Face the Fear, Elayna’s story: admitting she needed help with her mental health

As part of my new blog series, Face the Fear, I will be interviewing women about how they have faced their fears and what they went through to get to where they are now.

This series is tapping into the minds of incredible women, who have one way or another faced their fears. You can read the original Face the Fear blog post to find out why I wanted to write this and what my own fears are.

Today I’m interviewing Elayna, you can find her over at her blog, ingredientsofliving.org, Pinterest ingredientsofliving and Twitter @ingredientslive.

Tell me a bit about yourself? What do you do, what do you love, where are you from?

I’m 19 and I’m from Michigan, USA. I attend the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and I’m studying public health! I’m extremely interested in community and global public health, and I hope to find a way to focus on mental health awareness and prevention (eg. suicide prevention, identifying environmental or societal factors that contribute to the formation of mental illnesses) specifically throughout my career. I absolutely love animals (between my parents and myself, I have 3 dogs and 2 cats) and spending time with my boyfriend, friends, and family. I began blogging in February and it has become a new love of mine as well! I’m still getting started but I can’t wait for my blog to truly take off. I know I have valuable ideas to share with the world.

What is the fear you’re going to be writing about today?

I’m going to be writing about my fear of acknowledging that I needed help with my mental health. Growing up, I faced a lot of trauma that I didn’t see other kids facing, such as my parents divorcing at a young age and my mom becoming so broke that she couldn’t buy her own groceries, let alone pay her own bills. In addition to that, I had (and still have) emotionally abusive family members who definitely take a toll on my mental health. All of this, along with genetics, contributed to my lifelong struggle with generalized anxiety disorder, social anxiety disorder, and depression.

How long have you had this fear/what made it start to develop?

I had this fear all of my life. I grew up in a tiny, conservative rural town in southwest Michigan that heavily enforced stigmas surrounding mental health. Acknowledging mental health issues or even considering mental health an issue is greeted with smirks and lectures about how you need to just “get over it” and “think positively”. Because of this, I refused to even admit to myself that I needed help, and I convinced myself that the way I was thinking and the way that I viewed life was normal and how everybody thinks and feels. I was made to feel attention-seeking and weak for letting my illnesses (that I still was not aware of) get to me.

When/why did you realise you had to face your fear?

The first semester of my freshman year of college was a very, very dark time. Everybody has troubles adjusting and making friends when they first move away to college, but I soon realized that what I was facing wasn’t typical. I stayed in my dorm all day, too afraid to even go to the dining hall by myself or even talk to my roommate, listening to others talking and laughing in the hall and wondering why I couldn’t make friends. I was too afraid to speak to anyone else in fear of them judging me, laughing at me, or thinking I was weird or annoying, but rather than realizing that these thoughts were caused by social anxiety, I convinced myself that I just wasn’t good enough to make friends. I began to ruminate over every conversation I had with literally everybody I interacted with and tore each and every detail apart looking for things that were wrong with me and how I made the conversation go poorly or made the other person hate me. This sent me into the deepest and darkest episode of depression I have ever experienced.

How did you face your fear?

Soon, I began to look into my university’s mental health resources. After taking one of their online symptom checks for anxiety and depression and being told that my symptoms strongly aligned with both, I was terrified. I realized that I needed to get help, but I was so ashamed. Without telling a soul, I went to the counselling center on campus and finally received my actual diagnoses: severe GAD, severe SAD, and moderate to severe depression. Receiving those diagnoses was the most terrifying yet validating experience of my life. I realized just how much power those illnesses had over my brain, and I felt like I didn’t know who I truly was without them. Before I told anybody, I was terrified of the responses I would get; I felt like my family and loved ones would laugh at me or imply that I was weak or attention-seeking, just as so many people from my hometown had throughout my life. However, every single person I told responded in the most loving and supportive way they possibly could. It’s been a year and a half since all of this happened, and I feel like I’ve been reborn. I’m on medications and in therapy, and now that I feel like I have control over my brain again, I feel like I’m finally alive. I’ve experienced true happiness and I’ve finally made some great friends. If you’re struggling and afraid to reach out for help, I am begging you to do it. If you’re afraid of what your loved ones will think, just remember that if they aren’t supportive of it, they don’t deserve to be there anyways.

Thank you so much Elayna, for sharing your story and kicking off this new blog series. I am in awe of your solo travelling and you’re inspiring me to want to do the same. 

If you’d like to get involved in this blog series, please email me at beth@booksnest.co.uk and I’ll send you through everything you need.