First few words
This article is going to be the most personal one I’ve ever written, and perhaps the longest one yet. It is dedicated to a 3 years of my life ranging from the early 2018 till early 2021, which is the time of the writing of this post. I decided to separate it into book-like chapters, in order to split the article in easier to read pieces and separate important sub chapters of the story. At first, I didn’t want to talk about this episode of my life at all, but later on I realized that my story might be helpful to other people struggling with similar issues like I did.
Everything in this story is real, and only real. Don’t expect any film-like dramatic stuff, as what I want to achieve by writing this post is just to share my story, and share it in as real manner as it occurred, not to boost sales by adding extra drama layers, etc.
“If you’re going through hell — keep going.”
Winston Churchill
Chapter I : The background
I was just a regular 18 year old teenager — attending school, watching films in my free time, and working abroad twice a year in order to make and save some money for the future. At that time I can safely state that it was amazing. I had a good time in school with my friends, grades did suck, but I was never bothered by that. I can also recall my arrogance as I thought I was the king of the world, owning everyone and everything. Looking backwards though, I think it was a byproduct of overcoming my other fear — fear of planes. In the summer of 2017 I came to UK to work abroad for the first time as I could make a lot more money than in my home country. Upon my return, I felt like I accomplished something — overcame my fear, started making some extra cash, and saving it for the future and most importantly having something none of my friends did. Whether you believe in karma or any other religious system of what you do, is what you always get back, in this story I sort of believe it was karma that returned all the wrath and arrogance that I had in myself back then, and I received it in form of anxiety. I’ll leave the conclusion to you. Simply put — that time of my life — summer 2017 till Christmas 2017 was great, then for the Christmas I went back to work abroad again, returned home and it was great again. I tried to be slightly better as a person as I noticed how I changed and that led me to spend half of my Christmas earnings on Christmas gifts for my family. This act made me feel better, made them feel better as well, and I think it was a good decision I don’t regret. All over again, everything has been great, going smoothly — school, having nice hobbies, I event started jogging although it was a little cold at the time as it was late February/late March, but overall, I was happy. Until that night when it all came back to me.
Chapter II : The Breaking Point
It was just a regular night in the March of 2018. I suddenly woke up in the middle of the night, feeling like everything is spinning, I felt a lot of emotions and some rush in my chest. I stood up, trying to get to my parents to help me. I was feeling disorientated, not knowing what’s going on, and just wanted it to go away. When I came to parents, they didn’t do much and obviously couldn’t do much as they knew that “my spinning head” has been occasionally a problem since I was 8 years old. So I tried to fall asleep again, but after such a huge rush of adrenaline and a substance of other brain chemicals, I just couldn’t. I was just laying in the bed, and I felt like someone was dragging me somewhere, at the speed of light. It felt eerie, and even alien like. I wasn’t sure what to think of it. There was one thing that I knew for sure though — after that night I’ll never be the same. Somehow I managed to fall asleep, I tried not to think about it in the morning, and I succeeded for a moment. Everything was okay in the school — I was talking to friends as usual, tried not to let out what just happened last night. For a few days, everything was fine except that spinning head feeling. When I returned home, sat on the garden and tried to relax a little I thought I’ll grab a bike and go somewhere for a ride. I came to nearby hill by our house, and had a look over the entire village and the nearby city. Stunning view, I thought. Suddenly, I felt the same rush, like I did that night but this time it felt like it was even more intense by ten thousand times. My heart started rushing, I started to sweat, I was shaking, I just quickly jumped on the bike, and rushed home, and just laid on the bed as it was a lot cooler than outside. I started to breathe in order to calm down, and watch some YouTube videos. None of my family knew what’s going on, and what was happening to me. In an hour or so, it was gone, but that odd feeling of something bad happening was still there. I bluntly remember feelings and thoughts rushing over me : what’s going on with me? What is causing this? How to stop this? And feelings : hopeless, scared, terrified, overthinking, uncertain of anything I ever learned or knew. All of this, would soon become my reality for the next 2 or so years (most of the time, not all the time).
Chapter III : New world
“Fear is a hard thing to deal with. I feel it quite strongly. If I think something is important enough, I’ll do it in spite of fear. But it can really sap the will. I hate fear, I wish I had it less.”
-Elon Musk
When I first started to move forward in the future, my days and routines changed quite significantly. Wake up in the morning, eat a breakfast, go to school and then… what then? All that followed was me, sitting in my room, stressing, overthinking and going through very difficult times. All I could think of was if it’s not gonna come back. The worst thing that could happen, that I, myself tried to reduce the effects of this state that was occurring to me, while in reality — I made it worse, and I made myself even more vulnerable to it. My first thoughts on how to battle this, was to let it go through me, if I start thinking about it, keep it up, keep thinking about it, and wait till it’s gone. But as I quickly learned, it didn’t work that easily. Instead, I just boosted it’s dominance over my mind and I couldn’t stop thinking about it.
