It’s hard to say when my mental health issues really started, I would say my anxiety started to really affect my life around 11 years ago, but in reality I feel I have had some degree of mental health issues throughout my entire life.
Some of my earliest memories are of my mother having a nervous breakdown and being sectioned when I was around 4 years old. My brother and sisters were all in school but I was at home with my mother all the time as I hadn’t yet started school. I have a vivid memory of being sat on the floor playing and my Mum crying on the sofa with my Dad saying she just didn’t feel right. I also remember being on a bus with her one day and her having a huge panic attack, the bus driver tried to call an ambulance but my Mum got off of the bus and took me home and made me sit in the front garden while she went inside. She was eventually sectioned when she had a full blown breakdown during our family holiday that summer, and we had to go and live with my Nan while she recovered in hospital. She has suffered on and off with mental health prover since.
I am told I was always an anxious child who hated going to new places and constantly felt sick and unwell. As I got older this calmed down but looking back I can now see there was always some mild anxiety and depression lurking in the background. It was in 2008 that I started to feel really anxious and at first I had no idea what was going on. Some days it would take me hours to build up the courage just to go to the shop as I felt I couldn’t cope with even minor tasks. Other days I would be convinced I was about to die.
Over the past 11 years I have had some good patches and some bad spells, but this past year has been one of the worst, and that is why I decided I wanted to start this site, to document what I am going through. I’m hoping it may help some people, and it may bring a group of people who are all suffering from mental health issues together to discuss how they feel and to support one another.
My Mental Health Battle 