This blog is part 1 of a 4 part blog series by York Ending Stigma Champion Bremner where he is sharing his experiences of anxiety and depression.
My name is Bremner and this is my story of experiencing depression and anxiety. It all started when I was 14, I was in my second to last year of school and as September rolled around and school started, I started to feel something I had never felt before. I felt angry at the world, however, I had a sense of sadness as well. I don’t recall why I felt like this. It was like something switched in my head and I saw the world as it is. A messed-up place that filled me with hatred but scared me in a way that I couldn’t comprehend. That was the idea of growing up, but it felt different. I felt lost and my confident person was gone. I was scared of the future; I was scared of the present.
“It all started when I was 14…I felt angry at the world, however, I had a sense of sadness as well.”
I had friends and family, but when you don’t know what is wrong with you and how it could be fixed, it makes you not want to talk about your feelings. People knew something was up with me but couldn’t put their finger on it. I think they just assumed I was in a bad mood but for anyone who has anxiety and depression, it just isn’t that simple. I was a teenager stuck in a cycle of feeling everything was going to be okay and then boom you back to square one and you feel like the worst human possible. Sadly, the feeling ‘’that everything is going to be okay’’ became less frequent over a couple of months. I was failing in school, I started having friendship issues and the next thing you know you’re at rock bottom. And that led to experiencing self-harm and having suicidal thoughts. It was possibly some of the worst experiences of my life.
“I think they just assumed I was in a bad mood but for anyone who has anxiety and depression, it just isn’t that simple.”
I told an odd few people in my school how I was feeling but telling 15-year-old teenagers about that stuff is hard because we were barely taught how to deal with it at school. It made me feel worse knowing that talking to people just wasn’t working because I felt I didn’t matter and just sat a lot listening to dark music to just make me feel something and then eventually just burst into tears, it would continue for months. Eventually, I gained the courage to tell my mum and she didn’t understand it either. She did realise though that I looked pale, I lost a lot of weight and in January 2018 I was referred to see a councillor. I noticed that, for me, counselling is sugar-coated and not honest. They would tell me that I would be fine and there was nothing to worry about and sent me on medication. But it was far from the truth, and I don’t thank counselling for me eventually feeling better because it genuinely wasn’t them. In part 2 I will talk about the months that followed and how my anxiety and depression continued to take a big toll on my life. However, In parts 3 and 4, I will discuss how I have managed my anxiety and depression in the last 2 years and the progress I have made to the present day.
“I felt I didn’t matter…I gained the courage to tell my mum and she didn’t understand it either”
Resources for England
- Anxiety UK – anxietyuk.org.uk
- Mind – Depression
- NHS – Depression in adults
York Ending Stigma
To 
find out more about our work and to join us to end mental health stigma in York, please refer to our website https://yorkcvs.org.uk/york-ending-stigma/ or email us on yes@yorkCVS.org.uk