Monthly Archives: June 2014

Over ten months, I morphed from a skinny blonde into a 45-pound-heavier brunette. From being praised by my workplace boss for a great job of managing change in our organisation to struggling to explain to my husband the changes happening inside me. I went from a woman who could buy a house to a woman who could barely take a shower. Left behind a wide circle of friends and nights partying to long days living between neighbours I didn’t know and the ghosts of dance-floor memories. Nobody warned me that motherhood was likely to affect my sense of who I was as a person and how I felt about myself. Or that losing myself could lead to postpartum depression.

I didn’t know I was depressed. I just thought I was exhausted and yet I couldn’t sleep. I didn’t know insomnia was an early sign that something was amiss. I thought it was the same for all new parents and so I just sucked it up; I didn’t tell anybody. I didn’t know I was anxious. What I did know was that my stress levels would peak about half an hour before my husband came home each night and that on the days the house wasn’t tidy and he would go tight-lipped I was primed to explode. As well as protecting my fragile self-esteem, I was fighting to stay afloat, to stop myself from sinking deeper. What looked like power was panic underneath.

I desperately wanted, every day, for it to be different: to look forward to him coming home, for him to wrap me in his arms to reconnect at the end of our now very disconnected days, so I could forget the drudgery of mine. For him to be my anchor while I grew into someone I recognized. I wanted to look into his eyes and find myself again. Instead, I couldn’t meet them. Like amateur boxers we danced around each other every night, occasionally taking a half-hearted swing, not really wanting to hurt each other but not knowing how to do something else.

It had been stressful leading up to the baby. I had left my high income job and my husband was just still finding his feet in his new, lower paying one. We didn’t know that high stress in both moms and dads during pregnancy was correlated with depression after the baby came. Maybe we could have done something different if we had.

My depression made my husband more anxious. His anxiety made me more depressed. We wove through each other with tenuous threads. There were sub-clinical symptoms that wouldn’t rate a tick on a clipboard but would undermine our ability to work together and support each other as co-parents for the first few years of our children’s lives.

This is what also made me take a special interest in the perinatal stories of my clients. As a relationship counselor, I’m trained to ask my couples in a first session “when did things start to change between you?” I paid close attention to their dance. I stopped blaming my husband when I saw him multiple times in the faces sitting opposite me in my counseling room, my clients revealing the layers of themselves and seeing that he was just trying to cope too.

So I started researching, for my husband and I as much as for my clients. I found the number one factor in antenatal anxiety is a woman’s relationship with her partner and it is one of the three biggest factors postpartum – for both women and men. One in seven mothers suffer with PPD and so do one in ten dads. Fifty percent of depressed mothers will have a partner who is depressed too. That makes for a lot of depressed and anxious new families.

But I wasn’t looking for statistics. I didn’t want to be one; I was looking for a way out. I learned we, all of us, new mothers and fathers alike, are vulnerable to anxiety or depression. Because before baby, we are each other’s personal battery pack, a mutual source of comfort and strength. In the first few years of parenthood as life becomes busy and chaotic and everything changes, couples naturally go through a period of disconnection, even happy ones: it’s hard to make time and space for each other. And when partners become disconnected from each other, anxiety or depression can creep in.

I wondered if we could do anything about that. There was a wave of research done in the 1980’s by Gottman and Gottman, Cowan and Cowan and Belsky and Kelly. From this research we know that 92% of couples experience increased conflict and disagreement in the first year after baby and 67% a decline in relationship satisfaction in the first three. These researchers also gifted us some clear information on what brings couples closer together and what sends them further apart. Gottman and Gottman’s pilot for Bringing Baby Home even found that just two 40 minute relationship sessions prevented the risk for postpartum depression by 60%. I had my answer and yet relationship preparation is still not a part of traditional antenatal programs. It’s become my passion to change this.

