188: What if you spent four years inside?
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This Is Actually Happening features real experiences that often include traumatic events. Please consult the show notes for specific content warnings on each episode and for more information about support services. As deep as I tried to dig into my memory and my past, there was just nothing we could think of that was causing this. And because there wasn't, I was just left fighting this invisible thing inside me, the root of which I didn't know.

From Wondery, I'm Witt Misseldein. You are listening to This Is Actually Happening. Episode 188. What if you spent four years inside?

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I grew up in the Highlands of Scotland and my parents separated when I was under a year old but my mum was just so good at looking after me, she was wonderful.

We lived with my grandparents in this big, beautiful house and this wonderful, warm environment of just love and care and adventure. And my mum very much nurtured and encouraged a sense of wonder in me. She would teach me about all the plants that were around us, all the wildlife and plants.

She made up these stories about creatures that lived in the woods nearby and she showed me all the constellations in the sky and we'd go out for walks in the winter and we'd see the northern lights. It was wonderful. It was lovely. And I felt very cared for. Every day was exciting.

Even though my parents divorced when I was so young, I never really felt lack of a father figure because my grandfather was such a large staple of my life. And when my mum was working, because she worked a lot, she was a nurse, he would take me out for walks and to different places and teach me to tie my shoes and things like that. I was always a curious child. I didn't have brothers and sisters. I'm an only child up until the age of 14.

Because of that, and because I was around so many adults, I think it brought out a side of me that wasn't so much playful as interested in how things worked and why. Even though I had this strong upbringing of love and care, I was always very much a worried child. I was always quite anxious sometimes.

My mum always talks about how when I was little, I was obsessed with feeling sick, worried that I was going to be sick, so much to the point that she would give me a small pocket mirror so that I would stop asking her if I was pale, if I looked pale. And she taught me the level that my pulse should be at so that I could check it on a watch and I could check if my pulse was elevated or not.

The strongest fear I had as a child and growing up was the act of vomiting. Me, myself, throwing up and people around me throwing up as well. And I couldn't tell you why that was. It's not like something traumatic happened with me when I myself was sick or something like someone around me was sick and it really caused this traumatic event. It was just always very deep-rooted in me.

The feeling of nausea and anxiety, they kind of go together hand in hand. And I think because when I would go to bed at night and I would be anxious, I'd be convinced every single night that I was going to be sick. And I would spend every day worrying about going to bed because I was worried I was going to be sick.

I have memories strongly of one night waking up and rolling over and being sick and I was sick on some library books. And I'm not sure if it was like the guilt and the worry of that, that, oh no, I've been sick on these books that we didn't own and now my mom's going to have to pay for them or something like that. I'm not sure if that is what set it off, but...

For as long as I can remember, I've been terrified of vomiting. And that is known as emetophobia. It's like a phobia of vomiting. When I was at school, if there was someone who was sick at school, I would be terrified of them. I would avoid them as much as possible. There was one time when one of my friends in class, when I was about seven or eight years old,

had gotten sick and the teacher asked me to go and look after them in the bathroom and I just flat out refused. I couldn't. I was terrified. I was rooted to the spot in fear and I felt like such a cruel person that I was leaving this friend to deal with this on their own and I couldn't explain why. I couldn't get across that I was scared of them because of this.

It normally starts with feeling my fingers getting numb and I'll start to feel my heart beating noticeably harder. I'll feel it against my ribs and then I'll find that I can't breathe easily. It's harder to breathe.

My mouth will get dry and it will be hard to kind of speak because of that and I'll start to kind of twitch a bit involuntary like my arms and my legs and that's the adrenaline coursing through me beginning to pick up speed. My vision will start to get tunnel vision in a way and I'll find it harder and harder to speak to the point where I'll get a stutter.

If it's bad and if I'm unable to get out of the situation, I'll start finding it really hard to stand. So I'll have to sit down. And at this point, my breathing will be really struggling and I'll feel sick to my stomach, which will only push it further and further into panic. My teeth will begin to chatter because I'm just terrified. I'm filled to the brim with adrenaline.

