The manifestations of mental illness in my childhood and adolescence

It has taken a long time for me to realise something was wrong. In fact the realisation has actually been quite liberating as I know that my feelings and thoughts are not my fault, but I have to take some control and recognise triggers and stay away from any stressful situations that I can knowingly avoid! Following my diagnosis and first psychiatric visits I have learned a lot about mental health and its surrounding issues. Knowledge and hindsight have allowed many pieces of the puzzle to fall into place. I still get upset when I think back to the little girl who felt so isolated and confused and that somehow she was not ever meant to be here.

It’s difficult to know where to start in explaining how my destructive thoughts and feelings first manifested themselves. I can remember the little five year old girl who had to (and I mean had to!) check that her books were stacked neatly. This then progressed to having to have the curtains straight, tops on bottles and tins facing the right way! Anything that wasn’t neat would seriously do my head in until the point I would get so angry! I remember the arguments I used to have with my sister and she would win the match by disarranging my books or moving the curtains and then holding me down until I apologised - then releasing me so I could bring back some order to my surroundings! In the end it got to the point where it would take me more than half an hour to rearrange the whole house before I could close my eyes and sleep. School and work were nightmares as I had no control over the space. It was so difficult to concentrate if anything was out of place! At home though I soon had the whole family pretty much trained!

Anxiety was always a major issue – you name it I would worry about it – and I mean worry! In primary school I would lie awake and obsess as to what I said, from where I put things to what the teacher would think. The day I started high school I got myself so worked up over the school holidays that I took a load of pills just to get out of going. In fact it was probably at high school that my problems truly manifested. I feel that if you have a tendency to worry or obsess it is magnified when the adult world comes along. It was when I was 14 that I first went to the doctor (not about my compulsion for order - didn’t have a clue what OCD was then!) but because I couldn’t stop crying, felt seriously fat and ugly, not sleeping, and the continual thoughts of wanting to take loads of pills. Though when I got there I literally didn’t know what to say and started crying about how I felt ugly. I was then promptly put on the scales and told I was a bit over weight (not a lot!) and that I was ‘a very pretty girl’. That day I went home and took a whole box of paracetamol/codeine tablets. Luckily I was very sick and some how just got on with it until the next time I wanted to end it all.

With the eyes of an adult I wish that the Doctor had probed further into why a 14 year old had took the day off school and was crying in his office over her weight. Sometimes I wish that if I could have spoken up sooner about my feelings, or had the words to express how I felt, somehow I could have avoided the future deterioration and obstacles like being in hospital and taking lithium.