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[music] OK, so this video is going to be a bit more
personal than the other ones I've made so far. Um, something you may not know about
me is that I've been struggling with anxiety and depression lately. And due to this, I've
had a lot of trouble in school this semester. And so in this video, I'm just going to talk
about my personal experiences with the anxiety and depression that I've had so far. So I
guess my problems started out during finals week of last semester at the end of spring.
Um for about-- it was over a week long I was having just really bad anxiety, it was getting
worse and worse everyday, crying for hours, just pacing, I had trouble falling asleep,
and then I would wake up early because my body just physically hurt so bad, and it was
just torture. I just couldn't think, I couldn't concentrate, I didn't really know what to
do. It just kept going in cycles, like I was so anxious I couldn't think, so I became really
upset. And being really upset I became-- I was like "Oh I can't study for this," so I
became more anxious and then that made it so I couldn't think anymore, so it just kept
going back and forth between the anxiety and depression. Just like, it kept going in cycles
off of each other. On one of the days, I just decided maybe if I go to the library I'll
study better. But instead of going to the library, I just kept walking and walking,
and I didn't really know where I was going, I just wandered around completely lost. I
guess like the weird thing is I kind of enjoyed the feeling of being lost because-- not really
enjoyed but I found it exciting, so in a way I kind of wanted to be lost. I don't know,
it was just, I was miserable the whole time. At the very worst time, on the very worst
day, I just felt so out of control, like I was so anxious, so restless, just so... I
was just throwing things and scratching myself frantically and crying and shouting. It was
just horrible. That was the worst I've ever felt in my life up until that point. And yeah,
I know I should have gotten help at that point, but for some reason, I was convinced that
if I like talk to someone about it, they would be upset with me or something like that. I
don't really know why. But yeah, I definitely should have gotten help. Basically, I was
just so anxious that I couldn't study for my finals at all. But luckily I had been doing
well all semester so I managed to get good grades overall. Over the next month, I had
some sort of like mild depression. Like I wasn't doing too well, but I wasn't terrible.
Basically it was just thinking about that awful sort of time that I had at the end of
school. And I was just thinking about it for hours a day. I couldn't-- I just couldn't
get it out of my head because I was so afraid that something like that would happen again.
And then for a while in the middle of summer I was fine. I was feeling like really good
and I thought all my problems are over and I didn't need to worry about that sort of
stuff anymore. [sigh] Then in sort of mid to late August, I started feeling nervous
again. There was this week where I was kind of nervous every day and at the end of that
week I had my first panic attack. It happened basically I was alone at home for a few days,
and for some reason I don't know why I was just feeling really nervous like I was afraid
someone was going to break in like a murderer or something. And so I turned on all the lights
in the house and I was mostly ok, I just made sure all the doors were locked, all the lights
were on, that kind of thing. Like kind of barricaded myself in my room. I was also thinking
about next semester coming up in school, and I was really afraid that something like that
would happen again since the last experience at school was the worst week of my life. I
was worried I was going to have another one of those and that thought just triggered this
panic attack. And it was pretty scary-- panic attacks are always scary-- but this was my
first one so it definitely was a frightening experience. And after it was over, I just
didn't want to talk about it, it's like ok I'll just pretend that that never happened
and I'll go on with my life sort of thing. Then uh later that week I had a test to get
my driver's license. While I was with the driving instructor, I had another panic attack
and I managed to make it back to the starting spot but yeah I definitely failed the test
because I couldn't think, like I was stopping at green lights and definitely couldn't parallel
park, just, just hyperventilating. Afterward, my parents seemed really worried and they
took me to the doctor, my just my general sort of doctor. Then I also needed to get
a blood test done and I don't like needles so I had another panic attack kind of after
and during the that as well. So that was right before I went back to me. September for me
was an absolutely horrible month. Um. Basically I felt anxious every day all the time. Just
it got to the point where every day I was just so anxious I was dreading the next day
coming because I just felt really bad. It wasn't quite as bad as like finals week of
the previous semester but it was just so bad I was having trouble paying attention in class
and getting homework done and that sort of thing. When my anxiety was really bad like
I would start breathing heavily to the point where other people would notice like they
would ask like "what's up?" or like people I didn't know would just look at me or something
like that. And I would just worry about everything like how am I going to get this homework done,
did I lock the door to my room, am I going to have enough time to do everything, did
I do this, did I forget to turn my homework in, did I put my homework in the right homework
box, just all these questions just I'm continually worrying about them. A lot of the time I was
worrying that I was going to have another panic attack, because the week before I went
back to school I had three panic attacks in a week, and I was really worried that I was
going to have another one, but luckily I didn't. At least in September I didn't have any more.