Over the past 15 years, I have seen important issues like family violence and physical health go from private matters to a public concern. It’s only then that new programs can be drafted and rolled out. For the sake of our new families, Mental Health needs to be the next wave. It’s time to stop speaking in shamed, hushed tones. It’s time to clear our throats and ask, clearly, openly: how can we prevent this? How can we support our new families? How can we help couples bed down strong foundations for their children?

Next week I will be traveling to the U.S. to present my work with couples at the Postpartum Support International conference in North Carolina. It will be a full circle moment for me. I will be telling my audience that parents are born along with babies. That as well as infant-care, self-care and couple-care is important too, for the sake of the whole family.

Bio: Elly Taylor is an Australian relationship counsellor, perinatal researcher and author. She lives in Sydney with her firefighter husband, their three children and a bunch of pets. Her new book Becoming Us, 8 Steps to Grow a Family that Thrives has been warmly welcomed by parents and the professionals who care for them.

“Why are you doing this? Did someone hurt you?”

My parents looked up at me from where they sat at the kitchen table. Pacing the length of the room, I tried to answer their first question. The second question was simple: no, no one had molested or abused me. I was fifteen and, from the outside looking in, had everything going for me. My family loved and supported me. I did well in the culinary arts program at my school. I had even managed, with my introverted personality, to make some friends. So, when my guidance counselor called my mom to tell her that they had discovered cuts I had made on purpose the night before, my parents were baffled.

Over the next year, I hurtled to the bottom at an alarming speed. I couldn’t explain the darkness clouding my mind—not even to myself. I was officially diagnosed with depression, put on Zoloft, and plopped into counseling. To my parents’ and my dismay, none of it fixed me.

For the next decade, I seesawed between ignoring my illness and being completely drowned in it. I desperately wanted to be normal. Each of my peers seemed to move through life with relative ease. For me, the tiniest failure ignited that familiar dialogue. “This sucks” led to “I suck” faster than lightning, my thoughts a rapid fire of self-pity and abuse.

Life wasn’t entirely horrible, but even the happiest moments couldn’t throw enough light to drown out the grey blanket that shrouded me. I was able to stop cutting at nineteen, but by the time I graduated college, it was clear that my depression wasn’t going away. I could go from kicking ass at life to struggling to get out of bed in the morning, often without any triggers. I just woke up feeling hopeless. Sometimes, that desolate feeling crept up on me in the middle of the day, kicking me down whether I felt good or bad. I tried more therapy and other antidepressants. My therapist seemed more interested in sucking more money out of me, though, and every antidepressant’s side effects were almost worse than the depression.

Zoloft had made me feel nothing at all. My entire family could have died and I wouldn’t have felt a thing. Cymbalta kept me awake, bouncing off the walls, for three or four days straight. Seroquel XR bloated me like a rapidly filled balloon. Then, I started Prozac.

I’ve always been sensitive to medication. Prednisone gives me night terrors. The lowest dose of Tramadol makes me feel like I just smoked a joint. I’ve always said that having depression has enabled me to better empathize with people, but my sensitivity doesn’t stop there. My nervous system is apparently just as touchy as my feelings. Prozac, however, took things to a whole new level.

I asked my doctor for an antidepressant for several reasons. I’d known for a while that I needed to try treatment again. Then, in January 2014, I lost one of the most important people in the world, my friend Sean. A month later, I lost my job and tumbled into the familiar yet terrifying world of unemployment. Grieving and panicked, I decided to pursue writing fiction—full-time, with no financial safety net. The stress and loss were weighing on my already depressed spirit, and I knew I couldn’t delay any longer. So, I started seeing a new therapist and asked my regular doctor for an antidepressant.

For the first two weeks, I barely noticed any difference. My anxiety seemed to be getting worse, but I spent a lot of time working, so I chalked it up to stress and grief. I couldn’t sleep, and spent my days in an almost twitchy state, unable to concentrate. Previously, I’d been writing every day and completing projects with relative ease and speed. Suddenly, I couldn’t get anything done; even showering seemed like an impossible task. So much was involved. I had to pick out clothes, and before I could even do that, I had to leave my chair. An unexplainable fear plagued me around the clock. Sitting still, tensed, was the only way I could cope.

