Part 1: My Mental Health Journey
By: Prerna Majumdar
Tags: Mental Health Awareness, Psychology, Self, Mental Health, Stress

Photo by Anthony Tran on Unsplash

Disclaimer: Everything I talk about in this post are solely my experiences and what has helped me, I’m not a therapist or licensed physician. There’s mention of suicide and death in this so please don’t read this if you feel this may trigger you.

For as long as I can remember I’ve struggled with my mental health. Through out my life there have been times when I’ve been afraid of my own thoughts and afraid of just being alone. My intrusive thoughts would take over my day to day life.

The earliest memory I have of getting these intrusive thoughts are from when I was about nine years old. The first thought I distinctly remember having was if I didn’t turn the sink on and off eight times someone I love would die. I was so scared after having this thought I turned the sink on and off eight times. From here on out I just remember being extremely obsessive about doing things in even numbers because my brain would tell me that if I didn’t do these things someone I love would die.

I was so terrifyed I would do whatever my brain would tell me to. There were times when I would open and close the door eight times because that’s what my brain would tell me to do. If I didn’t I was afraid that someone in my family would be harmed. This is when my obessesive compulsive disorder started to make itself known. The more I did what my brain and my intrusive thoughts would tell me to the worse I got mentally because I gave into whatever was asking me to do these things. I was also young so I believed that I was the only person having these types of thoughts and I was so so scared. I didn’t dare tell my parents because I thought I would get in trouble for having these thoughts in the first place.

My sleepless nights followed shortly after. I would be extremely afraid to go to sleep because I was afraid that if I fell asleep I would die. With this fear came my severe panic attacks which I didn’t know were panic atatcks at the time. I would wake up gasping for air, thinking I was dying. I would wake my parents up and tell them I couldn’t breath. My brother has asthma so they would start running around the house trying to find an inhaler to give me. They had no idea it was anxiety, so they would be pretty freaked out. I remember the very first time I woke up struggling to breathe, I scared my parents to the point where my dad ended up having to take me to the hospital because they thought I was having an asthma attack or something. From what I can remember the doctor said that I just had a nightmare which is why I woke up so afraid and gasping for air.

With all of this I started to struggle with focusing on my daily tasks whether it was homework or watching tv. I had a hard time focusing in school which is when my grades evidently started dropping. When I showed my parents my report card they were less then impressed. My mom told me I couldn’t watch tv for a week and obviously being so young I was devestated. I was so upset by this punishment that my intrusive thoughts worsened to the point where I started to expereince suicidal ideations at the age of nine. I think these thoughts terrified me more than anything else. I remember having these sucidal ideations at random moments in the day and if I was in a room alone when these thoughts seeped into my mind I would go and find one of my parents and sit with them because I was terrified I would act on these sucidal thoughts if I continued to be in a room alone.

My ideations started to worsen as time went on and it made me so terrified I couldn’t sleep alone anymore. The ideations started becoming even scarier because they started to combine with my intrusive thoughts. I started having thoughts that were along the lines of “If you don’t kill yourself someone you love will die”. This is when I was too scared to continue dealing with this on my own and I decided to tell my mom.

Thank you for reading part one of my mental health journey. There’s so much more to this story that I’ll be sharing.