Awareness

This past weekend I had an article forwarded to me.  Kelly Hrudey and his daughter Kaitlin are speaking out about anxiety. This week is Children's Mental Health Awareness week.  Kaitlin has chosen to speak out about the fact she deals with anxiety.  As I read the article it struck home with me in more ways then I thought it would have.

The further I went into the article I felt like I was reading my own story.  When I realized I was struggling with PPD and PPA. I was so relieved to say the words. And then come up with a plan on coping, well more then coping a plan to move on.  BUT…I almost cringe thinking of it.  I have so tried to convince my self that this was all just a pregnancy thing. Maybe the odd bout of depression as a teen but really who doesn't deal with that in the teens years?

Then I read this article and realized I was foolish to try and ignore my reality.  My reality is anxiety has been a major part of my life. And the more i think of it I think it start at a really young age.  

At one point Kaitlin says  “If I was supposed to go to a friend’s I would say they were people I didn’t want to hang out with anymore. I had all these random excuses, and my thoughts became so obsessive that I just couldn’t escape them anymore.”

umm….this kind of stuff was, and well, still is my life.  I remember having so much anxiety about events with friends or even school field trips that I would come up with all sorts of reasons why I didn't care, or didn't want to go, or was sick.  I feel so sad looking back that I didn't know that it could be different. That I could have had such a different experience in those years. I was so paralyzed by anxiety that I never was able to make a decision on going to university. I still regret that.  

Today life is very different. I have so many great things in place to help.  I just wish i had had them sooner.  It makes me really wonder though.  How do we catch these kinds of things at an early age?  I simply never knew that the way I thought was a problem, and could be worked through. I just thought it was the way i was. There is so much talk about mental health and how do we move forward in making it something easy to talk about. But I guess as having been a child who went through it, I don't know how I would have known to talk to anyone about it.  I was pretty good at hiding it with moodiness, and silence all typical teenage stuff.  

Off to think about this more. More to come. 

Link to article http://news.nationalpost.com/2013/05/03/former-nhl-goaltender-kelly-hrudeys-daughter-goes-public-with-mental-illness-battle/

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