I went back to my doctor’s office and asked her to increase Prozac from 10mg to 20mg. She gave me a prescription for Ativan for the anxiety, and I continued therapy. Less than two days after increasing Prozac, I slipped into a crippling depression.

Because I’ve had my depression for so long, I’d learned how to cope with it—sort of. At my very worst, I could find some reason to get out of bed. Sometimes I ended up on the bathroom floor, crying hysterically, but I always found a way to pick myself back up. On Prozac, it was a different story.

I couldn’t get out of bed. I wore the same pajamas for days, and stared at the ceiling for hours. I tried to get back to the normal me. Paralyzed with anxiety, though, I was too afraid to leave the comfort of my bed. Once locked in, the depression took hold. Looking back, I barely even remember those days. I don’t remember what I did, said, or ate. I know that I didn’t write, because my spreadsheet for April is empty. I remember sobbing on my mother’s shoulder because I didn’t know what was wrong with me or how to escape.

“I don’t like you on Prozac,” she said, and I burst into tears all over again—this time with relief. If my mother, a psych tech studying for her Master’s in counseling, thought that the episode was because of Prozac, there was a way out.

I flushed Prozac down the toilet that night.

I still have depression. There are still days when I feel off center. Sometimes, I even feel anxiety, but both are normal—or at least, my version of normal.

There may not be a medication for me. I’m learning to cope, though, with therapy, meditation, and journaling. I’m also learning that my depression is not going away—but it’s also not going to own me.

Bio: Elizabeth Barone writes contemporary New Adult fiction that makes your twenties feel less lonely. Her stories explore real issues that twenty-somethings deal with, pushing the boundaries of the New Adult genre. She is the author of over a dozen stories. Her debut novel, Sade on the Wall, was a quarterfinalist in the 2012 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award. Elizabeth lives in Connecticut with her husband and cat, and blogs about life with depression and being a twenty-something at http://elizabethbarone.net.

Do you remember that kid who was always last to be picked for any sports team? The one who was always tagged “it” because he/she was easy to catch? I was that kid.

I grew up as the only black head in a sea of blondes. Growing up in a bilingual household with a mother from Tokyo, I was automatically singled out as the exotic one, the native informant.

My black hair earned me nothing but bullying and snide comparisons to Pocahontas and Mulan. Every Christmas, I would secretly ask Santa for blonde hair and blue eyes and wake up crushed on the inside when he didn’t follow through.

Being the only Asian child at an all-white private middle school only worsened my depression. I was taunted, teased, and tripped. My so-called “friends” prank-called my house so consistently that I became afraid of the phone. Overwhelmed by my depression, pressure, and test anxiety (which eventually became full-blown anxiety), I became suicidal.

Based on what little I knew (some of which came from Japanese culture which says that freely displayed emotion is to be avoided at all costs), I picked up what some would consider the worst defense mechanism in self-help history: don’t express your emotions.

I lied and told people that I was okay when I really wasn’t. I smiled when I wanted to scream. I cried behind closed doors. The only time I felt safe was when I was on my therapist’s couch.

At eleven, I had no idea that a therapist is bound by law to tell a patient’s physician if they think their patients were in danger of hurting themselves. The only thing that registered for me was: She gets me.

I came home one day to a message from my therapist on the answering machine that was clearly not meant for me. As I listened to it, I realized that a) she had broken her confidentiality agreement with me and b) she had been lying to me.

Bye-bye safety net, hello big scary world.

My therapist, doctor and parents put me on anti-depressants, promising me that they would only keep me on a month, that I was free to get off the pills if I felt worse.

My suicidal symptoms were immediately exacerbated and I started suffering from migraines. 1 month became 2 months. 1 medication turned into 3. My parents did not listen to my requests to stop the medication. It wasn’t until I started trying to follow through with my suicide threats that my parents realized how wrong they were: the anti-depressants weren’t saving my life. They were killing me.

