I Asked for Help

I Asked For Help

This is a follow-up piece to the post “When Life Isn’t Funny.” 

I walked into my psychiatrist’s office practically vibrating.

I was so anxious; anxious to tell him what was going on, anxious that he wouldn’t understand, anxious that he’d think my plan was a bad one- JUST ANXIOUS. 

I’ve seen the same psychiatrist for five years. He is reserved, quiet, kind, and I’ve built a nice rapport with him over the past five years. 

I see him regularly for something unrelated to mental health, but for something related to pain management. He prescribes a certain medication to keep my body in check- and it works. However, I’ve never come to him with a mental health issue.

I sat down and immediately told him that everything with my regular medication was good, and just a refill would be fine, but I wanted to talk about something else. 

I told him that the Franchise Tax Board had levied our checking and savings accounts to the tune of nearly seven thousand dollars and that my mom experienced a stroke about a month ago.

I told him that all of these things were straightened out; I’d worked out a payment plan with the Franchise Tax Board, that my mom had made a full recovery from her stroke, and when I left her to head back to San Diego- she was doing great.

And then I told him: “I don’t understand what’s wrong with me. Everything is fine. There is nothing going on in my life right now that should warrant what I feel inside. I feel as though I have an elephant on my chest at all times, I am having an incredibly hard time sleeping, and when I wake up- it’s like an earthquake is going off in my body. I feel like I am being sent warning signs left and right- yet, nothing is actually wrong.”

He went on to explain that oftentimes when we experience something extremely scary and we are forced to be strong (my mom’s stroke), we go into a certain mode while we are dealing with that crisis. I happened to be strong during my mom’s stroke. I kept it together (for the most part), but inside I was terrified. In fact, I was terribly scared. I was scared that she would wake up, and while her body would be there- she would not. Every worst case scenario went through my brain.

He said that what happens in situations like that is when we rebound from the crisis, we crash. 

I crashed. I am crashing.

I am crashing and I didn’t even know that I was crashing. In fact, I still don’t REALLY know if that’s the reason for my newfound anxiety/depression, because I can’t pinpoint what the hell is wrong with me to begin with. But what he said did make sense.

He wrote me a prescription that I filled immediately and I am already feeling better. I feel more alive and like myself. I won’t lie in telling you that I was nervous to tell him this. I feel like I am going crazy on the inside, so I thought for sure my crazy would show to him on the outside.

How do you tell a medical professional that all you want to do is lay in bed all day and sleep? That you have no motivation to do the things you once so truly enjoyed? 

How do you tell him that your regular daily tasks are not just monotonous, they are painful?

Well, apparently they hear this stuff all the time- go figure. 

While this is quite personal, and I feel a little exposed writing about this, I felt that it was important to do so.

Many of you who follow along with my site are used to my funny shenanigans and my take on social issues, but I don’t feel I open myself up to the core like this. Mainly, that’s because I am nervous to type that out to the universe (and the mean trolls on the internet), but in this instance, I don’t give a shit.

Why? Because if this shows ONE person that even the “funny, goofy people” get fucked up in the head from time to time and need to ask for help, thus pushing them to do the same too, then I call this blog post a success. I wrote about my awful anxiety/depression, addressed it, and I asked for help. And, I am not ashamed of that- no one should feel ashamed in asking for help.

And you know what? I ALREADY KNEW THAT! 

However, being in the situation is so much different. In a weird way, the scales seem to tilt differently when you feel this way and ask for help versus reading about someone else who is similarly suffering, or watch a television program that touches on mental health. You can have empathy for that person and what they are going through- but unless you’re going through the same thing (or something similar), you don’t really get it. And now I do. 

So, if you find yourself feeling anything like I did, there is no shame. And, if you happen to feel that there is, you now know there is one more person in your corner who is going through something similar- someone who gets it and is rooting you on from the sidelines with their new prescription in hand and a newfound semi-calmness in their chest.

If you enjoyed this post or relate to it, please share it! 

And, may I kindly ask for a click on the brown banner below? Each click is a vote for my site and how I keep my site running! Thank-You! 🙂