I'll find it so hard to be coherent in what I need, what I want, and I'll just be constantly looking around for a way to escape the situation. It feels like you're an animal that's trapped with a predator coming towards you, and you'll do anything to get out of that situation. Normally my mind is going over and over the what-ifs.

thinking of the worst situation and it's hard to get out of that way of thinking. I'll be going over and over in my head, that person looks like...

they're either going to cough or be sick, that person is moving quite quickly, does that mean that they're going to be sick? Does that mean that they're ill and that I will pick up whatever they have? How do I get out of the situation? Where's the exit? Is that door blocked? Can I get there easily? Are people going to look at me if I've tried to get out of this situation? And that will be scary and that will be bad.

How do I place myself back in my head so that I can calm myself down? I can barely pick up what's happening around me because I'm so focused on this fear and this moment that I can't think past it into a way of getting out and all I can think of are the worst possibilities. It started becoming a problem in my day-to-day life and showing up more when a number of really difficult things happened.

My mum had my sister when I was 14 years old. I'd been an only child for 14 years and I was at high school and I was just starting to do exams and things. And then my mum became pregnant with my sister. And this was so exciting and wonderful, but also it was a huge change as well.

It was difficult to see the toll it took on my mum as well. The late nights and early mornings and hardly sleeping and I was having to share my mum for the first time as well. Unfortunately, just a few months after my sister was born, my grandfather passed away and that was really difficult.

He helped raise me for 14 years. He was a huge part of my life. And I remember finding a pamphlet on cancer in our kitchen. And I was really confused at first because some of the symptoms matched up to the symptoms that I had been suffering from. And I took it to my mom and I was like, Mom, is this me? Do I have this? And she had to tell me that no, unfortunately, it was my grandfather.

He was a big booming voice in this big house that we had, this big presence. And then to watch him slowly kind of become this yellow husk of the person he'd been was very, very difficult. And my mum had just had my sister, so she was already like a mess of emotion and hormones and tiredness. And then to lose her father and we both mourned it very much together.

We'd moved down to Edinburgh at that point and it was about four or five months after that that my mum got pregnant again and she was already dealing with this grief and the hormones and the stress of being a new mum and I remember looking at her and going, how are you going to cope? She kind of looked at me as if she didn't know anything.

My mum is extremely strong. She's a tough lady. But that was the first time I looked at her and saw that she was human, just like me, and she was scared and she didn't have all the answers. It's a scary moment, realising that they are just kind of going about life without a manual, just like you. This was when my anxiety started to surface in a destructive way for me.

I started to find it difficult to go to school. I'd wake up in the morning and I'd feel sick to my stomach. I'd run downstairs because I felt myself like about to heave, like I was about to be sick. And my mum would phone in to my school and tell them that I wasn't well.

In the beginning, it was just, oh, it's okay, Rachel. Like, you hardly ever take a sick day. Don't worry. Don't worry. And it stopped being that way when I was having to take like one or two days off of school every few weeks. So she took me to a doctor to see what was wrong. And they couldn't find anything wrong with me.

It was concerning because the doctor just kind of waved it away and prescribed me antiemetics, which are pills that they give chemotherapy patients to stop them from being sick.

But I was describing this all-consuming fear when I was faced with the task of going to school where I was finding it difficult to breathe in classes because I was scared because I felt like I was going to be sick because I thought that people around me were going to be sick. No one seemed to realize that there was something deeply rooted in me that was wrong at this time.

High school's an anxious time anyway, but I would hide behind my hair and study everyone in my class. Any sudden movements would scare me. A cough would scare me because I was certain that someone was going to run out of the room and be sick somewhere, which in itself seems ridiculous. Like, you just ignore that. It's gross. You just get on with your day. But for me, that felt like the end of the world.

I would walk into a classroom or if I was going to like the theatre or the cinema, I would be choosing the seat where I could see everyone, where I could get out of the room, causing the least amount of notice or drama that I possibly could.

everywhere needed to have an exit and it was exhausting to just constantly be documenting and planning and keeping an eye on everyone as much as possible.

I wasn't remembering anything, I wasn't taking notes because I was too busy focusing on my perception of everyone around me and keeping constant notes of how I was feeling, how my temperature, was my pulse okay?