During my physics prelim basically I was just so nervous that I got physically sick. I just--
my stomach hurt so bad and I sometimes felt really cold and got goosebumps all over my
arms, sometimes I got really just hot, and I just couldn't think. It wasn't a good prelim.
Even after the prelim for hours my stomach still hurt really bad. A lot of the time when
I was having anxiety, I had the need to go be alone. Like I would often go to the kitchen
or the bathroom or the common room if no one was there, and if there was, I would probably
hide in the trash room. And yeah, when my anxiety got really bad, I would become sort
of afraid of people. I don't really know why or what I was afraid of them doing but things
like overhearing people having a conversation or hearing someone walking down the hall would
give me that afraid feeling. That feeling that you're so afraid that it feels like your
stomach is dropping, kind of thing, every single time. Ok, if I was trying to be alone
in the hallway and someone was walking down the hall, I would just run, try to hide in
some sort of unoccupied room. This type of intense anxiety happened probably once or
twice a day and lasted for several hours. And the the times when my anxiety wasn't quite
so bad, I would still have anxiety all the time, I'd be nervous all the time, I'd have
trouble concentrating, worrying thoughts, it was just horrible. I was having just mild
depression throughout this, feeling pretty hopeless and awful, um. I was just miserable
and tired and anxious just all the time. And at this point it just occurred to me that
I can't go through a whole semester like that. It was just too awful and miserable, like
I wouldn't be able to make it. So I decided to get help from my school, they have counseling
and psychiatric help and that sort of thing. It didn't help right away, like I still failed
my math prelim around that time too, but it is definitely worth going to, having someone
to talk to, getting on medications definitely made things better than they were. So I started
taking meds end of September early October I was doing slightly better due to one of
them that acted immediately but sort of took a bit of time to get into my system. So I
was doing better than I was, but not great still. And after that I found out my grandma
was really sick so that kind of put me back a bit, I was really upset about that, just
had another panic attack at that time when I found out, I was just so worried, like I
didn't know what would happen, it was kind of awful. Then when I went back to school
after that, because that was during fall break, so then when I when I went back to school,
like I talked to my therapist and she suggested that I drop a class, like I was resistant
to it at first because I had already put in like a month and a half of work into that
class but I was just under so much stress that I didn't know if I could handle it. And
eventually I was like that's a good idea, so I dropped my circuits class. After that
I felt a lot better because the circuits class I dropped had about twelve hours of homework
a week. So dropping that definitely reduced the amount of stress I had, gave me a little
more time to try to relax and not be quite so stressed out. So even though I felt better
after dropping the class I still felt some anxiety, but overall feeling pretty good.
A was feeling a bit better but still having some problematic anxiety so my doctor increased
my dose of antidepressant because I was on a pretty low dose before that. So then along
came November. At the beginning I was feeling pretty good actually for a while, maybe about
a week. After my doctor had increased the antidepressant, I had another panic attack,
I was with my boyfriend, and we were sort of like taking a walk together, and my thoughts
were like I didn't want to go walk down by the track because there were other people
on it, and for some-- I was just afraid, so afraid that they would be watching me and
would think how terrible I was, and for some reason I became really afraid of this and
had a pretty bad panic attack at that time. So I was feeling a bit off for a few days
after that but then I went back to feeling better. About a week after that just all of
a sudden I got really depressed. Like I didn't want to do anything except go home and sleep.
Just all I wanted to do was sleep because I was so tired, and over like the next week
of school I didn't really have energy to go to class, I had trouble falling asleep, and
I wasn't attending a lot of my classes. I forced myself to go sometimes to go to one
class a day like if it was a lab or something I couldn't make up. I just forced myself to
go. I had called my parents and I was like "I am not doing well I need to go home." So
I went home. Luckily I don't live too far away from my college so I went home for the
night and they brought me back in the morning, I really didn't want to go back but I guess
I had to. Um, then I had an appointment with my doctor after that, he took me off the antidepressant
to see if that would help because he thought maybe the increase in antidepressant that
had triggered this really bad depression. But the only thing that that changed was that
I was able to sleep now, which was a little better because I was really tired, but I was
sleeping more that fourteen hours a day, and just all I wanted to do was sleep and sleep
and sleep and just go home and sleep. That's all I wanted, because I was just so like the
most miserable time of my life kind of thing. Like I still couldn't function, I was missing
at least ninety percent of my classes. Since that didn't really help I saw my doctor a
few days later and he put me back on the low dose of the antidepressant which I was on
before, and then I left school for a while, like a few days, and I had to postpone some
of my prelims because I was going to miss them. And I guess the next few days just got
worse. It was like being more sad than I ever felt in my entire life and I had no idea why.
