How I Healed My Depression (Anxiety and PTSD)
Please Note - I am not a mental health expert. This is my personal experience and is not meant to treat, cure, or diagnose disease. Additional mental health resources can be found at the bottom of this post.
It was summer, I was 17, and from one second to the next, everything changed.
I was hit head on as I waited at a light to head home for lunch. Outside my car window a lady told me I had been in an accident and asked me for a number to call my parents. A few seconds later, I heard someone yelling “That’s my sister, that’s my sister!”
Luckily, the woman asking for my phone number was a nurse who had been in the car behind me and witnessed everything. The guy yelling “That’s my sister!”, whelp, that was my oldest brother, who, on his way to work, recognized my car and stopped to see if it was really me.
It was.
The weeks that followed were full of chiropractic appointments, massage, physical therapy, doctors appointments, and pain pills. My CT scan was clear, except for what appeared to be a little bleeding of the brain - nothing to be concerned about. No broken bones, just massive bruises and a bump on my head big enough to rival the Himalayas.
As I continued to go to school full-time and work part-time, I tried to manage the pain. But it felt unmanageable. I tried to keep a semblance of control during a time where I felt completely helpless.
Then, three short years later, my life changed again quite immediately and drastically when I found my dad on the floor of his bedroom, having what I soon found out, was a stroke. He was rushed to the hospital and we prepared for the massive life-saving surgery he needed to have. 50% of patients didn’t make it out of this surgery.
My dad did.
A few short days later, the unimaginable happened as he made his transition out of the physical world.
YUP. He died. He left us all alone to figure out how to do this life thing without him. I was 20 at the time and a self-proclaimed daddy’s girl. And the emotional upheaval of losing the most important man in my life while battling the physical pain I was already in was too much for my 20 year old self to handle.
That same month, I went back to my care team and was put on anti-depressants for chronic pain, not depression. Low key, it was both. This was not the first time I had been prescribed anti-depressants nor would it be the last.
In the years that followed, I would be prescribed more pills; opioids for the chronic pain, muscle relaxers, migraine medication, and anti-anxiety pills for the latest symptoms that manifested in my body. The first time I was prescribed anti-depressants, I could not bring myself to take them because that would be an admission that I couldn’t “handle” my life, an admission that I was indeed, depressed.
The Day That Changed Everything
I continued on this path of emotional pain and physical pain. After years of medication use, alcohol, caffeine, stress, chronic pain and daily headaches, I finally hit my rock bottom when I hit the floor, literally. I passed out on the middle of the night for no reason.
At 30 years old, I was rushed to the ER because I passed out in my hallway and landed on a tub of my hiking gear. This began a new wave of ER visits, urgent care visits, sick leave, pills, tests and more tests.
With each test result that rolled in, I saw the same words over and over again.
“NORMAL.”
EKG? Normal.
Biopsy? Normal.
Heart? Slight gallop - nothing to be concerned about.
X-Rays? Normal.
Bloodwork? Normal. Normal. Normal.
I was told the physical pain I was in had no cause because there was nothing clinically wrong with me. There was no diagnosable disease in my body and all the lab results and blood tests confirmed that. The recommendation was to take some more pills to stop the pain signals being sent to my brain.
In that moment I knew I had to be my biggest advocate and do something I NEVER expected.
I call it the day that changed everything.
I said no thank you to the medication. I walked away from conventional medicine with no answers, with less clarification of what I was going through, and with an intense determination plus sheer will, to figure it all out.
And I did.
How Did I Heal My Depression?
I healed my gut.
I moved my body on a regular basis.
I cultivated a meditation practice.
I leaned heavily on all things wellness and woo woo.
I found the things that worked for me and removed all the things that no longer served me.
I dealt with emotions like grief and guilt and shame that I had been repressing and suppressing for years.
I became my own biggest advocate.
As I slowly worked to rebuild my health, I recognized that the years of medication, pain, stress, emotional repression, all took a massive toll on my health, physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. In this fight for my life, I was willing to do whatever it took to get myself better. I studied integrative health and functional medicine. I learned about the mind-body connection and the gut-brain axis. I studied the nervous system and learned about polyvagal theory. I read up on emotional wellbeing and gut health.
With improvements in my physical health, I saw improvements in my emotional wellbeing. With improvements in my emotional wellbeing, I noticed improvements in my mental health. Why? Because everything is connected.
There are components to depression, anxiety, and PTSD that I don’t understand. There are genetic components and variables that contribute to these disorders which can make someone more susceptible to mental health disorders and everyone’s experience with mental health can be layered and complex.
I also firmly believe disorders such as depression and anxiety can benefit tremendously by healing the gut, by moving the body, by creating boundaries for yourself and removing things (habits, people, situations, thought-patterns, beliefs) that don’t serve you, by accepting the scary things we keep hidden about ourselves, and by becoming our own biggest advocates.
If you are struggling with your physical health and it’s impacting your mental health, know that there is hope - chances are that someone in the world was struggling with the same thing and was able to overcome it.
If you are struggling with your emotional health, find someone you can confide in like a friend, therapist, or support group
Know that the health of your dreams is always possible in this world of infinite possibilities.
Where To Find Help And Additional Resources
If you are struggling with your mental health and need help for yourself or someone you know, know that help is available.
Please check out the following resources:
https://www.samhsa.gov/find-support/health-care-or-support/support-group-or-local-program
Call or text 988 or chat 988lifeline.org. You’ll be able to speak with a trained crisis counselor any time of day or night.
You can find additional health recommendations on the RESOURCES page.