I felt like a failure. I went into practically every alternative therapy on the planet saying I didn’t expect a magic pill, but the reality is that I hoping for one.

In retrospect, it’s ironic that I was looking for a magic pill when having a physical pill just screwed my entire physical being up.

I am now 24. I’ve been battling depression and anxiety for more than half my life. I’d be lying if I told you that my depression has been kicked to the curb. The monsters are still there; they still raise their ugly heads, although I (thankfully) no longer try to kill myself.

But just because I don’t want to kill myself doesn’t mean my demons aren’t there anymore. I’m still experimenting, trying to find things that work for me. Sometimes I go back to that dark place and it takes a while for me to get out. Being the sensitive person that I am, the littlest things can trigger my depression. I get anxious over things that most people my age would breeze through.

Those little things often take me on roller coaster rides. Yes, those emotional roller coaster rides aren’t fun, but they’re a hell of a lot easier than shoving my emotions down and pretending they don’t exist. If I discredit my own emotions, I can’t live an authentic life. I’ve taken the long way toward recovery because I know that medications wreak havoc on my body.

I am not in therapy for either of my conditions because of a host of other issues that the trauma my initial experience brought on. Am I purposely making myself suffer? Those in the know might say yes. Those who don’t know wonder why I’m not available for certain blocks of time. Some of those same people don’t believe that I have any reason to be treated for any sort of condition. When I ask them what makes them believe that, they say, “Well…because you’re you.” Great. Yeah, I’m me. And I’m human. Just like you. I may not take medication. I may not go to cognitive behavior therapy. I do things differently.

I get confused and frustrated by my half-Asian heritage where mental illness is an even bigger stigma; Japanese and American values clash. I try to move forward, put this in the past, but every day is an uphill battle. We can’t get rid of these conditions, as much as we would like to. Treatment can help us manage, but what works for one person doesn’t mean it will work for another. You find ways to work around the conditions; but it’s that creativity, that strength that you show that is one of your biggest assets.

I’ve been slowly learning to accept these conditions as part of who I am; I’ve been struggling to accept that these conditions have made me better. My journey won’t reach a certain point and stop once I accept myself. The same goes for my journey with these conditions. I know that sharing my story, giving a voice to those who feel like they’re alone helps me feel more liberated. But I also know that it helps people on the other side of the screen feel like they’re not alone in the world. By being ourselves, sharing our stories, we give others permission to do the same. That’s how we erase the stigma.

Alisa is a bilingual aspiring content creator and blogger. She hopes to be able to use her Communications degree from Lewis and Clark College to work abroad inspiring kids through writing and other forms of media. You can follow her personal journey through her blog, www.alisayui.wordpress.com, or follow her on Twitter @AliTanaka1.

I can’t remember the first time that I had a panic attack, I was too young. In my very first year of primary school, at the age of 5, I saw a child be sick during a lesson, another wet themselves in an assembly. These things bothered me tremendously and led to some obsessive behaviour, like making sure I went to the toilet before assembly every day. Whenever I saw someone be sick I would panic, and if I was sick myself I would be very frightened. My parents did not understand why I would get so worked up about it; they got annoyed at me and thought I was just having a tantrum. When I first started secondary school at the age of 11 things were very bad for the first several months. In some lessons I was so anxious and my hands tensed so tightly that I could barely hold a pen to write. I was confused and I was scared, I couldn’t understand what was wrong.

Some days I had no appetite, every time I ate I felt sick, my stomach was constantly churning, it felt like I had a lump in my throat all of the time. I asked other children at school if they’d ever felt similar, they hadn’t. I constantly asked my parents what was wrong, they said it was just nerves and that if they took me to the doctor he would say that it’s all in my head and send me off to get tested. Looking back, it’s obvious to me now that it was anxiety, but if I had been seen by a doctor and diagnosed then, perhaps I could have got help and things wouldn’t have been so bad years later.