And then I would come home and as much as I love my mum and my family, it was not a calm home life at that time. It wasn't the quiet environment that I was used to when I was growing up. So I felt completely out of sorts no matter where I was and what I was trying to do.

My only kind of solace was my room where I would just kind of sit and try and kind of block out the poor wailing children with music or something. But I was starting to have trouble with my sleep at this time. I would try and sleep, but my mouth would start to get dry. I knew that if I was sick, it would wake up the babies, which would wake up my poor, exhausted mother.

So it would get to the point where I would quietly creep downstairs and ever since I was very, very young I've always demanded to have like a bucket next to my bed because I have this deep-seated fear of vomiting. So I would take that downstairs with me and I would sit on the sofa with this bucket next to me, the window open, gulping in air because I felt I couldn't breathe.

Most nights I was up until about 4am trying desperately to sleep and to be as quiet as possible. And I would maybe get like three hours sleep until I had to be up at seven in the morning to go to school, which I was too scared to go to anyway. And it was just a constant cycle of fear and exhaustion and that exhaustion ramping up the fear even more.

to a point where I didn't even feel like days were passing. I just felt like a zombie. Today's episode is brought to you by Quince. It's been a busy season of events and travel, and my wardrobe has taken a beating. A total overhaul isn't in my budget, but I'm replacing some of those worn-out pieces with affordable, high-quality essentials from Quince. By partnering with Top Factories, Quince cuts out the cost to the middleman and passes the savings on to us.

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And the next, something goes wrong. But with ADT's 24-7 professional monitoring, you still feel safe. Because when every second counts, count on ADT. Visit ADT.com today. At this point, it started hugely affecting my diet as well.

I found it difficult to eat anything that had a huge amount of flavour. I was terrified that the flavour would be too strong and it would make me nauseous. And I was also very scared of eating too much because that feeling of being full I associated with the feeling of nausea and sickness.

So the comfort of controlling my eating and controlling what I was taking in and when and what flavour it was and how much became a way that I dealt with this anxiety, especially around the emetophobia. This got to the point where I wasn't eating much at all.

It was probably about two years of just very slowly kind of circling around this anxiety in a slow spiral, burying myself more and more in these coping mechanisms that I had kind of created to get by.

I obviously couldn't bring my bucket with me to school or when I was out and about so I started carrying a plastic bag with me in case I did get sick.

I always had one in my rucksack or a handbag and that was kind of a safety blanket in a way as well. I also would always chew gum because the taste of the mint is meant to be very good for nausea and also it meant that my mouth wouldn't get dry as well.

What my friends would do would be to get on a bus and meet up in the city and I felt so unequipped with the social toolkit to be able to do this. Buses became a huge fear for me. I was terrified that someone would get travel sick on those buses or that I would get travel sick on those buses.

That whole 40 minute journey felt like hours because it was just me wrestling with my own mind to just please let me do this, let me do this, I want to go. And it was embarrassing, it was humiliating to feel like I wasn't able to do this little normal thing of just sit on a bus and get from A to B. This all just continued to spiral up until the age of 18 when I finally left high school.

I left high school with not great grades because of it, but I did have good enough marks to get me a place at university. I was ecstatic. I was like, this is it. This is how I get out of this. I'll move out of my house so I won't have to deal with the anxiety of the babies and my mum. This is great.

I moved away from home. I start again. I focus on this one subject that I love, media design, because I loved kind of cutting together videos and I thought that this would be my future. But I couldn't leave this flat. I couldn't socialise with anyone. I was terrified of the university. Everyone around me is drinking and having fun and meeting new people.

But alcohol equals drunk equals vomiting equals hangover equals more vomiting. So I grew into this deeper pit of despair and fear because this escape, this new start, which I had been banking on, was not working out at all. And I didn't know what to do with my life anymore.

I felt so hopeless because my future was now a big question mark that was just endless empty days of fear. I managed two months before I had to admit defeat and move back home. I felt so humiliated and embarrassed with this defeat process.

Up to that point, I'd been in denial about it. I'd tried to deal with it. I was like, it's like a quirk. It's something that I can manage and I can control in a way, but it's not a problem. It's not me. It doesn't control me.

