Leah Holleran’s mystery illness was as common as common could be: anxiety and depression, but she and her family didn’t know it. Leah eventually solved the mystery of her mental health challenge, but not before struggling with self-harm and the loss of her best friend to an overdose.
by John Mollura
I believed that my slightest misstep from perfection would result in the immediate and irrevocable loss of love and respect from every single person around me.
I don’t know if I will ever be free of the panic attacks but I have hope that I will know how to cope. As of right now, I am taking things one day at a time, living my life and sharing my story so that others know that they are not alone.
After her young brother’s death, Lauren Fraser takes us on her journey of recovery from mental health challenges like anxiety, depression, and ptsd in this moving personal essay.
Instead of fighting against anxiety, I’ve learned to accept it and embrace it. Anxiety is only a small part of me, it doesn’t define me.
by Bryan Long
Bryan Long writes about his struggle with anxiety and depression from the perspective of a young man opening up to a provider for the very first time.
Natalie Rodriguez knew she needed therapy for her anxiety and panic attacks; but she had to fight against shame and stigma to get that help.
A never-ending cycle: Broken souls having children only for those children to be shattered souls themselves. Because I know that millions experience this, I want to share my story in order to change a life or even save one.
I’m a thirty-seven-year-old woman who was diagnosed with bipolar, depression and anxiety at the age of twenty-two. As I look back on my life I can remember feeling anxious throughout my childhood. I grew up in a good home with loving parents, but my anxiety persisted.
Though I am in recovery from generalized anxiety disorder, (GAD) that doesn’t mean I am cured, I have periods of remission and mini flare-ups.
Not hallucinations, but rather some of the smaller and fuzzier denizens native to Cambridge, Massachusetts. There is no metaphor more fitting for the person I was back then: twitchy, easily startled, a propensity to run scared from others. I had lost all the avenues I’d had to hide from depression and anxiety, and they closed in like a pair of gangsters in an alleyway.
I felt like a complete failure. I had always been able to handle everything without an issue. But at first, navigating depression was another story.
Whenever I’d gone through stages of major depression or anxiety as a young teenager, all I’d hear was that I was stupid, lazy, and unambitious. Imagine being judged by your symptoms and not by your illness.
As I battle with depression, anxiety, and PTSD, it has always been far easier for me to support others with mental health struggles than to admit my own.
by Sarah Hughes
Social anxiety still exists online. You’re still putting yourself out there and you feel vulnerable opening up, not knowing what response you’ll get.
This month’s installment of our mental health resources column is centered on anxiety Facebook pages, including a few pages with one to two million followers.
I failed the postpartum screening given, as protocol, by the hospital, and yet they sent me home.
I don’t know when it started. It was not as though I suddenly woke up with a raging heartbeat and butterflies in my stomach, wishing I could run away from myself. It came in tiny bits of worry.
by Roger Wright
Trapped between fear and anxiety, I would drink and use drugs to cover up my feelings. After years of living this way with several bad trips, blackouts and hospitalizations, I went into treatment.
We’re always looking for mental health empowerment in unsuspecting places, and today we’re featuring feeds focused around the diagnosis of anxiety on Instagram.