The Masks I Still Wear

I felt my breathing quicken and the tears well in my eyes. My whole body was tense, every muscle ready to run. After fighting it for five minutes or so, I made my escape. Walking quickly, I made a bee-line for the bathroom, locked myself in a stall, and released the panic attack that had been building up. It was going to happen no matter what, it may as well not happen in front of other people. My brain was swirling in an opposing mix of anxiety about not wanting anyone to see me at my worse and a longing to not feel as isolated as I did that moment, hoping that someone would walk in and be there to help.
A Friday night after a long week, I was at our variety show banquet which I'd been looking forward to since the show had closed nearly two weeks earlier. That year, after spending a winter isolating myself from people in general, I had finally found friends in this group, many of whom had been around for all three years that I'd been in the show, but it took until this year for them to turn from acquaintances and castmates into friends (going from 2 to 22 Facebook official friendships). When the show closed after its one-weekend run, my social interaction level fell off a cliff, and I was on the struggle bus trying to deal. Banquet night was supposed to be a time to reconnect with many of them. But then I got there early and didn't want to grab a table all by myself, then as people I knew trickled in, all of their tables seemed suddenly full, and I didn't know where there was room for me but was too afraid to ask for fear of imposing or being rejected, and on top of it all, after showing up in a nicer but casual outfit involving denim capris the year before and feeling severely underdressed compared to everyone else, I showed up in a casual dress and leggings to discover that this year most people were in jeans and felt incredibly overdressed, and just as I had started feeling like I fit in, I suddenly felt like I ceased to belong. (And in that crazy-long, run-on sentence, welcome to my brain on a panic attack).
In the bigger picture, that panic attack was really the result of a spiral that had started the previous Monday with a day that had been, by all rational standards, a pretty fantastic day outside of being plagued by physical anxiety symptoms for literally no darn reason. When physical anxiety symptoms stick around for too long, anxiety brain likes to find reasons for its existence. By the end of the day on Monday, then, the questions started swimming in my head: What had I done during the day's professional development sessions to make a fool of myself in front of my colleagues (especially as I try to get rehired in the district, hopefully for something much closer to full time than I am now)? Had I said too many negative or idiotic things out at dinner with recent acquaintances-turned-friends that would make them reconsider wanting to spend time with me again? Was there something I'd done wrong at the volunteer event I'd worked at that evening that would somehow destroy any of the work that we'd gotten done? The questions running through my head started coloring all my memories from the day with doubt and insecurity.
I'd tried to spend that day ignoring all of my physical anxiety symptoms, tried to enjoy all the great moments that had happened, tried to convince myself that I was fine even though I didn't feel that way. I'd spent my whole day attempting to cling to the positive - but I wasn't doing it for myself. I was doing it because it's what I felt was expected of me. More than I was trying to help myself be okay, I was trying to convince everyone around me that I was okay.
After many years of hard work, I've finally managed to convince myself that I'm still valuable and lovable even as a person who struggles with an anxiety disorder (which, when it gets bad, also leads to stretches of depression) - but somewhere along the line I also developed the belief that I'm only worthy of that value and love if I'm successfully managing my anxiety disorder. If I'm falling apart? If I can't manage to pull my life together no matter how hard I try? If no matter what I do, the anxiety gets worse to a point where I give up trying to get better? I'm worthless. I'm unlovable. I should expect to be abandoned and shunned.
Because I'm pretty open about my anxiety (except at work), I like to think that I've put away most of my masks of perfection. But when it gets bad, I start to put new masks on - not ones of perfection, but ones of successfully managing my mental health disorders. I'd been doing it all winter. I put on the mask of stress management in the face of ever-increasing stressors and anxiety-triggers at home and at work when I felt overwhelmed to a point of drowning. I put on the mask of cautious optimism in the face of yet another year of job insecurity when internally I was convinced that I was a failure of a teacher who wouldn't ever get hired again. I put on the mask of attempting to be a functional human being when really I was cutting out all non-essential pieces of my hygiene routine, eating junk or nothing at all, and not getting my dog outside beyond the small front lawn to do his business. I put on the mask of a faith still standing when panic attacks had kept me out of church for months and ignoring God's existence half the time because it was too painful to acknowledge Him in my life when it still brought me no hope, no comfort.
