My Barrier to Getting Help
By Melanie Oswald, NAMI Dane County Intern
For about five years now, I have known that something was different about me. Around my senior year of high school, I began to notice that I worried about things other people didn’t. To a weird extent. I noticed that all my friends were happy and excited about life, whereas sometimes I could barely get out of bed. I noticed that little things sent me into a spiral, my notebooks not in the right order, a text from a friend in a different tone (as if I actually knew this was what was happening). These were little things that a lot of my friends never even thought about. But, for a while, I just decided to ignore it. I developed my own coping mechanisms, pushing down what I felt and plastering a smile on my face to feel “normal.”
I spent all of high school filling my time, with friends, activities, sports, books, anything I could to not have to think about all the things going on inside of my head. Once I got to college, I began to have more and more free time, also giving me the chance to really take a look at what I was thinking and feeling. In doing so, I realized I needed to talk to someone, but I couldn't. For three years I continued to ignore what was happening inside of me and try to feel as though I was normal. But, for about three years now, I have also known I wanted to be a therapist. This is what stopped me from getting the help I needed. Once I got to college, I knew that something was off, that the new people around me didn’t feel the way I did either. I began to notice how my anxiety was affecting me, my school work, my social life, etc. I began to notice how my depression was taking the joy out of the things I once loved to do. But I didn’t do anything about it. How could I? If I wanted to be a therapist, how could I need a therapist? How could I help people who struggled mentally, if I wasn’t healthy myself? These questions, among others, were what stopped me from getting the help I needed.
Looking back now, I see how wrong I was. Going to therapy didn't make me weak or put me in a place to be a bad therapist. Asking for the help I need makes me strong, and puts me in a place to be a better therapist. It allows me an understanding of what it’s like to go through the process and to feel all the hard things that come with mental illnesses. I hate that it took me as long as it did for me to realize this, but it’s something I didn’t know any better at the time. I now know that my depression and anxiety aren’t what makes me not good enough to do what I want to do, but they make me more capable. If I could go back and change one thing, it wouldn’t be to not feel these things at all. It would be to tell myself a few things.