But admitting that I couldn't manage university, admitting I couldn't take that next step in life, that was devastating because that was then me going, this is bigger than me and I can't control this and I need help to control this.

At this point my brother and sister were now old enough that they needed separate rooms and we lived in a three-bedroom house so my old bedroom was now my sister's room. So I didn't have a room anymore and I had to live in the attic. That was fine because there was somewhere for me to stay. There was carpet there and there was a light bulb but there were no windows.

And having to come home because I wasn't well enough to look after myself made me feel like a burden. It felt like I was intruding on this new family. I don't ever think that that's what they thought, but to me, I just felt like I could not stop ruining everything around me. I felt like I was just a tiny boat in a tsunami of feelings and stress and worry.

The depression that I was having because of all of these things that were happening to me, all these things that were just overwhelming, the doctors were more than happy to prescribe things for that. So I was put on a number of different medications over years and years later.

We started off with SSRIs. I was so scared to take these because one of the side effects is nausea and vomiting. As with most medications, to be fair, but SSRIs are very well known for making you feel sick. I got to the point where I was so hopeless that I was willing to try it.

A lot of the time it was nausea. A lot of the time it was strange things like my legs feeling like they were filled with needles. I had weird palpitations sometimes and some of them made me feel like extreme rages and I didn't know what I was angry at. Desperately hoping that this next one would be the fix, the next one would work.

I was also put on a number of different behavioral therapies, like cognitive behavioral therapy. And that's very much about rewiring the way you think, changing the way you think so that you stop going down the road of worry and what could happen and what will happen and rather keep yourself thinking about how there's many different ways a situation could go rather than just the worst one.

But I felt like it didn't help. I was doing the homework which they gave me and I was trying to challenge every thought I was having, but it just couldn't stick with me.

I did hypnotic therapy where someone kind of put me into like a very calm trance like way of thinking and going back into my childhood and trying to find the root of everything. But no matter how hard I tried and no matter how deep they went, there just wasn't a cause.

I didn't know if I was blocking something out. I was desperately asking my mum, did something happen when I was little? Did something traumatic happen? And she just couldn't think of anything and neither could I. It was so frustrating in a way because if there had been something, I could have processed it and I could have gone through it. Maybe I could have come to some sort of reassuring end in my mind

But as deep as I tried to dig into my memory and my past, there was just nothing we could think of that was causing this. And because there wasn't, I was just left fighting this invisible thing inside me, the root of which I didn't know.

Because she didn't understand it and she didn't know the cause of it and she didn't know the cure of it, my mum felt so helpless just seeing me fight this invisible thing. Another form of treatment that I was prescribed was occupational therapy and this was when I was finding it difficult to go outside.

So someone would come to my house and kind of chat to me and find out how my week had gone. And then their job was to basically take me outside and to kind of sit with me on buses and we'd go two to three stops and then we'd get off and then we'd do it again. And I remember thinking how strange that was.

It was at this point that my one purpose in life, my one job every day was to walk my dog. My day would be me getting up in the morning and wondering about if I should get dressed for the day because what was the point?

And then sometimes I'd go and I'd sit at the back door to just kind of breathe fresh air and remember what it felt like to have a breeze on my face or to feel the rain. And he would just come and sit with me and sit next to me and kind of lean next to me. I could have sworn he knew something was wrong with me.

But my whole purpose every day was to walk him and my whole morning would build up to this point where I was terrified of having to do this one thing. But I also knew that if I didn't walk him, he wouldn't get out and that wasn't fair and I couldn't do that to him. So...

I would put on my shoes and I'd feel terrified and I'd put in my headphones and I'd play music really loudly and I'd put his lead on and I would just take that step outside and it just felt like this big invisible barrier was there where it felt far more difficult to breathe on that side of the door.

There was this old lady that lived on the street down from us and she would sit by her window all day and she just kind of sat there and I think she just sat and watched TV and did a crossword and phoned her family. But every time she saw you, she would wave at you as you went past. And it just it made such a difference because I knew that there was going to be that friendly face always.

And she would be there and she'd wave at me and I'd wave back. And like the empathy of this dog whose one purpose was to go out and this lady that waved at me. Those were the two constants in my day, which were the scariest point, but also a huge amount of comfort as well.

