- Mental Health
Hi, my name is Bri. I am 18 years old and have been fighting mental illness for five years. This has included self-injury, eating disorders, depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorder. The first time I was hospitalized, I did everything I could to leave treatment. I lied and pushed aside all of my dark and scary thoughts so that I could go home.
At that time, I didn’t even really understand my mental illness so I wanted to avoid dealing with it at all costs. After discharging, I managed to stay out for three months, but during that time period, my symptoms significantly worsened. At age 14, when I was readmitted to a psychiatric hospital, I didn’t know that I wouldn’t be home for more than two months in the next four years.
I resisted treatment. I fought so hard to push people away. Because of that, I was transferred from treatment center to treatment center for the next four years. It got to the point that treatment centers started sending me to other places because they weren’t equipped to handle the severity of my symptoms and behaviors. Every time I would admit to a new treatment center, I was shortly transferred because of the fact that they weren’t going to do all of the work for me and because I was way too big of a liability. I will never forget the day that one of my doctors told me that I wouldn’t live to see my 18th birthday. Because of the mindset I was in, I hoped he was right. But sitting here today, I am so glad he was wrong.
In May of 2016, I was admitted to the inpatient psychiatry unit in Colorado. Expecting the same results, I shut everyone out when I first got there. My treatment team would try to get me to open up, but I was just so resistant. For about my first month and a half of receiving therapy from the woman who I now look at as my life-saver, I would not speak during our sessions. I would sit in silence, hoping that she would just leave me alone. I wanted them to see that there was no hope for me, too.
Finally, on a Friday afternoon, I let my walls down. I told my treatment team everything. I told them about the dark thoughts that I struggled with. I told them about my past. I figured after they heard how “messed up” I was, they would transfer me somewhere else. That’s where I was wrong. The difference about the treatment center I attended compared to other treatment centers I had been to is that the staff and everyone else there believed in me. They had hope that I could get better.
At first, I didn’t know how to take that, so it took a while for me to actually accept that they cared. As soon as I got there, they reached their hands out to me and the day that I finally decided to grab them was when my life changed. I heard so many times in treatment that it will “get better”. Every single time that I heard that, I shook my head, rolled my eyes, and thought, “if only they knew what went on inside my head.”
After discharging from my five-month stay there, I saw a new life ahead of me, a life that I never thought was possible for me. When I walked out of those doors, I had goals. I wanted a future. I had a smile on my face that was no longer fake.
Today, I know that it does get better. The people who told me that knew what they were talking about. Today, my mental illness isn’t gone. I still have negative thoughts. However, I now know how to cope with those thoughts. I don’t set expectations for myself (because mental illnesses are unpredictable), but I do set goals. My goals are not always long-term goals– sometimes they are goals that I can accomplish in five minutes.
When I realized that life outside of mental illness exists, it was the most refreshing feeling I have ever felt. And now that I feel a happiness I forgot existed, I want to use my stories to help others. I want to show them that things do get better. I hope to inspire those who have no hope that they can recover.
As cliché as all of the things professionals tell those struggling, they couldn’t be more true. And I can now tell you that because I am LIVING PROOF that recovery is possible.