Originally released 2020
In Episode 1 of Our Stories, David describes what anxiety and depression feel like, physically and day to day. David talks about a mental breakdown, grief after the death of a partner, and why reaching out matters.
Watch Episode 1 on YouTube · See all episodes of Our Stories
Transcript
This transcript is lightly edited for reading: punctuation added, and “uh” and “um” removed where the meaning is unchanged. Words in [square brackets] are editorial. To respect her privacy, the name of David’s partner is replaced with [his partner].
My mind starts to race. It’s, it starts to skip steps. So if I take in information, my mind starts to jump to conclusions to process the information faster. And when your mind starts to make those assumptions and it starts to snowball, your heart starts to pound a lot faster and a lot heavier. You can feel it in your chest and you can feel it in your throat, and [you] start to sweat and you start to fidget.
And now everything starts to close in, and you don’t know where to go. You don’t know where to turn, what to do or what to say. It’s, everything just, just clamps down and eventually just starts pushing all of the air out of your lungs, slowly. My mind starts to go dizzy, and, and it starts to go blank, and my, my eyesight starts to go blank, and I start to feel faint. And, and I’ve, I’ve gotten close to passing out a couple of times because of anxiety, physically.
Depression is a lot harder to describe. You’re being weighed down by nothing. There’s nothing around you, but you feel heavy. A lot heavier than you would on a good day or on a normal day, or just, you feel heavier than everybody else, but you can’t really explain where it’s coming from. You can, you can make it through your day, but everything requires a lot more energy, a lot more effort, and you really start to question, you really start to wonder what is worth doing and what isn’t.
My journey with mental health really started about three, three years ago. I had a full mental breakdown. Couldn’t work. I was sleeping two or three hours a night, at night, and then would sleep maybe 17 hours during the day. It was a bit of a, of a trying time, especially because I had no idea what was going on. It was just, everything was just becoming more and more negative, and everything was becoming more clouded, and I couldn’t make sense of anything anymore.
Even my house gave me anxiety. I couldn’t go grocery shopping. I could barely take my little dog out for a walk. Really, really just, just shut down and struggle hard for about almost a year, completely on my own, without doctor’s help or anything like that.
I met someone who was also a very big advocate for mental health and was very open about her struggles, and we started seeing each other last year in January and hit it off right away. It was, it was a huge part of my healing process to be able to be with someone who just understood and who didn’t judge, and who was okay just lying around on a bad day, and, and was okay to be spontaneous and go out and do things on a good day.
Like I said, she was a sufferer from mental illness as well. And August 27th of last year, she, she herself lost her battle with depression. And… that… it really took a toll. It really, really, really took a toll. My, my healing stopped. Everything just stopped.
You know, you don’t really know how far rock bottom is until you think you hit it and then continue to fall further. And, and that’s, that’s what happened to me. I, I struggled myself until I could get the help that I needed to, to start getting better, and I thought that was rock bottom. And then after I lost [his partner], everything just fell further again. I was back to not sleeping again. I wasn’t eating anything. I couldn’t, I couldn’t think. I couldn’t see straight. I was, I was emotional at all times of, of, of every day.
And it took, I took a lot of… it took a lot of personal work and a really, really, really hard journey just to get to the stable point that I am now. Because of that, fighting a battle against yourself that nobody will ever see is incredibly exhausting. But we make it through, and we do what we need to.
Being able to talk about and being open about your struggles and what you’re dealing with really helps put things into perspective, and really helps take a lot of that weight off. Because a lot of that weight you feel is segregation and separation. It’s a feeling of loneliness, that you’re the only one that’s going through this, that it’s the world against you.
So being able to reach out and to talk with somebody really helps control that part of your mind that wants you to feel isolated, and that believes you are isolated. And it helps remind it that you aren’t. That there are people there who love you, that there are people around [who] want to listen, who want to help you. So the best thing I can tell anybody to do is to reach out and get help.
About Our Stories
Our Stories is a 10-part documentary series from URevolution. In each episode, one person talks about their own mental health in their own words. See all episodes, transcripts and support resources.
If you need support, find free helplines in Canada, the US, Australia and elsewhere.
Credits
| Role | Name |
|---|---|
| Director and editor | Kelly Paoli |
| Cinematography | Jonathan Choi |
| Original score | Milen Petzelt-Sorace |
| Executive producers | Brendan McDonald and Corinne Gray |
| Produced by | URevolution |