Over a few weeks it was looking just the same, usually around the afternoon time I just started to get shaky, returning panic attacks, stress levels beyond roof, etc. Then this sort of mind virus has evolved into something bigger and certainly worse. As I was overthinking the same thought — is it gonna come back, another seemingly random thought came to me — what if I had feelings like if I’m on the swing (my fear of swings has been present since I was 8 years old, around the same time as I started having “spinning head” problems). This started a brand new chapter of my anxiety battle — I started to fantasize about totally surreal scenarios, which in my head sounded absolutely terrible, while at the same time, not being real.
This was happening each week — each week I learned on how to cope with one scenario and be okay for a few days, and then another type of scenario would just pop in my head and make my life difficult, once again. Later on, I even noticed that even my thoughts of something entirely different can make me remember that night and everything that followed. This condition was making me wanna stay home at any cost, making me almost scared to go out, but I couldn’t let that happen and just go to school and so on. I remember times when I came home, it was pretty hot spring-summer time of 2018, around April or May, returning back home from school on the bus, and with the location of my home, I had a choice of 2 bus stops to leave the bus at — one slightly closer to home than the other one. As you’ve probably guessed it, I left on the more distant one, and walked extremely slowly back home. I was literally trying to avoid home, as I knew what was waiting for me there — invisible monster within my own mind, the one that can touch everything I see, smell or hear, but I can’t touch it.
So I stepped in and thought of some forms of help — my mom referred me to her former psycho-therapist, that she used to work with in the past. So I started the treatment, I think I spent there over 300€ — 30€ per session x 10 sessions means a whole lot of money for the therapist. Overall, if I had a chance to go back and decide whether or not I’d go and see her, I’d throw the money out of the window, and they would have been used for a better purpose. What I learned? Nothing. She started to explain to me how do thoughts and feelings relate together and what happens when I get stressed, and when I asked how to stop these attacks from happening, she said just keep breathing and it will go away. All of this useful knowledge for 300€? Definitely worth it. Anyway, what it gave me back then when I was hopeless — it temporarily gave me hope that I’ll be okay, and it will pass. I came to therapist, she would calm me down for a week, then in a week I’d start stressing and overthinking again, and the cycle repeats itself again. That was my life for a few months, until I was in a car with my friend, I laid down on the seats on my back, facing up. I had to quickly stand up as my “spinning head” was terrible at the time. He looked at me and said, it could possibly be something with the inner ear. That makes a lot of sense, I thought, after all, I had problems with something like that since I was 8, but I never thought it could be related to my current problem.
In the meantime, I managed to get an appointment with the doctor about the inner ear. And days kept on rolling as before — morning, school, stress and panic attacks, repeat. This was happening almost everyday, and I can simply mark this as the darkest time of my life. Nights were the worst — I just laid on my back on the bed, turned the light off, everything went quiet, and thoughts came back, spinning head came back, and of course a feeling of someone crouching on my chest returned as well. I remember one of the nights, I thought of one song that I heard on the radio, and couldn’t remember the name of it. I tried a quick YouTube search and the song started playing. It was the one I thought of. That song would define my new music mania that was linked to this anxiety situation as music helped me feel distracted from my thoughts. The song I was listening was Starboy from The Weeknd. I remember later on to be listening to more songs than just this one, but this was the gateway to his music and ultimately the one that helped me through my darkest days.
Chapter IV : Solutions
“ When I was a little kid, I was really scared of the dark. But then I came to understand, dark just means absence of photons in the visible wavelength — 400 to 700 nanometers. Then I thought, well it’s really silly to be afraid of lack of photons. Then I wasn’t afraid of the dark anymore after that.”
Elon Musk
When the day of the inner ear examination came, I had a feeling of what I’m about to learn. As it turned out, that feeling was right. After several tests, among which were ear disability tests (if you can hear sounds of all the levels and frequencies), moving dot on the screen testing your eye coordination and lastly the mild warm water being shot in your ear to test the functionality of the ear.
As we were awaiting the results I started to expect the good news, as I’d finally know what was going on with me for the past few months. My mom’s response to the initial problem wasn’t anything dramatic — just get over it, it happens (don’t you love it?). The doctor would return with the results and explain what will be happening next — my left ear has a dysfunctionality, meaning that the part which handles coordination and balance is working only on 15 or 20% properly, and right side should be relatively fine. That just explained what would be later referred to as “vertigo” or the constant feeling of movement. That’s why I had this feeling since 8 years old — I most likely got cold, and that disrupted the ear crystals handling the balance. Add a few years of not dealing with this problem and a forgotten fear of swings and you get me, in 2018 with vertigo and vertigo-phobia-related anxiety. Just the same way, says doctor, must have happened that shock from the night when I felt like I was flying — it was March/April time of the year, when it’s usually pretty cold in the country. That way, I also got explanation on why do I feel this vertigo since 8, and why was I scared of swings, airplanes and similar related things. So this day, was the mark of the end of my ear problem. Or so I thought.