That fantastic-but-anxious Monday that had started my week? I'd had a chance during an afternoon professional development session to reconnect with an instructor I had for the one graduate-level course I took a couple of years ago who's very aware of my anxiety struggles. Before her presentation, she asked how I was doing, and I talked about liking my job and wanting to start working toward my Master's Degree in her specialty area as soon as life's timing allows. After her presentation, she more pointedly asked how I was doing with my health and if I was taking care of myself; I admitted some of the struggles but tried to put a positive spin on it. I didn't to disappoint her by sharing just how bad this winter was and how much I've really struggled to take care of myself through it all and how after a couple of weeks of successfully managing my anxiety, at that moment in time I was at a jumping-out-of-my-skin level of anxiety. Later that evening out at dinner with friends from the show, one of them turned to me to ask a little about my anxiety struggles, and after I shared a little bit, she followed up with the question "But you're turning a corner now, right?" I attempted to answer with something positive because I was afraid to disappoint her and the rest of the group by sharing that I was having a crappy anxiety day. The full truth was that I'd felt really great during show week and the week that followed, but at that moment, that evening, anxiety brain was fighting to take over. While rational brain was saying "I'm so happy to be here with this group of people," anxiety brain was screaming "I hope I don't do anything stupid that will make these people never want to hang out with me again." So I put on the "I have an anxiety disorder but I can totally handle managing it" mask.

"Being aware of your crap and actually overcoming your crap are two very different things." ~ Christina Yang, Grey's Anatomy (Season 4, Episode 6)

I spent most of Monday telling myself I was thinking positively and optimistically about the anxiety struggles of the day. That night when I got home, felt like isolating myself, and started crying the moment I made it to my room, I realized that all my positivity was driven less by a desire to be healthy and more by a desire to not let other people down. Anxiety had run my day, and I had let it.
I spent the rest of the week trying to strike a balance between being real about how I was struggling and trying to find the bright side. Because maybe finding a bright side would eventually be more about trying to be healthy instead of trying to live up to other people's expectations for me. But I wasn't going to let anxiety run my life either, and that meant forcing myself to start taking off the masks and risk letting people see all of me in the rough moments and days the same way I did on the good ones.
The Facebook responses from my new show friends through the week were positive and supportive, but dealing with the face-to-face possibilities at Friday's banquet helped to push me over the edge, and I had a panic attack at a time that I really didn't want to have one. The good news is, this story has an actual bright side. Once I'd made it past the big panic attack and at least made my way out of the bathroom stall to where the sinks were, one of those new friends happened to walk into the bathroom, expressed a calm, helpful, non-suffocating amount of concern, and when I shared that one of the things that had set me off (and was keeping me in the bathroom) was the fear of finding a place to sit at one of the tables, she offered to help me out with that. A couple of minutes later, I talked myself into finally leaving my bathroom hiding spot and wound up at a spot next to her at a table full of people that I generally have a pretty strong comfort level with, and the night got better. The night was still a rollercoaster of emotions with no rhyme or reason, where I'd slip between feeling great and having fun to holding back tears in an instant for no real reason. But the night felt good overall by the end. I didn't leave. I didn't have another panic attack. I didn't burst into tears in front of people. And, after my anxiety dipping to panic attack levels, I was supported and not abandoned.
So I'll add the memory of this night to the others I've built over the past few weeks. One more reason to take off the masks. One more reason to believe more in myself and less in what anxiety brain tells me. One more weapon in the battle to believe that the bright sides of the bad days are real and lasting and worth holding on to.

In Response to "13 Reasons Why"

Note
As I reflect on my own response to 13 Reasons Why, I must include some of my own experiences as an example. But that is not to say that my experiences are shared among all those who have experienced depression and/or suicidal ideations. One of my biggest frustrations about criticisms of 13 Reasons Why is the people who say "I have depression and was suicidal, and I never felt that way or experienced that. This story is completely unrealistic!" - and they say those things about the exact same experiences that have been part of my own mental health journey. So are these experiences universal? No. But are they realistic? Well, seeing as I've had them and a book/series depicts those same things, I'm willing to bet that there are plenty of others who share those experiences as well.

