Hi, I’m Louisa!
Hi blog! Louisa here. I’m Kirsten’s little sister!
I guess my job description at this point is professional anxiety patient, which may sound like a huge bummer but hey, it could be worse! I will be writing a little blog post for you guys every month, sharing my experiences in everything mental health including therapy, medication, hospitalization and all things in between. This is to give readers a glimpse into mental health struggles from the patient’s’ perspective. Hope you find it helpful!
Thank you!
Where it all began
I guess I will start at the beginning of my anxiety journey. Looking back, I can see my anxiety making its presence known from as far back as I can remember. I would say I probably came out of the womb anxious! Almost every clear memory I have from childhood has some sort of tinge of anxiety in it. I was not a shy child, in fact I loved attention, which perhaps made it harder for adults around me to see how anxious I was. The most obvious sign was how dependent I was on my mom. Now, being overly attached to your mom doesn’t necessarily mean anything is wrong but I remember having huge meltdowns every time she was would go out without me, which was not very often because she was a stay-at-home mom. So, I took “attached” to the extreme. I would get hysterical and desperate to make her stay home. This was around the same time my parents divorced so it does not take a PhD to figure why I was being triggered, but the intensity of my reaction was confusing all the same. As time went on, I gained more independence and though I was still an anxious kid that liked routine and predictability in life, I was not being fully controlled by my anxious thoughts. All of that changed when I was 11.
I was going to a slumber party but ended up wanting to go home, which happened literally every single time I would try to sleep anywhere but home. The next morning, I threw up, and since that moment I developed emetophobia aka the fear of throwing up. It was not a traumatic event by any means, but it was like my brain thought “Aha!! now I have something specific to pour all of my anxiety into.” After that short and completely uncomplicated bout of the stomach flu, I became obsessed with being hyper focused on if I was feeling nauseous or not. This, of course, became a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy because the more I focused on searching for any sings or nausea, the more nauseated I became. Also, one of the most common physical manifestations of anxiety is nausea, so I really painted myself into a corner there. All of this led to me desperately trying to find even just an illusion of control, so I stopped eating. My 11-year-old logic told me that if I did not have food in my stomach, then I would not be able to throw up. I also would not get food poisoning, another thing I was terrified of for obvious reasons. I was losing weight at an alarming rate and would become dehydrated, which was terrifying for everyone to witness.
My mom took me to my pediatrician, a very skilled physician with an unfortunate bedside manner. I told her about my obsessive thoughts and she said with her intimidating German accent “Well you know Louisa, the world doesn’t revolve around you.” This was the 90’s, when anxiety disorders were under diagnosed and treatment from GP’s beyond “suck it up” was still relatively new, so I forgive her for that ridiculous answer. Unfortunately the shame I felt from opening up only to have it thrown back in my face would effect me for years to come. Thankfully my mom did not accept that as an answer. The difficult thing for parents of young children suffering from mental health difficulties is that kids just don’t have the language or understanding of themselves to be able to communicate what is really going on in their mind and body. I just kept saying I felt nauseous and would obsessively ask if I looked pale or sick. So of course, everyone’s first thought was to figure out what was wrong with me physically.
After countless blood tests and doctors visits, it was finally decided that I need an endoscopy (camera drown my throat) to see what was going on with my stomach from the inside. My mom said she remembers the doctor approaching her a bit nervously after the procedure. He told her that nothing was wrong and perhaps my issues were psychological. She thinks he was nervous to tell her because he was worried she would not accept my issues being “only” psychological. I am sure he had encountered that type of reaction before, which makes me so sad.
Thankfully, my mom was just happy to have gained some clarity in the situation, even if it brought on a whole new set of questions. I was referred to a child psychiatrist, who pretty much immediately diagnosed me with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. Nowadays the first line of therapy for OCD will usually be Cognitive Behavioral Therapy paired often with anti depressants or anti anxiety medication, and perhaps that is how it was in the 90’s as well, but the treatment I received from the psychiatrist was only talk therapy based. There was no structured therapy in regards to methodically mapping out my thoughts and triggers. No explaining of the anxiety cycle, or how to handle my symptoms. After a few months of therapy that was mostly focused on my awful relationship with my dad (sidenote: we are great now!) I was spiraling more and more. I was very underweight and completely drowning in anxiety, obsessive thoughts, and compulsive rituals. Everything revolved around not throwing up. For example, I stopped eating anything with dairy because I remember hearing an old wives tale about dairy causing upset stomach. I would basically only eat donuts or happy meals from McDonald’s. I am not sure why my anxiety labeled that as “safe food” but anxiety is inherently delusional, so it never really makes sense.
Apropos not making sense, I would also have to get dressed in the morning in a very specific way and if I did not do it “correctly”, I would not go to school because I would be completely convinced that would throw up because I screwed up my ritual. It was paralyzing. Even when I did the ritual correctly, a lot of times my anxiety would convince me that I might have done it wrong and it was not worth taking the chance. I missed a lot of school because of this, which in retrospect also stunted my social and emotional growth. There are so many experiences in my school life that were completely tainted by how much I was either absent or overwhelmed by anxiety. I was incredibly fortunate to be naturally confident but I still cringe thinking about how I would over-share my anxious thoughts to my peers in a bid to feel safe and understood by everyone around me. For me, warning people that I could get a panic attack made me feel secure that someone could either help me if I needed it, or it would explain any weird behavior I would potentially exhibit. I knew none of my OCD rituals were “real”, in the sense that I knew logically that getting dressed in a certain way could not actually control anything. It was not an actual delusion, but of course I understand now that the cycle of anxiety, the thoughts triggering the physical symptoms, convinced my subconscious brain that I could not trust my own judgment and the short term relief I would feel by giving in to the compulsions became addictive. I would be desperate to feel any respirate from the constant discomfort of anxiety, that I just could not resist.
The problem then became that my anxiety would require more and more reassurance, more and more compulsive rituals, and there was no room left in my life for anything else but feeding that need. When I use the word addicted, I genuinely mean it. It is so easy to accidentally create an addictive pattern in the brain, and self soothing anxiety revolves around a similar reward system that any other addiction uses. Triggers + Fear = Ritual, Ritual = Relief. Unfortunately, as with any addiction, the stakes get higher and higher and soon you are trapped in the cycle where it never really feels like you are getting what you need, but you desperately keep trying. It is at this point that my psychiatrist gave me an ultimatum: start medication or go into the hospital to essentially be force fed. That decision, at the already confusing and delicate age of 12, would start a long and mostly detrimental journey with pharmaceuticals.
In my next blog post I will discuss starting on anti-depressants at 12 years old and navigating all of the side effects that go with them, the evolution of my anxiety through puberty and more experience with therapy!
With gratitude,
Louisa Sherlock