I started watching a lot of horror films at this time because when I was watching them it was like I was controlling the fear and I was controlling the adrenaline. It was my way of being like, I'm deciding to feel like this right now so that when I do feel like this outwith my control at least I can recognise the feeling in a way. I wasn't able to go to my doctor's appointments or get a haircut on my own anymore.

I was having to ask my mum to drive me to the hairdresser and to hold my hand because I'm so terrified that once the hairdresser starts cutting my hair I can't really leave because then I'll have half a haircut. I was lucky enough to have a very understanding hairdresser because she'd gone through something fairly similar to what I was going through. I remember her saying to me, "To get better you have to want to get better."

At the time I was furious. Didn't she know what I was going through? Didn't she know what I had been through? What I was feeling? The hatred I had towards myself because I couldn't function like other people? Of course I wanted to get better. I remember so clearly her saying that because she was so right.

I was so stuck in these ways that I didn't want to get better because I didn't know any other way of living.

I wasn't even living, I was just existing. But I was at least existing in a way that in my way of thinking was safe. And if I even relinquished some of that safety that I had created around me in my habits, if I let go of that, I opened myself up to the danger which I had been hiding myself away from. And was that worth it? It felt like...

All of these unknown possibilities and all of these unknown dangers were constantly pressing in on the doors and the windows to our house and I felt claustrophobic by the thought of the outside. Why put myself through all of that agony and fear of the unknown? Why bother? Why not just make things easier for myself?

and just give in to the fear. From the ages of 18 to 22, I became pretty much fully housebound. I could sometimes go out if I had someone with me, but to do it alone felt an impossible task. So I just kind of regressed into fully becoming housebound.

I felt like a ghost in a way. I was just haunting this house that my family were trying to live in and I would just kind of float from one room to another and live up in the attic like some sort of phantom. At this point, I didn't feel like I even deserved clean clothes. I didn't feel like I deserved to wash. I wasn't looking after myself at all.

The day would flash by because I would just be sat there wallowing in this bleak in-between. These endless empty days of just nothing. I would sometimes see Facebook posts of friends getting engaged or having a baby. And I just kind of looked at it like I didn't even know.

know these people and I didn't know how they were living this way I couldn't get my mind around it I couldn't imagine them being the same age as me because I felt like I was frozen in this moment of 18 years old and just about to embark in the world but I kind of lost my ticket or something

I did have a few friends that I was able to keep in touch with and meet during this time, but it was completely online. It was completely message based. And sometimes they would come and visit me. And that was just such a highlight. But it felt humiliating not really having anything to share with them.

It felt kind of like living in a greenhouse in a way, just kind of watching everything behind glass panels. But I'm still trying to grow inside, not quite understanding how they're surviving out there.

It was around about this time when I was 20 that a childhood friend of mine passed away terribly in a mountaineering accident and he had just graduated as a doctor.

Here I was with no direction, no purpose, unable to leave the house, unable to look after myself. And I felt like, how dare I be here when this person who had dedicated themselves to bettering others

the better the world had passed away and it felt like I didn't deserve to have the rest of my life ahead of me when I didn't even know what I wanted to do with it it just seemed like a cruel joke in a way

I was going to lots of different doctor's appointments at this time as well. And I was trying so many different kinds of medication. It would get to a certain point in the day and I would feel overwhelmingly dizzy. And I would just sleep for 12 hours and then I'd wake up. Medications that would give me these extremely real feeling dreams. But they were horrible dreams that I could just feel and see myself dying in and violent ones.

ways medications that gave me palpitations and ones that I had strange memory loss with and trying again and again and again to get it right but it just nothing stuck and

I remember it was New Year's Eve and I had an appointment and I just felt like I couldn't get out of the car. If I got out of the car, I was going to die. It felt like I was just going to die if I got out of the car. My mum had to carry me in to the doctors. She had her arm around me and was carrying most of my weight to get me in to see this doctor doctor.

And we got into the to see the psychiatrist and I just kind of tucked myself into her like a baby bird. I wasn't brave enough to face what it was going to take to make me better.

