Nadine: Anxiety and Depression: Can Therapy Really Help?

Originally released 2020

In Episode 8 of Our Stories, Nadine talks about a lifetime of anxiety, the moment panic attacks finally had a name, and a breakup that led to situational depression. Nadine also talks about writing poetry, two very different therapists, and talking openly with family.

Watch Episode 8 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.

I’ve always been a very anxious person. When I was six — this is one of my favourite stories about myself — my mom practised with me, when I was going to preschool or, like, Grade 1, she practised with me unwrapping my sandwich. Because I had such anxiety about getting to the lunchroom in front of all the kids and having to unwrap, like, the plastic wrap off my sandwich, so I made her practise with me so I wouldn’t make a fool of myself, at, like, six years old. I didn’t know, obviously, at the time that I had, like, crazy anxiety about things like that.

I come from a long line of anxious women. I think I had a little bit of social anxiety growing up. Like, going to parties and stuff used to make me nervous. I had this, you know, like, heaviness in my chest about, about social situations I didn’t fully understand.

So then I was 18. I got kicked out of theatre school, my parents were getting divorced, and then one of my best friends died in a car accident, like, randomly. And so there was just a period of time within, like, six months where sort of everything came to a head, and I just didn’t deal with it. I just pushed past that. And again, I still didn’t even know that I had, that I had this, like, volcano of, of anxiety sort of just resting, asleep, dormant, waiting for it to sort of come to the surface.

I started getting heart palpitations, and my heart would stop for about five seconds, which is kind of… it doesn’t seem like a long time, but it is a long time. And then it would speed up really fast, as if you’re going down a roller coaster, like that feeling of sort of gravity leaving you. And it would just do that in the middle of… I ended up going to another theatre school, so this, I would do that in the middle of class, and I would stop. My whole body would just stop moving, and then that weird sort of gravity-loss feeling.

So I went to the hospital and I got a heart rate monitor put on. And then I would go to my family doctor, and she’s like, “Oh, like, well, I prescribe your mom this, and I don’t want to prescribe it to you if you don’t need it, but, like, are you interested in taking [Ativan]?” And I was like, “Well, I mean, I don’t really want to be on medication.” But she was like, “It’s just for panic attacks.” And then I realized that I was actually having panic attacks, from that one conversation, because I didn’t know what they were. As soon as you realize sort of what it is, like, once you identify the problem, it’s just much easier to deal with it.

So then there was a couple years where I was just like, “I have anxiety,” and I would just sort of wear that like a little sweater. Like, “Sometimes I have anxiety.”

And then two years ago, I was in a relationship that I was really, really committed to, and then it sort of just exploded in one day, which was very strange, because I had known this person for five years. And we weren’t together for that long, but he was my best friend, and, and there was something about that… And sorry, I forgot to mention that my parents, they were divorced when I was 17. They got back together when I was 22, like, remarried, and then divorced again when I was 26.

For some reason, there was something about getting broken up with that… I got situational depression, and I couldn’t get out of bed. I would cry at the drop of a hat. I just remember… I was about to go to a wedding, like, a couple months after my breakup, and I went to go get manicures with two of my friends, and I was, like, bawling my eyes out for no reason while I had, like, hands in hot water, in front of, like, 30 other women, and all these women on the other side of the table. And, and I was like… it wasn’t, like, a cute, like, one tear. Like, and everyone was so weirded out by me. But I just couldn’t control… The minute I started thinking about something I didn’t like, I couldn’t control how upset it made me.

And I just was like… I was at the point where I’m like, “I am worthless. Everybody hates me. Like, why can’t I keep a relationship? Like, why do my parents not like us enough to stay together?” I just didn’t know how to deal with it.

So what I started doing, inadvertently, was, like, I was writing poetry on my phone about how I felt about things in general. And then I was writing and writing, and then I would copy and paste it onto my computer, and then I realized that I had over a hundred poems about, you know, how I felt. And how, like, from the whole range of, like, “Oh my God, I feel totally worthless,” to “Oh my God, am I ever going to feel better,” to, like, “I think I just can’t wait for this to be over, because I know that it will be over eventually.” And so I was like, “I’m gonna write a book about it.” So I compiled all this poetry together and wrote a book.

And then I discovered therapy. I went to one therapist first that was recommended to me, and he literally said to me, “You are the maker of all your problems, and it’s because you don’t know how to identify healthy men.” I ended up going to another therapist, who was a student. I went to go see her once a week, and we talked about lots of stuff, and sometimes we talked about nothing. And then after a while, I was able to internalize all of what she was saying and apply it in the moment to situations. I think it just, like, strengthened almost all of my relationships.

I’m not saying that, “Oh, my anxiety is gone, it’s so great.” It’s not. But I’m able to deal with it. I don’t make it everyone else’s problem. Now I can actually just take a step back and essentially be my own therapist for a few minutes. And sometimes I need to talk to… often I need to talk to people. I’ve talked to my mom about it a lot now, too, and both my grandmas about it.

And I think that understanding that hereditary… understanding that, like, we are all in this truly together, and also, you gave me this, was a tremendous help. Because now we’re able to talk about it, and we’re able to identify patterns, and then you can sort of [nip] those in the bud before they bloom into other, more unhealthy patterns.

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.

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