this talk: is about my mental health - by Sasha Treharne
My struggles with mental health started when I was around the age of 15 and in secondary school. I would get anxious feelings and struggle to deal with emotions. But in recent years, whilst studying at uni, my mental health really hit rock bottom.
Despite studying what I loved and doing well at university my anxiety kept growing. I felt alone despite being surrounded by amazing friends. I just felt like I couldn’t discuss it with anyone. Even though I was educated about mental health, having completed my degree in psychology, I was still very much in denial about what I was going through.
Eventually it got to the point where I didn’t want to get out of bed. Didn’t want to study. In fact, I considered dropping out of uni 1 term before I finished my third year. I grew apart from my best friends. I felt like I didn’t belong anymore - that I didn’t want to be here anymore. It’s only by looking back, and being out the other side, that I can realise how much of a dark hole I was in.
With the support and push from my family I went to the doctor and told him how I was feeling. He put me on anti-anxiety medication called Sertraline and sleeping pills to help ease my mind at night. Although I studied the advantages of medication to treat mental health I still felt that there was a stigma toward being medicated.
The first month of being on pills was awful. I spent most of my time sleeping and felt like a zombie when I was awake. I would meet up with friends and not be able to remember it properly a week later. But as the weeks went on I started to feel better. The crying stopped. The dark thoughts lessened. I started to feel more and more like my old self.
My energy levels and confidence picked up just in time to be able to finish my dissertation and study for my final year exams. I felt like my mental health was improving by the day. Once I had been on my medication for a few months I decided to start therapy. A fight with my mum, which I don’t think has happened since I was a child, was the final straw that pushed me into going to therapy. I had anger and feelings that I hadn’t dealt with from my childhood that needed to be addressed.
As weeks passed in therapy I was able to start telling myself “it’s okay to be feeling this way”. Looking back, I think it took a long time before I felt that my anxiety and depression were not unreasonable or unjustified. I was unable to link what had happened when I was a child to how I was feeling as an adult. But as more tears were cried, and more discussions had, I stopped being so hard on myself. I am now in a position to be able to connect the feelings I have now to the experiences I have had in the past. Your mental health is always justified, whether people tell you it is or not.
Now that I am out the other side I can whole-heartedly say I don’t think I would be here if I hadn’t had conversations with the people I love about how I was feeling. But these conversations could have started before they did. I could have been more honest with myself, my friends and my family about how I was feeling. I’m not saying that I am ‘cured’ of anxiety and depression - I don’t think this will ever happen and I am aware that I still struggle with mental health issues. But looking back at where I was this time last year I can say that I am a completely different person. I am back to my old, happy self.
In light of how I feel now, and what I have been through, I set up this talk to start conversations about mental health. By bringing speakers into corporations and schools to discuss their personal experiences I hope to destigmatise the subject for all of those who will listen. This talk is about providing meaning to my experience; even if one person in one talk changes their relationship with their mental health and feels empowered to open up, this talk has achieved its objective.
Written by Sasha Treharne - this talk founder.
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