The Importance of Taking Care of Your Mental Health

Image source: Merlina McGovern

Writer’s note: It has taken me more than a month to fully write this post. All part of the mental health healing journey.

I was going to title this “My Mental Health Journey,” but I’m tired myself of that overused “journey” metaphor. I get why it’s an easy metaphor to jump to, especially for transitions in our lives. When we go through a change, we start somewhere (supreme anxiety, obese BMI, beginning writer) and then we travel through obstacles (therapy, medications, writer’s block) to arrive at a final destination (healthy mental outlook, improved lab numbers, a finished project). The journey metaphor just makes sense.

But I’m tired. No really. I’m physically tired right now. I met with a psychiatrist this morning at 7:30 a.m. And what did I do to prep for this appointment? I jumped into the pool of insomnia at about 1:00 a.m. and didn’t pull myself up out of it at all.

So, armed with about 2 hours of sleep, I met with my healthcare provider. I say this because she was a nurse and not a doctor. In fact, she was an advanced practice registered nurse (APRN), so she could, in Massachusetts, diagnose and treat mental health disorders, something I did not know.

I’m going to be vulnerable and open right now. I have suffered from anxiety all of my life, and it has only gotten worse over the years. As I hit perimenopause and as I no longer turn to food because of my GLP-1 treatment, I realized that I was white-knuckling my anxiety, with no desire to use food or alcohol to self-soothe.

Just like I do with everything in my life, I started to research treatment, including therapy and medications. Oh my God, there is so much stigma and misinformation out there about mental health. No, you can’t massage your Vagus nerve to relieve anxiety (what the heck, you can’t even massage a nerve). No, that expensive supplement being touted by a quack influencer is not going to heal your gut microbiome and sanitize your mental health. And now we have an administration actively demonizing people who turn to SSRIs for relief.

So, I’m going to share my journey. Anxiety and treating that anxiety is nothing to be ashamed of.

Childhood Anxiety

Thinking back to my childhood, I have always been anxious. I remember often feeling flustered and then feeling my chest tighten whenever I encountered stressful situations. I would inhale deeply only to feel as if my lungs weren’t fully filling with oxygen. In fact, the deeper I tried to breathe in, the less air I seemed to get into my lungs. At one point, I had my mother take me to the hospital, where they checked my oxygen and declared everything was normal.

From then on, I tried my best to ignore what I now know was anxiety-induced air hunger. I channeled my anxiety into being a Type A, straight-A student. I threw myself into books and fantasy worlds to escape from stress. And, of course, I turned to food to soothe myself through Doritos-fueled dopamine hits.

And there are the genetics and environmental factors associated with my anxiety. My father also suffers from anxiety, and I certainly inherited his anxiety around being late (woe betide my poor husband, as I insist that we arrive for a domestic flight three hours early!).

Channeling Anxiety into Adulthood

For most of my childhood, I was able to harness that anxiety to propel me into getting good grades and getting accepted into UC Berkeley. I continued to surf the pulses of a racing heart without ever truly having a panic attack. I was a normal, functioning adult.

When my sister was diagnosed with cancer, anxiety slammed into me, and it took a physical toll on me. My weight shot through the roof. I suffered from debilitating back pain. I was eventually diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. Writing all of this now, I can see how the anxiety that I was suffering had real physical effects on my body.

But I was still a well-functioning adult. I followed the rules. I earned promotions. I was outwardly successful. When the pandemic knocked the entire world for a loop, I thought I would be able to handle the changes to my life with steady calm and reserve. And, for the most part, I did. But, I found that over time, my world became smaller. I shrank back away from other people. I rabidly followed the social distancing and masking guidance. I was getting close to middle age, and thoughts of my own mortality started to get larger in my mind’s rearview mirror.

During a post-COVID screening mammogram, the radiologist saw something suspicious in my left breast. They followed up my screening mammogram with a diagnostic mammogram and an ultrasound. The images were still inconclusive. Obsessive thoughts about cancer and death and dying occupied my mind. The physicians ordered an MRI. They also mentioned possibly taking medication to calm my nerves, and I thought nothing of it. I thought that I was strong; I could handle a simple imaging test.

Oh, how wrong I was.

I realized that I had had a panic attack while getting my MRI follow-up. As I listened to the horrible clanking of the MRI, I pushed myself to last through the 20-minute procedure. But I could feel the tightening of my chest. The more I tried to breathe in, the more I felt like I was suffocating. The test was during a time when you still had to wear a mask, even though I was the only person in the room.

Clank, ratchetty-clank, screech went the machine. The heavy headphones the techs had placed on my head piped in soft classical music, but it did nothing to mute my mounting panic. My mask was starting to slip up and over the bottom of my eyes. My chest tightened even more. How long had it been? Surely it had been twenty minutes already, but still the large machine belched and bellowed around me.

I reached a point where I could not handle the stress for one second longer, and I pushed the panic button. They stopped the procedure, but thankfully, they were able to get the information they needed (imaging was benign). I don’t think I would have been able to get through another imaging procedure if they needed to redo it.

This was a classic panic attack, but I hadn’t known what it was. As the years went on, I was still anxious about my health. My physicians continue to monitor my left breast (I swear that when I write my memoir, I will call it My Left Breast), and for now, all seems probably benign.

Perimenopause Wall of Anxiety

After that experience, I put my anxiety out of my mind. It wasn’t until I started losing weight with Mounjaro and then started to have severe sleep problems right around when I started my HRT therapy for perimenopause that I started to revisit the idea that maybe my anxiety was not something that I could push aside any longer.

I finally decided that I wasn’t going to win any prize for trying to white-knuckle my way through this, and I set up an appointment with a therapist.

And I am so thankful that I did. I have now begun my journey into therapy, and I have also started to take medication to help with that anxiety, sertraline to be specific. During this learning journey, which I’ll write about more later, I have learned to push past the immense stigma surrounding my diagnosis of moderate anxiety and depression. Just like I was proactive about treating my disease of obesity, I am now being proactive about treating my mental health disorder. It is nothing to be ashamed of, and it is not something that can be healed with quackery and overpriced supplements, regardless of what certain completely unqualified HHS secretaries will have you believe.

I am so glad that I decided to treat my mental health. Our brains are the command centers for our lives. Why would I choose to ignore it? It was leaving me living a less fulfilling life. I am just at the beginning of my treatment journey, but it is one that looks to be leading me to a brighter future.