My most obvious experience with mental health issues began when I was in year 10 of high school. I was 16 and studying for my Higher school certificate exams when I began to realise that I was stressing to a level that none of my peers came close too. I would spend hours poring over notes, colour coding them and making them beautiful. I wasn’t sleeping, my eyes were blood shot and I was always on the verge of tears. I started isolating myself from my friends during these times. And I began having physical reactions more and more frequently where I would have moments of uncontrollable hot sweats that would wash over and drench me instantly.
The word ‘perfectionist’ was thrown around by my teachers constantly, a word that I loathed for what it did to me but took pride in what it meant to me. This may sound strange to you but for years and years I never understood the idea of not doing something to the absolute highest standard you are capable of. The idea of doing the bare minimum or even of doing just enough made me feel uneasy and anxious.
I started to feel myself falling into a category; the girl who was always stressed about something, running late to hand work in, and pulling all nighters to finish assignments. Socially I had no issues, I had wonderful friends I was socially confident and I had the most amazing family a person could ask for but I was plagued by my own self doubt never feeling ‘good enough’. I lived in fear that one day people would realise I was just hardworking not smart. Soon I started feeling like I was loosing control of my emotions and myself, growing less and less confidant about my abilities and my looks. I started channeling my perfectionism into something new, something I could control, my body.
I had discovered something new to focus on, something I could actually control which made me feel powerful. It was the ability to skip meals. I would empty my lunch in the bin everyday or give it out to friends, when close friends were getting suspicious I would try and brush it away like it meant nothing to me.
At the end of the year I was feeling unhappy, I needed a change in my life and I needed more structure in my studies, I was spending ridiculous amounts of time pouring over my work. At the time I attended a ‘alternative education school’ which was very lax on rules and encouraged a lot of self motivation. I decided to make a huge move and go to a mainstream private school on the north shore for my final two years of HSC, hopeful that a new environment would help me disrupt the patterns I was beginning to get stuck in. Little did I know that everything was about to get a whole lot worse…
To be continued…
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Mind Your Head 