My experience with mental health conditions started since I was a child. It is believed among the mental health community that factors such the environment, events and/or genes are responsible for the development of mental illnesses. In my case, I could say my biological nature was activated through the environment I grew up in and the events I have encountered throughout my life.
As a child, I have this recurring imagination of the glass door in our living room shattering. It might appeared as if I had a wild sense of imagination as a kid. However, it brought me terrible bouts of anxiety. Throughout my childhood and adolescences, I developed compulsive behaviours— such as ritualistic set of activities to be carried out at the very specific time of the day, persistently checking on things in fear of losing or misplacing it and magnifying the consequences of such loss, hair pulling and etc. In this sense, these are a few ways in which my uncontrollable anxiety manifesting physically as the coping mechanisms. Sometimes, I was in so much distress internally that I would rub my feet until they were bruised. I would get panic attacks as a child and I didn’t know the words to describe it so I called it ‘an itch in my heart’.
I vividly remember how everyone in my family would laugh at it, telling me to scratch the itch away so I feel better about it. When I looked back, I remember this very angry and confused little girl whose feelings were invalidated as ‘kids-being-kids’. Moreover, I did relatively well and I never had any disciplinary issues in school so I didn’t raise any red flags. In another word, I was ‘flying under the radar’ all my life.
I was raised overseas till I was 11 years old. From where I came from, I didn’t have the resources to get the necessary help I needed, including diagnosis and treatment. From my parent’s part, they weren’t aware of such behaviours are possibly the symptoms of mental health conditions. In general, the public’s knowledge of mental health issues is only limited to those individuals who are admitted to mental asylums and thus, it was taboo to talk about it openly.