Let's Talk About Mental Health: My Thoughts After Watching Jacksgap's video

Today Jack from the Jacksgap YouTube channel posted this video:

It is all about mental health and how people don't like to talk about it. Which is interesting because I have been thinking about this a lot lately too. So I'm going to talk about it...

I am a person who has a lot of anxiety and panic attacks. I had mentioned this briefly before in my book review of Girl Online by Zoe Sugg (which I highly recommend you read if you also suffer from panic attacks). And, despite being a very quite/shy/reserved person, it's not something that I'm shy about telling people anymore. Anymore is the key word in that sentence. Jack is right when he says that people don't like to talk about mental health because we feel like we are not in control. I know for me, that it what scares me the most, not being in control of my body and how I'm feeling.

When I have a panic attack, it feels like there is nothing I can do to prevent it or stop it from happening. I am not a person who has a specific thing that seems to trigger a panic attack. If I being honest, school and tests/quizes/exams are not things that tend to bother me. Socializing or just relaxing with friends seems to be the times when I tend to panic the most. Which seems strange. These are my friends, I can be completely honest with them and they wont judge me. They care about me a lot and I always have fun when I see them. So, why does that cause me to have a panic attack? The only logical explanation I have is that I get excited to see my friends. It's like when I was little and we would go on a long car ride and I would get carsick at first because I was so excited to go wherever it was we were going. It seems like I grew out of that and instead have gained anxiety, panic attacks, and cyclical vomiting syndrome. This has made things very difficult and has put me in the hospital on various occasions.

If you don't know what a panic attack is, the best way I can explain it is to tell you how I feel when it is happening. My heart starts pounding, I start to sweat, I feel like I can't breathe, I start hyperventilating, because of that my arms and legs start to tingle, and if it gets really bad I pass out.

But mental illness/health can effect your physical health too. Sometimes my panic attacks are so bad that they trigger the cyclical vomiting. This especially is something not many people have heard of and again, I will try to explain this the best way that I can (if you are very squeamish about bodily functions, you might want to skip to the last paragraph but I will try not to be too descriptive). Basically, something triggers you to vomit, and then you can't stop. For me it's usually about every 15 minutes and no matter what I try to put in my stomach, it comes out. It feels as if as soon as food or liquid hits my stomach, my stomach clenches up and rejects everything inside it. I have to admit, I would much rather just get carsick like I used to. So this is something that seems to baffle the doctors who try to treat me. Nausea medication doesn't help, because I  don't actually feel nauseous, I just feel whatever is in my stomach coming back up and know that I need to get a bucket, fast!

Sometimes it feels like you are the only person in the world with a problem like this, but I have found out that there are millions of people who experience the same things that I do. Just nobody is willing to talk about it. So if you have anxiety, or panic attacks like me, or a different mental illness like depression just know that you are not alone, there are people out there experiencing the same things as you and there are always people who are willing to listen.

<3 Rebecca