But my parents couldn’t recognize the signs of anxiety. Eventually the daily panic subsided, but the panic attacks still happened occasionally. At the same time, throughout secondary school I became more uncomfortable socially. Lots of children could be very cruel and teased often; I became very sensitive and started to feel like the one at school whom nobody liked. This feeling continued into college, I felt more and more alienated from others, embarrassed about my own talents and interests.

It was towards the end of my first year of university, in 2011, that I developed Generalized Anxiety Disorder. I felt constantly anxious; I struggled to go out at times. After a couple of months of this I decided that I had to do something about it, but I didn’t know what I could do other than ask a doctor for medication. I was started on some tablets but my doctor was concerned also with my daily tension headaches so tried to gear the medication towards helping that. The first medication I tried didn’t work so I had to keep switching. I’m currently on the fourth medication attempt, Pregabalin. I also was referred for Cognitive Behavioural Therapy through the counseling service at my university.

I was surprised by how helpful everyone at the university was. I also spoke to my personal tutor about my problems and she said that if things were too difficult I would be able to take time off or apply for mitigating circumstances for marked work. Part of me thought that would be best for me, to take some time out. However, I was too ashamed to take that option, I thought that it was unfair on people who might struggle more than me with physical problems that I would get special treatment. My course of CBT was supposed to be 6 sessions, every other week. But I felt that in that time, I’d barely scratched the surface. I still didn’t understand how much work I was supposed to put in. I suppose I was holding on to the hope of a miracle cure or something that help quickly, rather than things taking a long time.

After finishing CBT things still seemed very bad so I had to ask for another 6 sessions. After that, things still hadn’t improved much, because I still didn’t understand what was expected of me. Things hadn’t really been made clear. Many of the appointments consisted of being given lots of print outs of help sheets, and although I read them I just didn’t know how to apply them. My attendance at university suffered a lot and I lost confidence with my work. I felt more socially anxious, refusing more and more invitations and keeping quieter in group conversations.

Luckily I had a boyfriend to take care of me, and I don’t know what I would have done without him. Last November – 2013 – I saw my doctor and said that I wasn’t sure how much the pregabalin was helping, I’d been taking it for a year but still felt anxious a lot. She suggested that I try stopping it, I halved the dose for a week and then stopped. The next week was one of the worst of my life, unfortunately it coincided with visiting my parents. So not only was I separated from my boyfriend, but also my parents still lacked understanding and didn’t know how to help me. After a week I had to go back to the doctors and ask to be put back on the medication.

The anxiety was completely permanent, I couldn’t sleep well, couldn’t calm down, couldn’t eat. I started another course of CBT, and tried to promise myself that I would try harder this time around. Things started well but when I got into exposure therapy, I found it so hard to push myself. I was discharged from CBT a few weeks ago. I had made a slight improvement but now I know what I need to do to take care of my own recovery. Most importantly I need to grasp that it will take time, it will be slow, and it has to be gradual. I have to find ways to increase my motivation and get things into gear. I’m going to try and implement the techniques that CBT has taught me, and try out advice that I have received from others. I need to start believing in myself more and start enjoying my life without anxiety.

Dev is a Masters student living in London. She writes blogs on the Anxiety United website (www.anxietyunited.co.uk) and is on Twitter @Dev_AU

The following article is an anonymous submission for Stigma Fighters. The writer wanted her identity to remain confidential, but feels that the issues expressed here are universal. This is her story.

Abuse: the silent killer

You see it in the movies. You hear it on the streets. Most of us have a friend who is trapped in a cycle of violence. It’s interesting how it seems so much easier to identify when it’s not happening to you.

Several years ago I ventured into the state of matrimony with a good friend who I thought I loved enough to marry. It looked just perfect on paper even though I had witnessed warning signs prior to us getting engaged. His temper. The ridiculous argument we had over me not being honest about completing a paint job so that he could sleep comfortably in my bed. His controlling behavior. The fact that he always “needed” to use my credit cards. But that wasn’t abuse or at least I didn’t see it that way.

