The Latent Effects of Undiagnosed Mental Illness (and Physical Illness)

Growing up, I was sick a lot. When I was younger, I used to get a lot of strep throat, but the doctors were eventually able to fix that. However, there were other things the doctors didn't see and couldn't fix, like my absolute terror of thunderstorms that lasted well past the age that a kid should be petrified of things like that. Or the fact that sometimes at night, I couldn't shake this feeling that someone was watching me, so I would sleep in my closet until I woke up part way through the night settled down. I also have always slept with a TV on because the silence makes my heart race. Or that I can't sleep with my bed in the middle of the room because I feel like someone's going to sneak up on me. Then there were the nights when I would lay in my bed sobbing just begging God not to take away any more of the people I loved which started around the age of 9 or 10.

A lot of that, I'm not even sure my mom knows. As close as we have always been, growing up there were a lot of things about how I felt that I didn't tell her. While I wore my heart on my sleeve, I internalized so many of these scarier, darker feelings that only seemed to show up as monsters in the night when I was all alone in my room. I felt this sort of responsibility to her, to be on my best behavior, to be the perfect child, to make her life easier. Now I was by no means perfect, but I got good grades, never really got in trouble, was involved in activities. I was a normal, mostly healthy kid which was quite remarkable to anyone who learned about the trauma I had been through so young.

That's the thing about mental illness, though. Just because you can't see it, it doesn't mean it's not there.

As I got older, I got worse and worse at hiding it. As school got harder, friendships got more complicated, and dating got thrown into the mix, I had a lot of sick days. I would work myself up, hyperventilating, making my stomach upset until I would throw up. I think my senior year of high school, I actually missed more school than not. My poor mom took me to doctor after doctor. We saw specialists, we had tons of tests run. No one could figure out what was wrong with me. My brothers started to resent me, and my older brother thought I was faking it to get attention. I imagine my younger brother probably did, too, he's just never said it to my face. Honestly, I don't blame them. I probably would have had the same reaction.

The only test that came back slightly abnormal was a gall bladder test, but it wasn't abnormal enough to warrant removing my gall bladder at that point. So the search continued, and when I got to my first college I had what I now understand to be my first major breakdown. My roommate said she woke up and found me curled up in the floor sobbing and struggling to breathe and talking about things that didn't make sense. I don't remember any of that. I remember going to the hospital. I remember my mom drove up and we went a saw a family doctor and for the first time someone suggested I might have a mental illness. I didn't really take her seriously. It wasn't long after that that I withdrew and came home.

After another major breakdown a year and a half later while at Ball State, after my group for my final project saved me from failing and the professor showed me some grace, I finally faced my demons and sought out help. (For the record, we did eventually learn that I had a bad gallbladder too, and they took that thing right on out!) The backstory, though, isn't what this post is about even though I've spent a lot of time laying it out. This is about the present.

You see, all those years of unexplainable illness did what's probably irreparable damage to my relationship with my brothers. To this day, whenever I am sick or hurt, I feel like they're judging me, thinking I'm still just faking it all. That's probably not true, but that's what anxiety and depression do. They make you obsess about what other people may be thinking, and then you feel bad about yourself because you think they see you in a particular way. It starts to eat away at you. You start to feel guilt about the past, about what you put your family through for so many years. Rationally, you know that there's nothing to feel guilty for, but you can't help it. The thoughts of guilt start to turn into wondering if maybe you are the reason for every strained relationship and bad thing that's happened in your family. It is completely and entirely irrational, but depression and anxiety don't run on reason or intelligence, they feed off your emotions.

I've been battling some unknown shoulder injury for going on two months now. Physical therapy didn't help, the steroid injection didn't help, now we will have to do imaging to try and find out what the issue is. Meanwhile, we are supposed to be moving in six weeks, and our entire house needs cleaned and packed, and I can't really help with any of it. Instead, I just have to sit back and watch my mom struggle and be exhausted trying to do it. On top of that, I'm now starting to line up all of these vendor events where I will have to put up and tear down my booth, and there's no way my shoulder will be ready for that. It is a huge source of anxiety for me to the point that I've started having anxiety attacks in my sleep. Where I wasn't having any trouble getting out of bed before, now it's a struggle to convince myself not to call in every day, and it's all because of my shoulder hurting. The pain, mind you, has been validated by the doctor and the physical therapist who keep telling me it's inflamed, but I lay here at night wondering if it's all in my head just like it was for all of those teenage years.

But I don't talk about any of that to anyone because that just makes me MORE of a burden, MORE whiny, MORE needy, and that's the last thing I want to be right now. So I continue to suffer as silently as possible, throwing myself into things that I love like SeneGence and leaning on my SeneSisters and close friends for support. They don't ask a lot of questions. I tell them that I'm having a bad day, and they just say they love me, that they're there for me.

Unfortunately most of them are also all the way in Texas so they can't come help me pack.