Mental Health Awareness Week

About three years ago, I came to BYU as a Freshman.

...which meant sudden, huge, exciting, and uprooting changes in my life. I went from living comfortably at home to being over a thousand miles from my family. I could no longer just breeze through classes (as I mostly did in high school), but had to spend late nights pouring over notes just to scrape B's. I met an entirely new crowd of people, and had a blast making new friends. 

I really was having the time of my life, and yet it was a lot of pressure all at once. My whole life I've been relatively prone to stress, so at first I just assumed it was nothing more than that. As the school year went on, and I dealt with the strain of college life, I began to become somewhat suspicious that my excessive proneness to worry and overly emotional tendencies were more than just personality quirks. But I brushed those thoughts aside, or worse, gave myself a hard time about it. I would feel guilty for being stressed, or assuming that I was somehow worse off than anyone else.

Somewhere during the first year of college, I was walking through the Wilkinson Student Center between classes, most likely in search of free food. That building always has something. 

(For example... free rice crispy treats at the beginning of this year! Thanks Women's Services.)

On that particular day, the promise of free BYU brownies caught my attention. I wandered into an office off of the main hallway to grab one, but found a catch- as usual. They always want something out of you... to sign up for hip hop club, or promise you'll come to a lacrosse game, or listen to a spiel from some visiting career counselor. This time, I had to fill out a mental health screening form. 

Admittedly, I filled mine out rather rapidly (yet still honestly), because I really only just wanted that brownie. In my untrained mind, I seriously doubted that I would be flagged for any sort of mental health concern. In retrospect, I think that mental health issues were kind of a taboo for me. Surely, the only people that had depression or anxiety or one of those thingy-s dressed in all black and looked like this:

So... boy, was I surprised when I was flagged for general anxiety disorder. And not only flagged. As I recall, I measured rather severely on the spectrum. This kind of alarmed me. My pride told me to not believe it. After the test, I was ushered into a side office to meet with a counselor-lady. She kindheartedly voiced her worries about my results, and presented me with a flyer on campus resources for stress management. I vaguely remember her surprised and concerned face as I sort of waved off the results, thanked her for the test, grabbed my brownie and swiftly left. I'm pretty sure I even called my mom and joked about my results.

Flash forward to now, and it's once again mental health screening day again at BYU. And, more broadly, it's Mental Health Awareness week.

This has really got me thinking about just how much I've learned and grown during the past three years. I've come to understand myself and my mental health approximately 324324% more than I ever did coming out of High School.

Recent Grad Amanda knows nothing about anxiety.

Maybe it's because I'm a teacher by nature, but I came to the conclusion recently that one of the best ways for me to improve is for me to reach out and help others. If I've talked to you about dealing with anxiety (and you people know who you are), please know that helping you with your fight has done wonders with me winning mine. 

I'm by NO means any sort of mental health expert or psychologist, but I've taken a lot of time during the past three years to research and understand what I and so many others deal with. Maybe it's not much, but I'm compiling a list of resources here that have helped me with my anxiety, and could maybe help someone else as well. Of course, everyone is different. Just because something works magically for me, does not mean that it works for everyone.

• First off, Russ Harris's book The Happiness Trap has done fantastic things for me. I never labeled myself as a "self-help book reader" until recently, but I'm finding that I really like the self-motivated format books like this give me. This book hits the issue of happiness SPOT on, and talks frankly about living a fulfilling life.

• The Happiness Trap falls under the umbrella of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, which I have grown to LOVE. The principles of ACT work really well for me, and I've done a lot of research on ACT-based coping strategies. 

• Elder Holland's General Conference talk Like a Broken Vessel. I've never heard an LDS General Authority talk so openly and frankly about mental health. And a lot of what he talks about lines up pretty well with ACT. 
• "If you are the one afflicted or a caregiver to such, try not to be overwhelmed with the size of your task. Don't assume you can fix everything, but fix what you can. If those are only small victories, be grateful for them and be patient. Dozens of times in the scriptures, the Lord commands someone to 'stand still' or 'be still' —and wait. Patiently enduring some things is part of our mortal education."

• I've really gotten very lucky to have been dealing with this as a BYU student. The BYU Counseling and Psychological Center has been a HUGE blessing in my life. They provide free counseling to students, staff, & student spouses as well as biofeedback (my new favorite thing), and group therapy. Their website is also incredible and has everything from meditation recordings to mental health screenings.

• Meditation. And purposeful breathing. It does wonders.

• So this isn't really a "mental health" thing directly, but the Planner Pad has been wonderful for me planning ahead. I find that when I am able to think ahead some, my anxiety is GREATLY reduced. My old choir teacher Sister Hall swears by this planner, and she's probably the most put-together woman I've ever met. Definitely a good buy for someone like me.

• And lastly, I would also like to thank Pinterest for helping me stress-bake (Studies have shown that cooking can actually be used to reduce stress and anxiety in mental health patients!). And I'd also like to thank Nick for eating the food I make. Because there's always a lot, and I'm not really a stress-eater.

Anyway. Those are just a few things I've found that have worked so well for me. But be aware: dealing with anxiety & depression is largely a game of trial and error. It's different for every single person that goes through mental health challenges.

And I'm always there to chat. The number of people who deal with this kind of thing is really common. You are not alone.

I'm thankful for my husband, who has helped me see that I am not my anxiety, and has helped me find how to use anxiety as my superpower. I'm thankful for the progress I've made. I'm thankful for a loving Savior and Heavenly Father who see me not as who I am, or who I was, but who I can become. And I'm thankful for the future. 

Here's to looking up. 


- Amanda