And I was, all I wanted to do was sleep. And if I couldn't sleep, I wanted to eat because
that was the next best thing. So during my waking hours, I was either lying in bed, scrolling
through Facebook, or talking to my parents hoping that would cheer me up, eating, and
stuff like that. Like it was scary because as I was thinking I was just so so sad, I
had no idea what I was sad about, and that's kind of a really scary feeling. I think at
this point like sometime this week I had another panic attack like am I going to fail, am I
ever going to get better, like that sort of thing. So yeah, basically at this time I couldn't
really function, and when I was home my parents like forced me to take a shower because I
wasn't showering, I wasn't functioning. And basically be showering I mean just laying
at the bottom with the water just pouring on top of me, crying really hard for about
forty minutes. And yeah, it just, it got worse for the first few days when I was home, but
since I was on a very low dose of antidepressant it eventually started to get a little better.
And I went back to school for a few days and I was feeling good enough to go to most of
my classes and get some of my homework done, at least most of it, but I had to postpone
another prelim because I couldn't study well enough, like I was just barely getting by.
And then, it was Thanksgiving break so I was lucky about that, that I could just relax
a bit or try to relax since I was still feeling really depressed. During this depression,
my anxiety overall wasn't too bad, luckily, but [sigh]. Yeah, this is the start of December,
which is a little over a week after I started being on a low dose of antidepressant again.
I was kind of pretty much back to square one, having anxiety with a little bit of depression.
So my anxiety was getting worse, not quite as bad as being on no meds at all, so my doctor
adjusted my meds, and all this time I was going to therapy and that definitely helps,
um because you get someone to talk to. Once problem that I had in December was one of
the make up prelims that I had to take since I missed them earlier was for math, and I
had already failed a math prelim earlier in the semester, and this make up prelim I did
really bad on, and I got really nervous and was freaking out because I need at least a
B minus in this class to affiliate with the major i want. And so I was really nervous
and like "I'm not going to do this, I'm going to fail." Like, it was awful. So I went, I
talked to my adviser, my doctor, my therapist, all those people, and eventually the adviser
contacted my professors and we came up with a solution. My grade for this semester in
math would be an incomplete, but next semester I will have to sit in on all the lectures
and and take all the tests for that math class, and then that grade will be counted for this
class. Then over the summer I will have to take the next math class to be caught up with
everything. So yeah, I think that is probably the best solution that I could come up with,
like I didn't have to take the final, which definitely made me feel a bit better, I'm
feeling less nervous about that whole math situation, it's like another chance, and i'm
pretty glad that that happened, that I get to redo all of that. Dropping that other course
earlier and then taking math as an incomplete, now currently with the classes I'm taking
I have just enough credits to get by, so pretty lucky there. Currently, I am still feeling
anxious, not very depressed, worried about my other finals, just anxious in general because
I always am. I'm still kind of getting my meds adjusted, changing things around, increasing
doses, that sort of stuff. So I am right now ok-ish for the most part. I just need to get
though this next week of finals and then I can go home for winter break and that will
be wonderful because I can relax and see my family and everyone and that will be good.
So after the whole thing about worrying about my math grade, yeah my meds are being slowly
increased and adjusted, we're going to be adjusting them for a while until we come up
with something that works. Ok so, my advice. If you are experiencing anything like this
at all, get help. It won't make everything completely better right away, but it will
definitely be better than doing nothing, and getting help earlier will make your life easier,
and if I hadn't been getting help, like the advisers have probably been so understanding
about helping me like get make up tests and helping me get a second chance in my math
class, so it's definitely good if you're having problems to go seek help early, and definitely
get the help you need. So yeah, I know that this video is pretty personal. I hope if at
all if anyone can relate like let me know. I just felt like putting this out there, so
yeah ok. [music]