Why I'm Talking About High-Functioning Mental Illness Once Again

As always, everyone is always extremely surprised when I tell them that I suffer from mental illness, and have for more than half of my life. I suppose I hide it mostly because it’s so stigmatized and I don’t like some of the comments people have to say about it. I probably also hide it well because I’ve never liked the idea of people not wanting to be around me because I’m constantly anxious or depressed. This unfortunately also causes some problems, because when something major occurs and my mental health begins to deteriorate, no one takes me seriously. This however, does not mean that people cannot take the time to help people; it just means they must work a little harder to break through those walls to allow people like me to open up.

2018 has been a very interesting year. So many good things have happened and part of me kind of thought I was finally making major improvements to ensure that I continue getting better and not taking steps back. At the same time, even though there have been many good things that have occurred, it has also been a very tough year that has taught me that no matter how good things can get, there are always going to be roadblocks, and I’m not able to deal with them as well as I thought I could just yet.

Earlier this year, my best friend Emily announced that she was getting married to her boyfriend that she met in Poland many years ago. She’s spent much of our friendship in Poland with him, and that has always given me the opportunity to go visit her and see parts of Europe I only ever dreamt of seeing. The two of us are best friends with another girl Emma, and she and I booked plane tickets months and months ago to ensure that we would be there for Emily and for the wedding. Both of us were so excited because we were able to go back to Poland - a place we both love so very much - and it also meant that the three of us would be reunited once again. It was going to be short trip due to our jobs and responsibilities here in California. We were there for just over two weeks. For me, that gets stressful. Flying and extensive traveling like that in such a short amount of time makes me extremely anxious. In order to make it to Poland, I often travel for approximately 26 hours. I take medication during the day to help give me energy to make it through the day, but unfortunately that doesn’t do me much good because I also have to take my medication to help me sleep at some point during all of the traveling, but my anxiety is often much too high for me to be able to sleep on the 10 hour plane flight just to get to Europe, not to mention the hours added on for the layover, and then the 2 hour flight to finally get to Poland. Not being able to sleep for the 10 hours I require a night on this medication, leaves me feeling extremely lethargic and unable to be in touch with reality for most of the traveling. Therefore, I need several days to gather myself and rest before I can jump into the exciting things that being in a foreign place has to offer. I knew that it wasn’t going to be like that, because there were plenty of things Emily needed our help with in order to prepare for the wedding. I did my best to mentally prepare myself for the amount of stress and anxiety I was going to have.

For the first week or so, I honestly felt like I did a pretty good job of holding myself together. But I was getting less sleep than I was used to which is not good for me because of the medication I take to help me sleep, and being in a foreign country always stresses me out. There are many people in Poland that we spend our time with, that do not speak very good English, and therefore, 95% of the time, I have no idea what is being said or what is going on. Emily speaks very good Polish and is able to translate many conversations for me. But it is exhausting for her to constantly be doing that, and I can’t blame her. But somehow, sitting there trying to be a part of what is going on is very stressful for me when I have no idea what is happening. I feel very left out and often times my mind wanders onto other things and I tend to space out. Many of the people I’m used to being around while I’m in Poland were also stressed out due to normal wedding stress which I completely understood. Unfortunately, I have the kind of personality that feeds off of other people’s emotions and if someone is stressed out, I am stressed out even if there is nothing for me to be stressed out about. During this trip, I also found out that being a part of professional/semi-professional photos is an extreme trigger for anxiety for me. I don’t know if that has anything to do with the fact that the people who were taking the photos all spoke Polish and could not/would not speak English so I didn’t have any idea what I was being instructed to do, or if those kinds of photos stress me out in general. I’ve never had to be a part of that anywhere else other than these two occurrences in Poland. There were also several other things I was dealing with personally that were related to things happening back home that were causing me a great deal of stress. The unknown and not having control over anything is a major trigger for me, and the things that were happening back home were things I had zero control over, which just kept adding on top of everything else.

