What am I doing?

I want to raise awareness of MENTAL HEALTH in children and young adults and raise money for the Mental Health Research Charity MQ. To represent stages of my journey with mental health, I will be cutting off most of my hair, walking the Yorkshire Three Peaks and finally walking the Dales Way.

There is a huge stigma surrounding mental health compared to physical health, yet 1 in 4 people are diagnosed with a mental illness in their lifetime, and many more suffer in silence. This means if you suffer, you are definitely not alone.

I have always been very secretive about my mental health problems and to help end this stigma I would like to share my experiences, in the hope that you might share yours too.

My mental health story

From a very young age I suffered from anxiety which expressed itself in a variety of forms over the years. At the age of 11, I began therapy for OCD (Obsessive compulsive disorder) and panic attacks. When I was 14, I was unable to attend school due to overwhelming anxiety.

Eight months after leaving school, I took up a scholarship place to attend a boarding school. After completing my A Levels, I decided to have a gap year, desperately needing a break from the stress and pressure I was putting on myself. I took away almost everything that stressed me, hoping that I would be greeted by happiness and relaxation. However, the result was severe depression.

In November of last year, aged 17, I was diagnosed with Asperger Syndrome (Autism spectrum disorder). Around the same time I was in a hospital bed as a result of my depression manifesting itself in the form of an eating disorder. This photo is taken two weeks later, where I am at Cambridge University for a interview.

On the outside I usually come across as happy, normal, motivated and successful. However, other times I may come across as weird, stressed, demotivated, depressed, uncommunicative and exhausted. This side I have tried as hard as I could to hide and conceal. My social media accounts only shown my bright side and until now have not hinted at the other side- I know I am not alone in doing that.

I’ve spent years trying to be “normal”, pretending that I’m fine, pretending that the reason I’m not at school or work is because I’ve got flu or a stomach ache when actually I’m shutting myself away, where no one can see my true anxiety plagued self.

Everyone has a different personality so each individual has different challenges to face. I am a paranoid perfectionist. I consistently push myself as hard as I can to achieve academic goals, only stopping when I reach them- or I break. My achievements give me the huge ups of my life but the pressure I put myself under results in the seemingly endless lows and damages both my mental and physical health.

Support

I am extremely fortunate in that I have an immense amount of support from my family and friends, but we have often struggled to get the professional help we desperately needed; only receiving it when the situation gets extremely serious and we are at breaking point. Only after I have physical symptoms.

One of the greatest things I have learnt from my experiences is that the bad times WILL pass. The most important step to overcoming them is to TALK.

I urge you to chat with your family, friends or doctor, or at least write down a few notes about how you really feel. If you’re a parent and you have any concerns about how your kids or teenagers feel, then please talk to them, if they are suffering in silence then they will be frightened and embarrassed. Remember that they are not as good at expressing their feelings in words as adults are.

Be on the lookout for friends or family who maybe be struggling. Your support could be invaluable to someone’s life. The earlier mental health problems are detected the better, just like problems with physical health.

When we can start talking more freely about our mental state we will be able to begin to stop feeling so isolated and alone with this very common illness. I have got an exciting future ahead, which I would not have if I had not started talking.

Remember there are always doors open, people do want to know and do want to listen and help. Keeping everything bottled up does not mean that you are strong. You should not feel guilty about having a mental illness. Mental health problems are in no way a sign of weakness.

I am cutting my hair short because as a child I used to play with my hair, as many children do, but as my OCD developed I began to pull it out as one of my “rituals”.

I will be walking the Yorkshire Three Peaks to represent the huge peaks and troughs of everyone’s life, and how reaching these heights can be hugely rewarding but how draining the amount of effort needed to reach them can be.

And then the Dales Way to illustrate how overcoming mental health problems is a long journey.

I am supporting the charity MQ because mental illness desperately needs funding for research. Currently research in this area is drastically underfunded, it is crucial that research in this field is seen as important as it is for physical illnesses.

MQ: https://www.mqmentalhealth.org

My email: georgia@bluedc.co.uk