A Story about Mental Health
Heather is a wonderful friend of mine! I’m excited to introduce her to you. She graduated from BYU with a bachelor’s degree in Psychology and endeavors to get her master’s degree in Speech Pathology and open her own practice one day. She and her husband, Kyle, have been married for six years and they have two delightful children, Charlotte (4) and Emma (2). Kyle is active duty army and has been stationed in Colorado Springs for the last 2.5 years. In fact, Kyle was deployed to Afghanistan for a year in 2018. She enjoys running and hiking, decorating cakes, writing, reading, and trying new things. I have learned that though she is quiet, she is also a warrior and she is here to share her mental health battle with you.
Throughout her life, Heather had felt depressed feelings, but it wasn’t until her junior year of high school that she started to truly be affected by mental health. The previous year her mother had gone to help Heather’s aunt with a mental health crisis of her own. When her mother returned home, she wasn’t the same, was experiencing trouble sleeping, and began having intense hallucinations and delusions. Heather remembers, “She ended up hospitalized for weeks and when she returned home, it took months before she was really functioning and years before she was mostly back to herself.” As a young teenager with a mother going through trauma of her own, the emotions were running high. Heather remembers being good friends with her mother growing up and this new circumstance put new and uncertain terms on what their relationship looked like. She felt terrified about what was happening to her mother,
“I didn’t know that kind of thing could happen to anyone, let alone my mother! I just felt so unequipped to handle what was happening.”
Feeling as though she had lost her mother to these struggles and without a good relationship with her father, the footing she had as she entered her teenage years suddenly became slick and insecure.
Heather dealt with this experience as best as she could, but she says, “…after this experience, mental health was all I thought about. I wondered if I would inherit what my mom had, if the depressed feelings I had experienced throughout my life were actually part of something bigger that was wrong with me, and I worried, like any teenager would, what my friends would think of me if they saw that side of me.” Prior to her mother’s experience and subsequently her own, Heather didn’t know much about mental health and she quickly discovered that it can become all consuming. During her junior year of high school, though she was previously a straight A student, Heather began skipping many of her classes, stopped participating in enjoyable activities, and withdrew herself from the people around her. Nothing seemed to feel “right” in her life. She questioned everything in her life; her ability to do her homework, her ability to socialize, and even her ability to brush her teeth caused her stress. Heather recalls, “My perfectionism really escalated during this time. I also experienced a lot of anxiety and began having panic attacks.” In place of the schedule she typically had for herself, she instead spent the time alone, “…I spent A LOT of time in bed. Crying. Thinking about how burdensome I was to everyone. Wishing I could just disappear. Wishing I had someone else’s life. It all felt too hard for me to handle.”
When she turned to her good group of friends for help, they called her a hypochondriac. Many of them just couldn’t understand what she was feeling or why she was feeling that way. So Heather questioned, “Was it all in my head? Maybe. Maybe not.” The cycle of intrusive thoughts was never ending. She followed with stronger sentiments, “Maybe that wasn’t the point. Maybe I really needed attention and someone to hear that I was struggling. Was that so wrong? Isn’t that what a lot of teenagers are looking for?” Unfortunately, her parents weren’t giving her the support she needed either. Heather’s father seemed to think Heather needed to consider all that her mother was going through and that she was making it all up in her head, “I had a very rocky relationship with my father and to this day he doesn’t believe I was experiencing what I said I was.” So, without feeling like anyone was around to listen and without the distraction of school and friends, she had too much time to stew in her feelings. “And that’s when things took the biggest turn for the worse. I became suicidal. I got to a place where I thought no one loved me or cared about me and I just couldn’t be convinced otherwise. I had plans to hurt myself. And I told my parents my plans in an attempt to get them to hear me for once.” I’d like to take a pause here and give thanks that Heather is still here. Heather is an amazing wife, mother, and friend. I have benefited from her friendship on many occasions and I am incredibly glad that she is part of my life today.
Heather spent time in the hospital near Thanksgiving that year. Her hospitalization, however, was not a positive experience for her. The environment there was shocking, to say the least, especially for a girl that had no prior issues with mental health or abusing drugs. She felt like she was judged because she didn’t have the same intense issues as everyone else and she wondered if they were thinking, “Why is she here? Oh, look at her, she would never actually hurt herself.” Heather also felt that the staff did not do a good job of listening or responding to her specific needs either. She related, “They were trying to get the correct dosage and line up of medication to get you out of there and you can’t figure that out in three days. It takes weeks for the medication to get into your bloodstream and to really know what effect it’s going to have."
"So, it just kind of felt like they were pushing people through the system. It never felt like anyone cared about what was happening to me.”
After she was released, most of her friends had abandoned her and though Heather’s family was in her life, the level of understanding had not changed. So, in many ways Heather says, “I came out of the hospital worse than I was before I went in”. She was initially misdiagnosed with bipolar disorder and given medication to help ease her symptoms. It took over a year and several different attempts with different medications before the side effects were manageable for her.