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She didn't do anything in particular that changed me. There was no treatment that she did with me that changed things. It was just that she was finally someone who listened to what I was scared of and reassured me. That was what I needed. The combination of her and this psychiatrist who just happened to prescribe me this certain medication

These were anti-psychotic medication. This was some serious stuff that I was being prescribed and I wasn't sure that I was comfortable taking that. But she sat me down and she reassured me and she told me that she had been on it previously herself when she had had a really hard time after the birth of her child. She'd spent so long building up this human connection with me that I trusted her enough to try it.

It was two weeks after that that I was able to go on a bus because this medication was exactly what I needed and we just finally found the fit for me. It was kind of like the bit in The Wizard of Oz where she's always lived in black and white and then suddenly my brain was full technicolor and it was just the most beautiful thing ever.

I wasn't so caught up in my head about everything I was scared of happening. I was just taking in that moment. Yes, my thinking process was hugely a problem, but once I had the stability in my mind that I wasn't getting naturally, I was then able to calm my thought process. My memory became clearer.

started seeing things about the world that I had forgotten or that I had never noticed before. Like, I remember standing out in the garden at night and looking up at the sky and thinking,

I couldn't remember the last time I had seen a clear sky with my own eyes in so long. I hadn't seen the stars in so long because I'd been so preoccupied with looking at the world around me and how it could harm me that I hadn't looked up in years.

I'd forgotten the wonder I felt as a child that my mum had been so careful to nurture within me. And I remember just crying because I'd forgotten how beautiful it looks with your own two eyes. It was December and there was a Christmas fair that happens every year in Edinburgh. And I said to my mum, it's like, you're off on this day. Let's go. And she was so shocked at this.

And she's like, okay. It was overwhelming being around so many people. And she kept kind of checking with me, like, are you okay? Do you need a moment? Do you need to come? But I was just amazed at all these things that I'd been missing. I wasn't scared of these people. I was interested in them. I was curious in them. That day is just one of the most magical days of my life.

It felt like an affirmation that I had been through hell and I'd come out the other side and I was going to be okay. It was a huge change in me but that wasn't me just immediately fixed. I had a lot of work that I was going to have to do to rewire the way I thought and the way that I reacted in social situations.

I had to eat normally and healthily because I was really not a healthy weight. My skin was like a grey from being inside for so long. I had to completely kind of relearn how to be a person in a way.

I didn't know how to cook, I didn't know how to drive and I also didn't know what I wanted to do with my life. It was a delicate balance of learning how to be me but not learn bad habits again. As I gained my confidence back and I gained headspace to be social again

I found out that I really enjoyed making people laugh. I discovered that I can be a very optimistic, happy person. I also remembered how much I enjoyed being creative and when I was very young my grandmother taught me to sew and I really got back into that and this is when I started applying for universities.

I managed to get into a university and I was terrified that the same thing was going to happen again. But the degree that I applied for was a costume making one because I remembered all of the films that I loved and the theatre that I liked to watch. I wanted to try doing that. I wanted to try inspiring people now that I had the chance to try doing that myself.

When I started at university, I found myself at 22, surrounded by 18 and 19-year-olds who had just left home. And it felt bizarre in a way because socially we were the same, but also I felt like a lifetime away from them because of all the struggling I'd done internally in that time. And it was wonderful to meet these people who...

hadn't progressed further than me in life and we could learn from each other as we took the same steps together.

Now in the subject that I was passionate about, I could be good at something and I had the ability to push myself. And it was so exciting to learn that about myself that I had things that I had power over and I had things that I was talented at that weren't how to survive a panic attack. And it was wonderful.

This is when I also decided that I wanted to see more of the world. I wanted to branch out. Let's go further. So

decided that I was going to go to Vancouver because I'd always wanted to see Canada. I'd always wanted to travel. So for one week, I went to Vancouver and I was terrified the whole time, but it was a good way. I was excited. I was full of adrenaline, but it was because I was nervous in a positive way.

I started going to theme parks with my best friend and I was so scared of roller coasters because that's what makes you throw up, right? But I was like, you know what? I'm going to do that. I'm going to do that and I'm going to like it. I did. I loved it.