Later on, the anxiety returned, besides me having vertigo treatment. But this time, as the summer was approaching, I was considering to cancel my summer work experience as I planned before. If I did so, I think it would have been one of the worst decisions ever. Simply because I’d just be sitting home, overthinking on what’s going on with me. While when I went abroad, I managed to get my best summer so far, with work and getting new friends (some of which I’m still in touch with, and they’re really amazing people). With 2 months away from home, I thought I was ‘cured’ for good. Once again, I couldn’t be more wrong. When I returned home after summer of 2018, and everything came back to normal — school, friends, home, etc., it took me a month to be just okay, not overthinking or thinking about my previous problems. For a whole month, I was just fine. Then it all came back, and I felt staring into the abyss, again. The more I was approaching the Christmas time of 2018, the more I felt stressed somehow — possibly because of another plane trip abroad to work, or high school final ceremony. Or both. Not that far from the ceremony (and the trip as well), one evening when we were about to go for a walk with the dog, I found myself getting extremely anxious and disoriented. My heartbeat was running faster and faster, the thoughts were present, and all of sudden I just threw up on the ground outside of our house. It was the first, but certainly not last time this would happen, due to the anxiety condition. I tried to forget about it, but that’s easier said than done.
Chapter V : Failures
“What we fear doing most is usually what we most need to do.”
Tim Ferriss
The vomiting would be a part of the process when the stress level reached too far — it also happened before my final exams on the high school. I was very glad to have my exams over, as I felt it would distract me from revising for the exams themselves. As I learned in the past — distractions were always a great help to keep the mind of the trail to the darkness. But what do you do, when there are no distractions? That was one of the thoughts that would be creeping me out for some time, but I managed to get over it as the time went. I left home shortly after the final exams, just to make money for my next year’s accommodation in the UK, where I decided to study on the university. This would help me to get back to normal — working for 8 hours straight, play some tennis, read a book, or just go to the beach. Thanks to this summer routine I managed to get myself back to relatively normal mindset without any phobias or swings.
But as I moved into the town I was meant to study, I was okay. At first. Just a few months later, random thought hijacked my focus in the shower and didn’t let it go for some time again. I thought I was cured when I left home, and didn’t have any struggle with anxiety for over half a year. Once again, I was wrong.
Chapter VI : Final resolution
As the pandemic started I returned home, and stayed there for 3 months. I thought it would be fine, but all of my thoughts returned and I felt desperate again. Vomiting was a part of my routine, the worst was right before my departure back to UK. And as I returned again, over time, I just got back to normal again. There have been times when I was feeling slightly stressed, but those weren’t as terrible and hard to manage as at home. Then I decided to take a leap of faith and just do it — overcome my fear.
It was a very warm morning in August, and I just sat on the swing for a few minutes, and swung for a little while. Afterwards, I thought I’d feel terrible or just out of world — but nothing really happened. It turned out to be the final resolution, as what I was struggling with for 2 or more years, was just to simply overcome the fear and I was just fine. For a few months and then it returned. This time I wasn’t as desperate as before, as I’ve had many ‘failures’ before, but this time I thought of getting medication treatment, as it might help as well. Over time, I think it was the medication and the combination of gradual exposure to the swings, and reading a book about this topic, that helped me get over this phobia. I’m not sure if there won’t be any relapse, but I guess you never know with these things.
Chapter VII : Aftermath & takeaways
Overall this experience was a horrible one, but I can’t deny getting some positives out of it as well — I changed my lifestyle into better, I work more than before, I got to love music way too much and the most important of all — I overcame my fears. If there are any advices that I should give :
- Don’t wait for your phobia to get better, it mostly doesn’t. Just face your fear and let it go.
- Be kind to yourself and others — if you don’t feel like you can do it yet, take your time and wait when you’re ready.
- In my case at least — it didn’t take only once to get over the phobia, I knew I wasn’t comfortable with the thought of me sitting on the swing after one exposure, nor was I comfortable with flying on the planes after one trip. Things take time.
- Motivational quotes and stuff is nice, but don’t get too obsessed with them. (I used to read a lot of them but I picked 3 of which helped me when I felt terrible)
Epilogue
As I’m approaching my 22nd birthday, I would never thought of finding myself away from home and people I knew for my whole life, on the way to move into completely different part of the globe. But just like Forrest Gump says : Life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re gonna get. I never really thought of mental health and people struggling with it in the past. Now I do. And thanks to my terrible experience, I know what it’s like to feel hopeless, tired, overthinking why is this happening to me. This tremendously negative experience had a huge impact on my life, my habits and the way I treat life as a whole. My humble opinion on mental health as a whole is that our generation (Z) can mitigate these issues with the next generation by open discussion, destigmatizing the topic of mental health, and to openly admit that these problems are real, and they can get very serious.
In the end, I’d like to thank anyone who’s been supporting me on this path and was there for me when I needed them. With that in mind, I hope you found this article helpful, as my experiences may not be so educated as I mostly learnt everything based on what was happening to me. Stay safe guys, and treat yourself right :)
Dec. 2022 Update : I was diagnosed with OCD, which suddenly opened multiple doors in my mind and made me realize it’s been OCD all along. After several relapses I realized I’m gonna visit a psychiatrist to find out exactly what is going on with me. Afterwards everything changed.
