.

I had told my ex that I was going on a walk but he didn't know that I was going to walk straight to his house, show up in a very agitated state and insist he come walk with me. He must have known something was really wrong because he came out and walked with me even though I basically just yelled at him to come with me and immediately left.
We walked (basically ran) to the bike trail on top of the Hocking. Once I stopped, he asked me why we were there and I said I just wanted to look at the water.
He knew I was in crisis after that.
In an effort to feel the cold on my skin like I was craving from the water, I took off my jacket (I was also hot from power walking the entire way). I stood there staring at the water for a minute in silence and when I took a step forward to sit down on the edge of the path, he grabbed me, thinking I was taking a step toward the water instead. He was visibly relieved, but still on edge, and sat down beside me. We sat there for a few minutes while he tried to ask me what I was feeling and help me calm down. I explained to him how I was feeling, that I didn't matter and that no one cared about me. He talked to me until I overcame the compulsion to get in the river and let the cold water swallow me.
I eventually stood up and started walking back to his house. He stayed with me there until he felt that I wasn't in danger of hurting myself anymore then he drove me home and put me to bed, insisting that I see my counselor in the morning.

To be continued...