Six months into our marriage I found myself pregnant. I had mixed feelings about it but overall I was excited. After our son was born I found myself being put into a specific role: housewife. I cleaned and I was supposed to cook and take care of the baby and my husband. I guess on some level I thought this was supposed to be my job but it didn’t feel right. I thought marriage was supposed to be a partnership and here I was feeling like I was the one doing more. I began to feel resentment but didn’t speak up because I didn’t want to argue.

One year after my son was born I went back to school. Although my husband claimed to be supportive, I found myself feeling terrified when I needed to ask him to watch the baby while I went to the library to work on a paper. So instead I would ask my mother. Nights when I was too tired to give my son a bath, I would ask my husband only to hear “I do enough around here”.

It got worse. Between spending money recklessly, using my credit cards and keeping me in a consistent state of fear so that I wouldn’t speak up, I began to have panic attacks. I would literally start hyperventilating on my way up the stairs to my home anticipating an argument. Dinners at my parents became too stressful to bear because I never knew when he was “ready” to leave and he never said but didn’t hesitate to yell at me in the car if we stayed too late. Making any minor decisions regarding the baby without him set the stage for chaos. Finally having the courage to get my own bank account because I was fed up with his spending habits led to me getting screamed at for several hours.

My parents saw it and my friends saw it. I was becoming a different person. I was becoming a person who was terrified of my husband because he was emotionally abusive and controlling. How did I miss this? I was married with a baby. I did things the right way. I thought this was trials…not abuse.

After several years I could no longer take it. I was emotionally drained and sick and tired of being sick and tired. But I was also a mother and terrified of being on my own. Ultimately, I was unfaithful due to the fact that I was too numb to care. I’m not proud of if but having an affair was the catalyst to walking away from my marriage. I met someone who in that moment gave me all the things that my husband couldn’t and it reaffirmed for me that I deserved better.

It was hell breaking away and I’m pretty sure I was called every horrible name known to man. Not because he was terrified of losing me but because he realized he could no longer control me.

I’m happy to say that several years later we are getting through the divorce process successfully and sharing our time equally with our son. Therapy, great family, and friends have helped me through the healing process and I am proud of how far I have come. I don’t hate him and I don’t think he is a bad person. We just didn’t bring out the best in each other. But I am so incredibly grateful because I am so much more confident and sure of myself and I can say that I survived abuse and no part of me will allow anyone to treat me that way as long as I live.

I’m a 22 year young woman living in Croatia, classical guitar player and teacher, passionate nature, music, art and life lover, giving my best to feel comfortable and happy in every aspect of my life so basically a huge hedonist. Oh yes, I was also diagnosed with GAD (Generalized Anxiety Disorder) and have panic attacks from time to time.

The reason why I mentioned my anxiety issue last is that I absolutely HATE to be known for having anxiety! It has nothing to do with shame or being afraid, I simply know that there is so much about me, so many things that make me who I am and anxiety is just one little negative part of me that I am trying to completely delete.

Now when I look back, I see traces of anxiety since I was a child. I remember my first panic attack when I was 4 years old when I had to go take a blood test. A few years after, when I was 7, I was bullied in elementary school and I would feel sick and nauseous every single morning before going to school. In this period I even got asthma which I never related to the bullying until a few years ago.

It all resulted with my parents sending me to another school. From that point on I had no traces of anxiety anymore, except during exams, playing concerts in the music school that I attended or traveling (which I love but it still does make me feel anxious).

I of course had problems, both emotional and mental, but they didn’t make my life harder in any way, I would feel anxious, push the feeling somewhere deep down inside me and continue walking through life like that.

This changed in 2013. I went through a terrible break up with my ex fiancé, I had to move to a place which I hated to make some money. I didn’t manage to get into the university which I really wanted to study in. This all resulted with a lot of tension in my family. The worst thing was I didn’t escape from the town I hated living and working in. Instead I had to return there defeated.