In Response to 13 Reasons Why 
It's been over 4 months since I first watched the controversial Netflix series 13 Reasons Why and over 3 months since I read the book and then re-watched the series. As someone who is passionate about and has often written about mental health issues, I've really thought a lot about what and how to share about my own reaction - and I have the half dozen drafts of this post started at various different times through the spring/summer to prove it. For me, watching the series and reading the book were cathartic activities. I find myself both awed and grateful any time I find a fictional work that depicts a character who experiences depression and/or anxiety in ways that I can relate to as someone who has experienced them myself.
As I do any time I finish a TV series for the first time, I delved into internet articles about 13 Reasons Why. I knew the criticisms from the mental health community and my fellow educators about the graphic scenes portrayed in this series. What I didn't know until then was that among the many critics of 13 Reasons Why were many who expressed severe judgment over main character Hannah Baker, the girl who died by suicide. It seriously threw me. Here was a character whose experiences I could relate to in my own journey battling depression and people were condemning her for many of the traits, thoughts, and actions that I could relate to. Many mental health professionals warned those battling depression against watching the series worrying that it would trigger downward spirals. To me it was not the series itself that was triggering - it was seeing how people responded to it.
I'm not going to argue against the criticisms coming from mental health professionals - that is their area of expertise and not mine. I don't know that I want to see the series disappear completely as I think that there are some messages that it gets right, but that doesn't mean that it's meant for everyone to view - adults should gauge how it may affect their own mental health (I, personally, intentionally have only interacted with the story when I'm having a solidly positive mental health day), and most teens should probably have some adult guidance in watching (yes, I realize how hard this is with a series that's on Netflix). Where I really find that I'm at, however, is accepting that this series is readily available for viewing by anyone with a Netflix account, and the question that I have now is this: What do we do in response to its existence? And to this my answer is that one of the best things we can do is respond with compassion.
In 13 Reasons Why, Hannah Baker leaves behind 13 tapes detailing 13 experiences, and 12 people, who led her to believe that death was her only escape from a life that she felt was too painful to continue living. And right here I'd like to address one thing: Feelings and emotions are not right or wrong, they simply are. Even the negative ones. Even the ones you may not agree with. Feelings can change when perspectives change, but to shame someone for their gut-reaction is counterproductive at best. And people who are living in a dark pit of despair, whether you understand that darkness or not, need your compassion, not your judgment.
Some say that Hannah's frustrations with her life are petty and blown out of proportion. But for some who are dealing with depression, the little things add a thousand pounds of weight to a load that's already crushing you. The final straw before my first active suicidal thoughts? Having to videotape the lesson my former friend (with whom I'd had a blowout fight earlier in the semester) teach a lesson when we got stuck in the same room for teaching clinicals. It shouldn't have been a big deal - but at the time, it was to me. It was the straw that nearly broke this camel's back. Sometimes when you're battling depression the things that are easy for others to cope with feel impossible for you to deal with yourself. It doesn't make sense - but it is reality for someone experiencing it.
Some say that Hannah should have ignored the words and actions of the people who became her 13 reasons and gone to the people who actually cared about her for help. But for some who are dealing with depression, one or both of those feel impossible. I don't understand why but when I hit my darkest points, it's often only the opinions of people I feel have hurt or neglected me that matter - especially when circumstances require me to spend more of my time with those people than ones who do care about me. The times that I already feel awful about myself are the times that the criticism of the people that are my classmates and co-workers is all that my emotions latch on to. For reasons that I can't explain, the negative opinions of a few outweigh the love of many - it may not make sense, but it has been my reality. So why not turn to the people that do care? Because sometimes that's more painful than isolating yourself. Because the pain you see others experience when you're hurting only makes your own hurt worse. And it adds a layer of guilt and shame to already feeling awful about yourself and your life. It takes more strength than you might imagine to open up the deepest darkest parts of yourself and share them with anyone, even people who care about you.