It was like I was regaining my control of fear and I wasn't letting it control me. I had spent far too long letting it be in control. It was my turn. I am now 29. I will be 30 this year and I could never have imagined I would be living the life I am now.

It's been eight years since my initial start to recovery and I've done a lot in that time. I did my four-year honours degree. I have worked in some amazing places with my degree in costume in

TV and film and theatre. I've made crazy things. I've worked on crazy sets and have done the most incredible travelling with my best friend. I have lived in four different cities. I have tried as many different foods as I possibly can with all different tastes and textures.

I go to work every day in a little bakery which I love and I could not tell you the difference in my outlook in life and my happiness and my hope. I'm grateful that I went through all I did because it's given me such a positive outlook on life and how I treat myself and how I treat other people.

I feel like I have more self-compassion now than I could have because I understand that we are all just kind of trying to make things up as we go along. And I am just a human. I'm just this little brain rattling around in a body. And sometimes what I want and what I do are not the same thing. And that's OK sometimes.

I do still sometimes catch myself going into old habits and sometimes it'll be just something silly like I'm excited or I'm a bit nervous about something that's happening and suddenly my body will take that adrenaline and start pushing me towards the direction of a panic attack.

And it is a constant struggle in a way. It is still something I'm learning and it probably will be something that I always live with. But it's at a point now where I can live with it. I can still live a full life

When you're pushed to the extreme of what you're able to deal with, you kind of see yourself looking back and you realize that there's a lot of parts of being human that you don't have control over and that's very scary because you think you fully control yourself a lot of the time but sometimes you don't. You do things without thinking and that's unnerving in a way.

I feel a lot of the time with mental health, your goal is to get better. It's this unrealistic thing

thing that you think is going to happen and you're going to be in like quotation marks normal there is no normal humans are scared and humans are sad and humans are a big mess and that's okay there's nothing wrong with feeling emotions and feeling them hard sometimes and there's nothing wrong with tripping up and not dealing with them in a way that's healthy

I regret strongly the way that I acted at times because when the fear or the sadness took over I was a cold, unpleasant person and unknowingly cruel and self-centered because they were so focused on survival and that did mean that I was not a nice person to be around.

I don't think I would recognise myself if I was to meet myself at that age now. I think the hardest part for me was the shame because I didn't realise it at the time but I can be quite a proud person.

So when I was kind of brought down to my most primal self, I found that very embarrassing. And the shame of not being able to manage was extremely hard hitting. And the shame of being a burden to my family, to my loved ones, it was horrible. It was a horrible time.

But finding out who I am at my very worst is not something that is a loss. I think it's a gain in a way. I know how I react to extreme fear. I know how I react to extreme depression. And I know that I can make it out the other side. That is such an important lesson.

I think I appreciate so many things so much more now than I would have otherwise because I've had it taken away from me and because of that I appreciate it all so much more.

It's worth it. It's worth the fight. And it's worth that step outside that seemed so huge. And I'm happy with where I am. It may not be for everyone as at 30, but it's just a number. And as long as you're living, I think that's a win.

Today's episode featured Rachel Balcerak. You can find out more about Rachel on Instagram at bearscenario. That's B-E-A-R-S-C-E-N-A-R-I-O.

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Before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a short survey at wondery.com slash survey. Welcome to the Offensive Line. You guys, on this podcast, we're going to make some picks, talk some s**t, and hopefully make you some money in the process. I'm your host, Annie Yeager.

So here's how this show's going to work, okay? We're going to run through the weekly slate of NFL and college football matchups, breaking them down into very serious categories like No offense. No offense, Travis Kelsey, but you've got to step up your game if Pat Mahomes is saying the Chiefs need to have more fun this year. We're also handing out a series of awards and making picks for the top storylines surrounding the world of football. Awards like the He May Have a Point Award for the wide receiver that's most justifiably bitter.

Is it Brandon Ayuk, Tee Higgins, or Devontae Adams? Plus, on Thursdays, we're doing an exclusive bonus episode on Wondery+, where I share my fantasy football picks ahead of Thursday night football and the weekend's matchups. Your fantasy league is as good as locked in. Follow the offensive line on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can access bonus episodes and listen ad-free right now by joining Wondery+.