At the age of 16 I was diagnosed with severe anxiety, anxiety-related depression, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD), and moderate Social Anxiety.
My anxiety is usually what sets me off. If I'm not making my Mental Health a priority, then I can lose focus on harnessing my anxiety. My rational mind takes a step back, and my anxiety-driven, obsessive compulsive mind takes over, leading to obsessive thinking. These thoughts are omnipresent and extremely difficult to derail. At my low point, my only coping mechanism for dealing with my thoughts was hand washing. The hand washing was cathartic-I felt like I could control my thoughts by washing them away. Some days I would find myself at the sink upwards of 50 times a day. The day I had finally washed my hands to the point of bleeding was the day I realized that my compulsions weren't giving me any control at all. This epiphany triggered a severe depressive episode. But on the bright side, it also encouraged me to embrace the Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) that I had previously been halfheartedly participating in.
The skills I learned from CBT gave me a great foundation to create and build a skill set for dealing with my anxiety and OCD. Self care, counselling, medication, clean eating, running, sleep, and support from family and friends are all integral parts of my skill set. I like to view each of these assets as an individual strand in a spider's web; any one of these on it's own isn't going to work, but all of these things woven together will create a safety net for when I feel myself falling.
The biggest, and most important, thing I want people to know is that you can't make assumptions. Just because someone looks "fine" on the outside, doesn't mean that they aren't falling apart on the inside. Mental Health doesn't discriminate.
The day I realized i’d washed my hands to the point of making them bleed was a turning point for me. I knew I didn’t have control over my behaviours and thoughts at that time.