All of those things combined, just meant I was headed for disaster. In two weeks, I had two panic attacks and one full mental break down. That is a lot for me. For one, my panic attacks don’t typically happen often enough for them to be so close together, and I hadn’t had any sort of mental breakdown in quite some time before then. All of that was extremely exhausting for me. Both panic attacks occurred because of photo related incidences. One panic attack was much more intense than the other. I felt it coming on, unlike most panic attacks that I experience. I felt myself getting more and more overwhelmed as time was going on. The more photos we kept taking and the more instructions that were being given that I did not understand, the more overwhelmed I was feeling. Emma could tell that something was wrong and she asked if I was okay. I told her I was going to lose it in about 10 seconds, and sure enough, that’s exactly what happened. I was trying so hard to hold it together for Emily, because we were taking photos with some of the girls after having what would be considered her bachelorette party here in the states. I know she was looking forward to having those pictures taken, and I didn’t want to ruin that for her.

I remember I was standing up when I told Emma that I was going to lose it and began to cry. I remember her hugging me. Then suddenly I was sitting down a bench and Emily was there. Bless Emily and Emma’s hearts, because neither of them has ever actually experienced me having a panic attack in our 5 years of friendship. Both had only seen me after one had occurred. I don’t really know how or why that is, but both were only familiar with what to do after one had occurred. I could not have asked for them to have handled it any better than the way they did. Their friendship has been such a blessing to me because they both bring such different things to the table, and the way they both show their loyalty and care to me is different, and that makes it so nice.

My breathing was completely out of control once I was sitting down. I felt extremely dizzy, lightheaded, and felt as if I was going to vomit at any given moment. I remember both of them stroking my hair and rubbing my back, because I like feeling physical touch when I’m having a panic attack and in the aftermath of having one. During a panic attack, you forget how to breathe, which is why the breathing starts to get out of control. I don’t know for how long, but it felt like hours, Emily kept repeating to me to breathe in through my nose and out through my mouth. Thank God for that because I likely would have passed out if I didn’t have someone there to coach me on my breathing. All of the girls we were with were inside preparing some things to eat for dessert, and each time one of them would step outside, they could see me. For some reason, when I would get to the point of somewhat slower breathing, the second I saw one of them, I lost all momentum of trying to calm down and I fell right back into the irregular breathing patterns and panicked even more. I don’t really know why. I guess maybe because it’s just embarrassing. I don’t know about the rest of Poland, but something that I have noticed about the specific area of Poland we go to, there are very little people that suffer from any kind of mental illness, if anyone at all. So I feel like it’s just very little spoken of, and most people don’t really know what it is. Panic attacks are scary, not only for the person experiencing one, but for those that have never been around someone having one, or if they are just not familiar with what they are. So I suppose I just felt like I was going to freak the girls out if they saw me, or they were going to place judgement on me for something like that happening. Emma kept reminding me to pretend that they were not there, or to not focus on them and to focus on my breathing.

At some point, they agreed that I needed to go home. I remember I kept telling Emily over and over again that I was so sorry for embarrassing her and that I didn’t want to make her leave. So Emma borrowed a car and drove me back to the house the three of us were staying at and Emily told us she would be home soon. Emma got me in the shower and I sat in it for a very long time letting the hot water calm me down and warm me up, because whenever I have a panic attack, I always get freezing cold. She made me a cup of tea once I was out, and had already let Shane (my boyfriend) know what was happening so that he could call me to make sure I was okay. I went to bed shortly after.

The other panic attack had occurred because of the wedding photos, and it was much more minor than the other and did not last as long. But they were only several days apart, with the mental breakdown only happening a few days before the first panic attack. So needless to say, I was absolutely exhausted.

