The One Year Anniversary of My First Real Mental Breakdown

Hi, everyone! Since November 6th is the one year anniversary of my first real mental breakdown (or the first one that I remember, at least--I feel like I might have had them previously, but my memory is just so bad that I can't truly say whether I did or not), I thought I might take the time to talk about it here.

I honestly don't think I've spoken at length about the circumstances and events of it before. Bits and pieces are on my twitter, but I don't think there is any one collective record of the events leading up to and following the breakdown.

There's some background that I think is necessary for you to understand before I talk about that actual day.

First, I briefly went to therapy in the late summer and early fall of 2017. I tried to commit myself to it in the way that was necessary, but I still wasn't being truly honest with my therapist or with myself about all of the problems I was experiencing.

Second, I'd been practicing mindfulness since about... May, I think. Now, this is neither an endorsement or criticism of mindfulness itself. When used properly and in the right circumstances, mindfulness can be beneficial. But at the time, I was not used to practicing coping skills, and because of this, all of the stuff that the mindfulness practiced dredged up from the depths of my memory and subconscious hit me like a train and I wasn't able to deal with it.

Third, I'd been having chronic migraines and tension headaches for almost a year. It was severely impacting my ability to function, though the tension headaches got better after I went to the eye doctor and was prescribed glasses (I really needed them). But the migraines, which caused a large amount of nausea and sensitivities to light, sound, motion, etc., were incredibly debilitating and stressful (even more so because of my extreme emetophobia.

Fourth, I'd switched my birth control to a higher dose in October, and my body DID NOT like it. But I didn't realize that until later.

Fifth, I was starting my senior year, and coming to the realization that there was no way I'd be able to apply to or go to college the next year (2018). This increased my sense of isolation from my peers and a sense of helplessness and failure.

Sixth, my panic attacks, which had slowed down over the 3 years that I'd spent away from regular society, returned in full force in late February of 2017, following an absolutely awful one that I had on the way to a gynecologist appointment.

And seventh, by the time November came around, I was already 2 months into my annual months-long depressive episode. I recognized it earlier that year (the year previously I didn't realized what was wrong until it ended), but combined with everything else, it made life very hard to deal with.

Now, I quit therapy after a few weeks because I started getting horrible panic attacks every time I went. Obviously, some therapy was better than no therapy, because it refreshed to methods used in therapy in my mind, but that didn't really help me until months later. I also briefly took Lamictal for my mood swings, but stopped after I felt really nauseous one day (I assumed it was from the med, in reality it was probably just anxiety).

I was finding school harder and harder to deal with between my depression, anxiety, and migraines. Finally, at the beginning of November, on a Friday, I had a god-awful migraine. It was terrible and lasted for hours, but even after the pain went away, the nausea and sensitivities stayed. I'd never had that happen before, or at least not to that extent. I spent the weekend laying in bed or sitting on my bed, staring at the wall for hours because I was so sensitive to everything I could barely move. I certainly couldn't read or watch movies. I was incredibly apathetic to everything. I was so exhausted and tired. My parents tried everything to get me out of that state. My dad stayed home on Monday to make sure I was going to be okay, but I was still very fatigued and I just wanted to sleep. We actually almost took me to the doctors to get blood work done. By early afternoon, I was sitting up, my dad got me to drink some electrolyte water and I was feeling better. I put an uplifting essential oil blend on my wrists (something I have to be careful about doing because of mania), opened my window, and sat down at my desk to send an email to my teachers. That great mood lasted for maybe 30 minutes, at which time I started getting a migraine. The migraine, as usual, slammed me right down into a depressive episode, which felt worse than usual because the essential oil blend had made my mood higher than it usually is.

The nausea and sensitivities caused by the migraine started to give me panic attacks, which, of course, only made me feel worse. I panic attacked my way down the stairs to my dad, who was on the phone with one of my doctors (the psychiatrists office probably). I was crying and scratching at my neck and chest (a self-soothing behavior that I developed that winter). He took me back upstairs into my blacked out room, where I spent the next few hours crying uncontrollably on and off. He was considering taking me to the hospital, but decided to wait until my mom got home. She eventually got home, but there wasn't much they could do to calm me down, so they finally called the on-call doctor at my psychiatrists office (it was 5 or 6 by then--after hours). The on-call doctor talked to me a little bit and finally decided to prescribe me mirtazapine, an anti-depressant that's easy on the stomach. I took my first dose that night and went to bed early.

And oh boy did that med knock me for a loop. An expected loop, but a loop nonetheless. I was so groggy I could barely function until mid afternoon the next day. Taking the anti-depressant gave me some hope in those first few weeks that things would get better, but if I'm being totally honest, I'm not sure it made much of a difference in my depressive episodes until recently. My anxiety symptoms in particular are so severe that I haven't yet found a med that can cover them up.

Despite taking mirtazapine (and buspar, something that I was prescribed previously but hadn't taken much), the next few months were terrible. I was anxious constantly. I felt like crap constantly. My dad had to work from home until the end of the year because I needed constant support. Everything got so bad that by the end of November, I went to a psychiatric facility for almost 2 days (one of the worst decisions of my life, and something that I'll talk about in a different post). I continued having breakdowns on almost a daily basis. I couldn't stop crying. The only reason why I didn't start failing all of my classes was because my teachers were very understanding and gave me extensions on most of my work (I've always been an exceptional student, so they knew that I'd get it done eventually).

I could go on and on and on about the events of the last year, but then this post would get horrifically long and tiresome, so I'll break it down into smaller pieces that I'll post every once in a while. There were a lot of factors that contributed to the hell that has been the past year, but that one breakdown was the main catalyst for it all.

It's taken a long time, but I'm slowly recovering from everything that happened. I just have to keep reminding myself "one day at a time."


Love always,
Sam

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