As hard as I tried to push these feelings under a rug, I simply couldn’t. One day in August I was sitting with my best friend in a café when I felt sick, I couldn’t breathe properly, my head was pounding and I fainted. After that I started having anxiety and panic attacks every single day.

I was afraid to leave my house, I couldn’t go out with my friends at all because I was afraid of feeling like that night and fainting again, I feared the day when the school year started and I would have to move to the awful town again to work as a teacher…

I don’t know how did I managed to go through every day and not tell anyone about my fears. To be honest, I didn’t even know what anxiety was and I didn’t think of the possibility of having it myself. I just thought I was going insane and I hoped it would stop by itself.

From August 2013 till now, I had two extremely bad anxiety and panic attack periods. The first was in September 2013 when I did move to the town again. I was lying on my couch, thinking about how I hated being there and how I hated how my life turned out. My whole body started shaking, I couldn’t breathe or move. My heart was pounding so hard that I was sure I’m going to have a heart attack. These sensations lasted for a few hours. I had one panic attack after another. Finally I fell asleep from all the exhaustion.

The next morning I didn’t feel any better so my mum had to travel 150 kilometers to pick me up and bring me home. I remember being so tired and fed up with everything that I didn’t even care about losing my job, going to a mental institution or whatever, I just wanted it all to stop no matter what it takes.

My parents didn’t take me to any institution and I didn’t lose my job, but I did get on my feet again and decided to fight every single day until I got a better job that would, as I thought, make everything related with anxiety go away.

That did happen after a few months, but moving back to my hometown and starting a new job after winter vacation made me feel the same way as I did in September. When I refused to leave my apartment for 2 weeks, I realized that my anxiety wasn’t triggered only by me hating my job.

I had my dream job now. I was living in the city where I wanted to live but I was still unable to do anything!

This is when I realized I had to change something drastically. I realized I had anxiety. I started writing my blog and got in touch with many people dealing with the same problem. I realized that my doctor wouldn’t help me because she claimed it all being an adolescent phase and that I just had to learn how to deal with problems. So I tried homeopathy, and what I found most helpful was practicing mindfulness. I still work hard on it every day, on focusing on “The Now,” breathing, meditating etc. I find that changing my mindset towards mindfulness changed my life completely for the better.

Today I am unfortunately unemployed (it had nothing to do with anxiety issues though), but I would be happy to work again. I still fight anxiety on a daily basis but I swore not to let it control my life. Yes, I do feel awful when I have to go out and do something important, but I don’t care- I make myself do it no matter how bad I feel and eventually I catch myself being really happy!

I also paid a visit to a CBT therapist a couple of weeks ago and she gave me a huge kick to make even faster progress when she explained a lot of my physical symptoms to me. I realized that I would be even better now if I had the courage to ask for professional help earlier!

I unfortunately live in a country where no one openly talks about mental issues. They are still covered up and a lot of stigma is around it. Well, I was always a rebel and trouble maker, so I decided to be one when it comes to mental health too- I have no fear of telling anyone who I meet about my anxiety and explaining what anxiety is. I want everyone to realize that we have to open up to educate people on mental health issues. We need to let them know that we’re not crazy. We just have a problem that we’re dealing with and that doesn’t make us unreliable or not trustworthy in any way!

Maja was born in Zagreb, Croatia, educated to be a professional classical guitar player. She is currently unemployed but worked as a guitar teacher for two years and is hoping for doing it again. You can read everything about her fighting with anxiety disorder and other life situations on her blog, www.myownchallengeblog.blogspot.com and follow her on Twitter @myownchallenge.

I was an overly-dramatic emotional child. We still laugh about the time we were taking a hike while camping and I begged my uncle to carry me. I was probably fourish at the time. When no one would, I threw my head back and moaned, “WHOA IS ME! NOBODY LOVES ME! MY LITTLE LEGGIES ARE GOING TO FALL RIGHT OFF!!!” I did this the entire walk.

I vaguely remember it, but I am reminded of it all the time.