Some people are angry that Hannah chose to use her suicide as a revenge against the people who have hurt her. Whether it glamorizes suicide or not I'll leave up to you. But whether it's realistic? Well, on the "Is it going to work?" side, my answer is "Probably Not" - because I think that frequently the people who have hurt you the most probably don't care. But on the "Do people considering suicide actually feel this way?" side, I can say "Yes" - because I've been there. On each of the 3 occasions where I've fought off active suicidal thoughts, an underlying belief was "Maybe if this series of events results in my death, the people that have led me to feel this way will finally wake up and realize that what they did was wrong." Again, will they actually? Probably not. But was it something on my mind? Very much so. Whether you like it or not, your actions do affect other people. It's an important takeaway from the book and the Netflix series. But I also don't want to place blame on those who wonder if they were at any fault when they had a loved one who died by suicide. My best response to you is that if you care enough to ask if you're at fault, you almost certainly aren't. Because to ask that question means that you cared.
Here's what I really want you to take to heart from this post: To judge a fictional character who is dealing with depression (I'll admit this likely diagnosis is my assumption as it's never stated as such in the book or the series) and dies by suicide, at least for some of us dealing with depression, is not a deterrent but a push directly toward the edge of the suicide cliff. Because to see the judgment of traits and experiences that have been part of your reality, it's even easier to think "I'm a horrible person. I don't deserve to live." But to see compassion, to see empathy - those make it easier to open up. Because if you react that way toward a fictional character, maybe you'll act that way toward me. You become a safe person to go to for help rather than another reason on the list to stay quiet and fight what feels like a losing battle all alone.
To my friends who have teens in their lives: I know that this story has worried us. It has made us concerned that the teens who watch it will think that we're as useless as some of the adults in the story. Let this story be a message to us. That the "drama queen" may actually be overwhelmed by life and quickly sinking. That kids might put on a happy face and not tell us what they're feeling. That it's our job to make sure to try to get help for the ones who open up. That we have to be aware of the adults around us who are too much like the ones portrayed in 13 Reasons Why - because, though a minority, they do exist. I'd know - I had a school counselor who was one of them, who my parents tried to get to help me and who ignored their request. Most of us are not like that, but we forget that some are, and we as adults are in a position to do something about that. And we are in the position to talk to the teens in our lives, and we need to have those conversations, especially with those who are engaging with this story. That doesn't mean that teachers need to integrate it into their curriculum, or that every adult needs to offer mental health assistance without training. What it means is that we need to find out what kids are thinking when they watch the series and read the book. It means that when we see a kid who's struggling, we need to connect them to professionals who are trained and equipped to help. It means that we need to be models of compassion and empathy for the people around us who are struggling.
I believe that suicide can be prevented. With the right supports, professional and other, people experiencing suicidal thoughts can learn to battle through them rather than falling to them. But it starts with supporting those people, not judging them.

Making Progress

This year was supposed to be different from before. After discovering my life's calling as an elementary music teacher a couple of years ago and floundering through a similar-but-not-quite-right middle school position last year, I landed myself in an elementary music teaching job again this year, and I thought I was set. But my new position brought some unique challenges - teaching part-time, in three buildings, on a cart (bringing my music materials into students' regular classrooms instead of them coming to see me in a music classroom) - all of which were perfectly primed triggers for my Social Anxiety Disorder. Lack of my own space both at school and at home (where my living situation changed last summer) has meant that I struggle to find time apart from situations where anxiety brain tells me the other people in the room (or who take ownership of the room in some way) are always watching, always judging, always thinking that I'm in the way. Wearing a mask of perfection as I've struggled to find sanctuary in spaces and situations where I don't have to work to manage my anxiety is exhausting, and that exhaustion leads to more-easily triggered anxiety - it's been a vicious cycle. And through the school year, I've gradually fallen apart, becoming a fairly dysfunctional human being.
And then I get mad at myself - because this isn't supposed to be me. Because the adults around me through all the years I was growing up expected to see nothing but greatness and success from me as I became an adult myself. Because when my anxiety was at its worst a few years ago, I took a 7-month medical leave to get myself back on track enough to manage to fake being a "normal" person out in the real world. Because after being non-renewed for the 5th time in my 6-year teaching career across 4 different districts, I had to start assuming that there was something wrong with me. Because when I look at my teaching friends and mentors who also deal with anxiety, they seem to be managing it well enough to thrive while I can barely function.
