High-Functioning Anxiety/Depression

I recently had a talk with my therapist about what it means to be a high-functioning person with anxiety and depression. It made me realize that a lot of people are likely suffering from mental illness despite “keeping it all together.” This happens because I was taught that falling apart was not ok. I also continue to function because the culture in which I work in cannot really deal with “mental health issues.”

I have been in situations where I’ve been sobbing in my classroom before class begins. Desperately trying to suck the tears back in before any students see me. I’ve been still in bed 30 minutes before the time when I have to be at work, and still somehow managed to get myself “together” enough to pass for “functioning” at work. The moment the students come in through those doors, I put it all away and I put in all of my energy and efforts into making class fun for the students. I know that the students can feel me struggling some days, because they are patient with me. But I constantly berate myself. I tell myself how I’m not doing enough. I reprimand myself for not being more “together.”

The High-Functioning part of my mental illness stems from a childhood of constant activity. If I wasn’t at school, I was doing some type of sport, or some kind of project at home. I was raised thinking that idleness is a sign of weakness. That if I let my mind or body stay idle, I will, in turn, allow myself to become a worthless sack of shit. Being useless is my worst fear. It’s one of the biggest reasons why I rarely sleep a weekend away.

So what happens when my mental health takes a turn for the worse? Well, I simply overcompensate. I run myself until I’m on empty. I forget about really simple things such as meals, medication, cleaning, and doing laundry. In my worst state, I do everything I can to make it through those doors at work before collapsing in a heap on my bed at the end of the day. On the weekends, I have no work to occupy my time, so I keep myself so busy that I don’t even have time to think about what is making me so distraught. This works for some time because it keeps me from dwelling on negativity, but eventually my emotions cup overflows. When it overflows, then the anxiety begins to manifest itself into real physical symptoms.

The past two weeks, I’ve been terrified to fall asleep. I wake up every two hours during my sleep, gasping for air. Panic attacks plague me and coming down from each attack takes time and energy. Sleeping is almost as detrimental as not sleeping, and I wake up every morning absolutely defeated. In my dreams, I replay all of the things in my day, my week, my month, my year that have accumulated to break me down so that I can be gripped in fear when I wake up… on the dot… every two hours.

I am exhausted. I feel like I’m constantly on the verge of tears. I feel hopeless. But that’s life, right?