After arriving home and going back to work, I was feeling more anxious and stressed out than I was while in Poland. I usually need a lengthy break from work periodically in order to regain myself and my composure and feel refreshed. Unlike all of my other trips to Europe, this did not give me that, and that is why I felt the way I did after returning home. I had several other mental breakdowns in the weeks following my return home, and was taking my Ativan (when needed anti-anxiety medication) much more frequently than I ever had. They upped the dosage on my sleeping medication which made me feel like a zombie during the day, but it seemed to help calm the day to day anxiety for a little while. My psychiatrist asked me if I wanted another leave of absence so that I could take a break and regroup myself. But I told him that I couldn’t take one just yet, because financially it would not be a smart move. A leave of absence is paid for by state disability if you have a qualifying disability, but unfortunately it pays close to nothing and I couldn’t afford to take a break and travel somewhere at the same time. Each time he gives me a leave of absence, he allows me to travel somewhere because getting out of town always helps me relax and it gives me time to reflect on things so that I can come home feeling less stressed and anxious. I asked him to give me a little bit more time so that I could save up more money. I absolutely regret asking him to wait because from July to October, I felt like I was going to go insane. My ability to handle every day stress nearly didn’t exist at all, and I felt like waking up each day and going to work for 8 hours a day was just getting harder and harder, and if I had to wait much longer, I was going to snap. This is the exact same way I felt when I was hospitalized in May of 2017. There was this impending doom lingering over my head and I felt like no matter what I did, it would not go away. I was afraid that if any more time passed, I was going to break, and end up right back where I swore I wouldn’t have ended up in to begin with.

The leave came right at the perfect time. But as always, I did such a great job of hiding how I was feeling or what was going on inside of my head, that no one believed me when I told them that I needed the LOA for the sake of my sanity. Everyone viewed it as my opportunity to go travel once again, and didn’t think it had anything to do with the recovery of my mental health.

And this is exactly why I’m talking about the concept of high-functioning mental illness yet again. You have absolutely no idea what anyone is going through unless you take the time to ask them - even pester them so that they open up to you - and you have absolutely no right to assume that people like me don’t need a break from their everyday lives in order to regroup themselves. People always seem to have something to say about the way I do things and the things that I do in order to ensure that my mental health is taken care of. But yet none of them actually take the time to ask what has been occurring in my life that means I need to take a mental break and reflect on some things.

My LOA is covered under the Family Medical Leave federal act, meaning that if I qualify for medical reason and my doctor states so, I am able to take either a paid or unpaid leave of absence from my employer if they are covered under that act. It is a process, and I have to qualify not only medically, but also meet a certain amount of hours from my employer that I have worked in order for them to grant me that leave. My FMLA is protected, and is confidential unless I choose to speak about it. Once I am on FMLA, I can do whatever I choose with my time. My doctor recommends that I travel during my time off, because he knows that is what gives me inspiration to write, reflect, and regroup. I am required to check in with his nurse regularly during my time off so that he knows how I am doing. I am also required to stay in contact with my psychologist while I am away so that she knows how I am doing, and I am also required to have phone sessions with her so that I don’t lose sight of the things she and I have worked on. My time off is not all sunshine and rainbows. It gets very difficult at times, because even though I am away, I am supposed to be focusing on the things inside of my head that brought me to that point, and working through those things can be nasty and ugly and exhausting.

I in no way have to defend myself when it comes to my time off, and in no way do I owe anyone an explanation. But this all ties in with the concept of high-functioning mental illness because it just goes to show that just because someone makes it seem like everything in their life is just fine, it does not mean that they are fine. And if you aren’t going to take the time to ask someone if they are okay, or take the time to be a part of their life so that you further understand them and their internal struggles, then you have absolutely no right to talk about why they do what they do, and what they do in order to take care of themselves.

I can assure you that most people out there that struggle with mental illness but hide it like I do, wish that people would take the time - just once - to be a friend to them and ask questions and show that they care, maybe someday we can finally eliminate the stigma that surrounds those of us who don’t have our diagnoses written across our foreheads.

If you or someone you know needs support right now, call the Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255, or text START to 741-741

Image credit: The Mighty via Unsplash