My name is Laura McMahon. I am not someone famous but I am someone you know. I am anxiety and depression personified. I own mugs that have a better handle than I do on life.
‘But what do you have to be depressed about?’
‘Calm down it’s not a big deal’
‘Sure everyone has it these days, are you sure you’re not just lazy?’
These are three things commonly said to me when I open up about my mental health.
I like to live by a law written by a wise physicist Sir Isaac Newton. His third law of motion states that: ‘every action has an equal but opposite reaction’. When I hear statements like the above I try to remind myself of the people who have messaged me saying they feel the same way/they are struggling/we are all in this together. This is an example of using self-talk and imagery to combat my depressive and anxious thoughts. Logic is the enemy of my anxiety.
Ironically, I host performance psychology skill training workshops. This terrifies me. Standing up in front of 30+ 12 year olds talking about imagery and getting them to write down things, but it’s going surprisingly well. The feeling that I can help at least one of those people is enough to combat my anxiety and cognitively turn it to excitement. I know this as this is what my Master’s Thesis was all about: Reappraising Pre-performance Anxiety as Excitement: a sporting context. (They gave me a master’s degree!!?).
So what is a 25 year old Masters Graduate doing having depression? Sure, isn’t life fantastic? The world is my oyster? All my life I have been told not to compare myself to others but it’s very hard not to. At my age my mom was married with a full-time job, my sister had moved to Australia and most of my friends have gone back to uni or moved around the world. Comparing my outtakes to everyone’s highlight reel is not good for me.
I know a lot of things about health and wellbeing with my background in sport science and my performance psychology MSc. However, education isn’t just about knowing, it’s about experiencing and yes, I know I should exercise every day, eat well, and so on, but my depression tells me: ‘I am not worth it. It won’t fix it. Why bother, no one will love me anyway.’
This inner voice is a powerful little monster that I; feed with bad food, not talking to people, destroying relationships, and many other things that I know I shouldn’t do. But the monster is there and it is hungry. Giving in is easier isn’t it? Perhaps, I’ll fight it tomorrow when I feel stronger. But this monster gets stronger and I get weaker.
This awareness of the depression and anxiety is only a distraction from the fact that I am the monster. It is a part of me. It is me. I control it. I let it grow. But every action has an equal and opposite reaction and so this monster has a little yellow enemy. It is also a monster, but a positive quick little thing, a good monster so to speak. It glows and gets brighter when I do something productive. It drowns the other monster and shuns it into a corner where it stays until it’s time to take control again. I am both monsters, and they are me. To deny and try to get rid of either is to try and get rid of who I am. The issue is finding a balance in control and understanding who is controlling my thoughts and is it productive in the current situation.
This is what we in the business call emotional intelligence or mental literacy. It is not something I was aware of or was very strong at until recently. It’s something that is very important to the success of mental services with young people. It’s about knowing what is normal for you and knowing changes in your body and mind. Identifying an issue before it gets out of control and being able to identify a trigger for said issues can do wonders for mental wellbeing.
No one knows you like you do. Get to know yourself and the monsters inside. You could associate colours, shapes, sounds to these feelings and then really work with these feelings as opposed to trying to get rid of them.
I, for one, embrace my monsters and I think that it is a healthy approach to everyday coping of these issues. They are not fun or ideal and some are worse than others but with every action there is an equal and opposite reaction so with the bad comes the good. With the dark comes the light. You are not able to have one without the other.
Acceptance of anxiety as a legitimate feeling seems to me to be portrayed in a negative light. Another aspect of anxiety is quite a positive one. One thought is that whatever is making you anxious it obviously means a lot to you and isn’t that nice? The reason I write that is because I struggle with strong feelings of apathy so for me actually feeling something, feeling anything, is positive. Also, more my main point, is that anxiety and excitement are, physiologically speaking, the same thing. The same butterflies in your stomach, the same high adrenaline, high speed thought processing, just different outcomes. This has been researched over and over again and proves to look like self-talk and expectations are the only differences.
The point is to have an awareness of which monster is in charge of your mind at the time. Whoever is in charge of your mind is in charge of your body.
So to conclude, I still struggle with mental issues. I know I have the capacity and education to change but I accept my anxiety and the duality of it all, the good and the bad. Maybe you can also try out adjusting your perspective, make your conflicting emotions work together to be the best version of you.
Help information
If you need to talk to someone please contact:
- Samaritans 116 123 or email jo@samaritans.org
- Pieta House 01 601 0000 or email mary@pieta.ie – (suicide, self-harm)
- yourmentalhealth.ie
- Aware 1800 80 48 48 (depression, anxiety)
If living in Ireland you can find accredited therapists in your area here:
Support Our Campaign
We rely on the generosity of the public to fund our work and so far together we have achieved great things! Please do continue to support us so we can provide future generations in Ireland with the resources to recognise and talk about their emotions, and equip them to navigate the ever-changing world around them as they grow