I am quick to react to something if it upsets me. I also worried a lot.

Growing up I yelled and shouted and cried a lot. I had night terrors. I made myself physically ill worrying about the worst case scenario. I hated spending any time away from home without someone who felt like home with me.

It was my “quirk” and was generally made light of.

But I remember not thinking it was funny at all.

The surge of sweaty nausea I got when I had to start something new like a job or college prevented me from asking questions or creating relationships until I had become comfortable.

Once I was comfortable, I would talk to anyone. I would make friends with an empty chair if there was no one else to talk to, so not many people realized how crippling my anxiety was. I didn’t even realize it.

When I know what to expect and I have a plan, the anxiety is so small, I forget it’s there.

That is what happened when I became a mom.

My husband and I had been married for four years when our oldest son came along. I had been in the same job for six years. Although we had been pitched some curve balls with miscarriages and losing my father-in-law to cancer, we were comfortable. There wasn’t much anxiety that we couldn’t manage-that wasn’t normal for where we were in our life together.

We happily prepared for Eddie’s arrival in June of 2009. We created a cute nursery, we read the books, we took the classes, we talked with all of our friends who had already had kids. Like all new parents, we knew how this was going to go. We even knew it could go a different way, and that would be Ok.

Having an emergency C-section was something I was actually prepared to have happen. But the reality of it-the trauma of it and the pain resulting from it-I was most decidedly not prepared for.

I was also not prepared for a baby who cried for hours and hours every single day. I thought babies slept a lot! Not Eddie. He cried more than he did anything else.
I was not prepared for the rush of hormones or my milk coming in or a baby that needed to be switched to soy or how useless I would feel as my incision healed and I couldn’t soothe my own baby.

Even after the first four months past and Eddie mellowed out, I was still vibrating with the after effects.

It never occurred to me that any of it had to do with my already present anxiety issue. I wasn’t overly worried about leaving my baby. In fact, when it was time to go back to work, I almost ran.

I never thought I was depressed either. Commercials for antidepressants showed people who were sad and ho-hum about life. That wasn’t me either.

I was mad all the time. And overwhelmed. So overwhelmed and angry. I want to slap my husband and then go to bed and stay there for a million years. I didn’t want to deal with life. I fantasized about driving my car at 80mph off the expressway during my commute and into a tree. But really, it wasn’t so much that I wanted to die, I just wanted to not be part of life.

I didn’t know how to verbalize this without freaking people out. I was an educated, successful high school teacher and college adjunct instructor. I had a great marriage. And now I had a cute baby. I had people commenting on how I was doing so much and so well.

But I wasn’t.

I wanted to scream that. “I AM NOT OK!”

But what would I say after that? I had no idea. So I pushed on trying to ignore the crappy stuff going on in my head, telling myself it’s totally normal since I am a new mom-and hating being a new mom.

One evening after a nine-month old Eddie was tucked into bed, I started crying and couldn’t stop. My life sucked! Why was this so hard? Why did I hate everyone? Was I never going to be Katie again?

My husband gently suggested I call my doctor and because I was too worn down, I agreed.

That was five years ago. In the past five years, I have been working my way back to myself. My official diagnosis is Postpartum depression and anxiety (which are now just depression and anxiety), post-traumatic stress disorder (from the miscarriages and emergency c-section), and obsessive compulsive disorder.

I’ve also suffered antenatal depression with my second baby and postpartum depression after he was born. Both of which I was quick to notice and quick to get help for because I knew what I was watching for.

I’m still a successful teacher and writer. And I have mood disorders and mental illness. I am a great mother and wife. And I have a chemical imbalance in my brain.

I take medication every day and I go to a therapist, but I am not afraid to have more children or whether or not I can continue to be successful.

There was a time when I asked my therapist when I would be “done”, when I would be “better”. She gently told me that living with my mental illness was like my best friend who lives with diabetes. There is no “done”. There is maintenance.

I can live with that. Because I have to. And it’s Ok.