Unable to find a positive thought about much anything, and knowing how much most people hate being stuck around someone who's negative, I began to isolate myself. It feels easier and less painful to take myself out of social situations than to have people desert me when they get sick of my inability to pull my life together. While logic brain told me that isolation was unhealthy, and I felt incredibly lonely, isolation was the only way I had figured out how to cope.
Except it turns out that it's pretty hard to completely isolate yourself in the weeks and days leading up to performances of a show - especially when you're a member of the show choir, danceline, and board for said variety show. I was looking forward to the performances. I was dreading the time around so many people, so many watching eyes, so many opportunities to judge me (I literally had a panic attack the night before our first dress rehearsal because the wrinkles in my danceline dress weren't coming out, and I didn't want to get in trouble my first year in danceline). And then I got to dress rehearsals, and performance adrenaline kicked in, and it turns out that said performance adrenaline is really good at overpowering anxiety brain - and suddenly I decided that these people were important to me and I wanted to be better connected with them. So I went home and sent a couple of Facebook friend requests that I knew I'd never be brave enough to make if I didn't do it right then (because most of the time, anxiety brain is really good at saying, "Heidi, even though you like, respect, and value those people, you are nowhere near cool enough to talk with them much less be the person who initiates a Facebook friend request").
After that, the rest of the dominoes started falling. This is my third year in the show, and I'm pretty sure that this year I've been more social during show week than in my previous two years combined (and those years we even had two weekends of shows over this year's one). I get bored if I'm not socializing in the times that I'm not required to be onstage or in the wings just offstage. And I went out with the cast after each of our first three shows - staying multiple hours each time. There have been moments of anxiety, but I've managed to push through each one. And I've acquired over 10 new Facebook friends (or so Facebook informs me) both from requests that others have sent and ones that I've sent myself. In an even bigger leap, I've continued to post about my anxiety struggles and triumphs with only minimal hesitation, versus my usual month or two hiatus from personal mental health posts after acquiring new Facebook friends.
Last night at our post-show gathering, after switching tables (which, for possibly the first time ever, I did because I wanted to chat with people I hadn't talked with rather than because I'd been deserted by everyone else at my table), I found myself in a brief moment of reflection where I realized what I've accomplished this week. In that moment, I realized that I was sitting in a small room crowded with 70 people (or so I was told), and I felt zero anxiety. That I'd had a hard time choosing a table both times I was looking for one that night because there were multiple options of people I wanted to chat with and knew I'd be welcome spending time with. That sitting and spending time with these people, I felt completely relaxed. That on more than one occasion that evening I'd shared my thoughts and opinions without any hesitation. That the previous evening when a castmate encouraged, "You do you, Heidi!" I'd never considered doing anything else. That I trusted my relationships with these people enough to be able to throw playful jabs their way without worrying that they'd forever hate me for it. That I'd come to value the hugs and handshakes choreographed into one of our numbers not just for their performance value but for the comradery that they represent with my castmates. And in that moment, I realized that I'd come up with a word for just such a group of people just last summer with my choir friends: family. I've spent most of my adult life building walls up around myself, fearing that if I let people in they'd discover what a mess I am and run away. But now for the second time in under a year, I've managed to integrate myself into a chosen family of people I trust enough to share all of me.
In that moment, I realized that as frustrated as I've been lately with my inability to manage my anxiety levels well enough to function at a normal adult level, I am making progress. This is what progress looks like. I don't have to track my progress by how long it's been since my last panic attack, by whether I convinced myself to eat real food today, by whether I got my dog out for a walk rather than a brief stop outside on the front lawn, etc. The bigger progress is in finding the courage to let people in. In taking the risk of being vulnerable enough to build friendships where I can share all of me without fear of abandonment. In sending a couple of friend requests and watching the dominoes fall from there.
I'm not there yet in my professional life, and I'll keep working toward that. Today I choose to celebrate the progress I've made and hope to continue making as I work to extend new friendships beyond our current performance season. I choose to celebrate that after a rough day at work yesterday, I found joy and comfort in coming together with my newly-discovered family. I am making progress, and for today, that is enough.