Unfortunately, things did not improve for Heather much in that year, “I ended up in the hospital again over a year later. This time as an adult because I had turned 18. My second hospitalization was much worse. It scared me. I felt like I was living someone else’s life and I was done. I came out with a determination to help myself. I knew I had to choose to help myself if I wanted to get better. I got out and moved in
with my friend and her parents for a few months. I completed my high school career online and missed out on a lot because of it.” The friend she moved in with, Amelia, is someone Heather considers her best friend. Heather positively recalls, “…[she] stood by me through it all and it made all the difference…I needed someone to listen to me. To believe me and acknowledge that it was possible for me to be feeling the way I was. And that that was okay. That I could find a way through it. That was everything for me.” I am so happy Heather found a friend that made herself available for Heather to rely on and trust. This was a first step in Heather’s recovery.
She continued taking little steps towards the things that she knew she wanted to accomplish. Amelia’s parents even helped her divide her schoolwork into smaller chunks so that it was less overwhelming. She began attending a new church with her friend and although the members seemed nice, something was still off. She began to look back on the spiritual experiences and feelings she’d received attending her childhood church, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Heather says, “I just remember that I started to pray…and I had a really strong prompting to go back to church on Mother’s Day”. She followed through with her desire to go back to church and although she hadn’t attended for quite a while, things started falling back into place. She was accepted into BYU during this time of chaos, which is quite a feat considering all that she’d been through the last two years of high school. Heather remembers, “I reconciled with my parents as best as I could and I moved home. I left for college a couple weeks later, beginning my summer term at BYU. My freshman and sophomore years of college were both difficult. I was still on medication and for the most part, it wasn’t working for me. I took myself off my medication several times with bad results. Eventually, with the help of my psychiatrist, I was able to wean myself off my medication.”
One thing that seemed to really benefit Heather was the time she spent with her therapist, “I really liked my therapist. She helped me a lot. She helped me with my family relationships. She helped me process old wounds. She helped validate my feelings. She helped me find some of the self-worth I was so desperately missing from my life. She taught me about affirmations and how they could help set intentions for my days. And now I do affirmations with my girls and we love them.” Heather has a list of affirmations that she does with her girls to help them understand their worth, even at a young age. Though they change with daily needs, they sound something like, "I am kind. I am honest. I am brave. I am smart. I am a daughter of God. I can do hard things with hard work." And, because it's something commonly practiced in her home, Charlotte rehearses it as she plays on her own or with friends. Raising her children with intent to help them manage their own self-worth battles is both admirable and aspirational. It begins with acting on a small idea like affirmations.
Life for Heather now is much more manageable than it has been in the past. She is taking the things she has learned with her into the next phase of her life, “I learned that it’s okay to struggle. It doesn’t make you less than anyone else. And it doesn’t really matter why you struggle. I always wanted someone to tell me why I was struggling when I was a teenager. I thought that there had to be something really wrong with my life to justify it. In the end it just matters that you do something about your struggle. You need to own it and then take a step forward... And I’ve learned that stewing in my feelings is counterproductive. I learned I can acknowledge my feelings, but also not sit in them for longer than I need to. I’ve learned coping strategies that are effective for me. Exercising, listening to religious talks from my church, reading books I enjoy, cooking. Anything that keeps my brain active and helps distract me.”
But, of course, those bad days do come up. Motherhood, as it has posed challenges for nearly every woman, tends to bring up those issues for Heather as well. “My depression and perfectionist tendencies sometimes rear their ugly heads in the middle of it all. I struggle often times with ‘mom guilt’ and feelings that someone else would make a better mom to my children.” On the flip side of that coin, her family also motivates her to take care of her mental health so that she doesn’t descend back to where she was. Her husband, Kyle, takes on a supportive role so she can rely on him to help her stay in a healthy place. For those that are struggling, I hope Heather’s story brings you hope that you are not alone. You can make it. Your worth cannot be defined by your doubt, internal struggle (recognized by family and friends, or not), or how much more worthy others seem around you. Heather urges, “If you are questioning whether you might need help, don’t stop there. Turn to someone that can help you…I think having a healthy setting to share your struggles can be really freeing”.
Heather’s high school mental health battle surely encompassed some of the most difficult times of her life, but she also gained empathy, understanding, and patience for those around her that are struggling. “We all have something. Everyone. I try to remember that everywhere I go. I try and give everyone the benefit of the doubt as much as I can. When people cut me off in traffic, or when they are rude to me, or anything like that, I always try and say a silent prayer for them. Because maybe they were just having a hard day or maybe they were fighting their own silent battle.” There is power in these words. We can do more in the way of listening to understand so that we can lift and heal. We can learn to see the inner potential of those around us and, like Amelia did for Heather, encourage and persuade that inner potential to come forth. And the grace and kindness that Heather seemed not to have been granted by those in her own life is something that propels her to give it to others. “Kindness and grace are so important to me. It means so much to me when people choose to see past my struggles… And it’s so important to me that my children learn the importance of kindness and grace from a young age. We always talk about kindness in our home. When Kyle leaves for work in the mornings, Charlotte always says, ‘Have a good day dad, be nice and kind to your friends’".
"I truly believe that kindness can change the world. There’s a quote by Maya Angelou that I love that says, ‘…people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.’”
In my life, Heather has exemplified this. She has cheered me when I am sad, come to my aid when I needed her, and listened many times to my ramblings. She has made me feel like I make a difference. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from her, it’s that when someone feels like they make a difference, they continue to do so! And, in our world today, inspiring people to make a difference is invaluable.
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