By Temwa
It’s 2am, and I am breaking down in tears.
I can’t believe this, this morning I’m going to tell my parents I’m dropping out of school. The voices are getting louder mummy, I’m loosing my mind, it feels like my life is slipping right through my hands, I feel like giving up, my tiny dorm room feels like it’s getting smaller, all the voices in my head are screaming at me, it’s getting hard to breathe, what’s real, what’s not. Mummy I’m tired and I’m scared, scared I’m dieing, the thought that you’ll have to burry your baby, that’s what’s breaking my heart, a picture of you crying.
10,000 thoughts, telling me I’m sick, I don’t understand why my own Brain literally wants to kill me, where did these voices come from, why are they so believable, they never leave me alone, not even for a second, I feel like I’m loosing myself in myself, I’m afraid I’ll sleep tonight and I won’t wake up, a stranger in my own mind. My preppy sunshine self has been lost. 2017,the year I found out mental illness is real, it’s happening, it can happen to anyone and it happened to me. Surviving hypochondria.
How do you survive hiv hypochondria? How do you survive living with a 1000 voices that have you convinced you have hiv? The tests say otherwise , I’ve done “nothing”, all my friends think I’m overreacting, but they don’t know, nor do they understand, what it’s like, waking up to voices screaming that you are sick, going through the day with these voices that don’t leave you alone, and finally they win, and I begin to believe them.
Not only do they want to convince me I have hiv, but that I’m dieing, that every night I go to sleep, they tell me I won’t wake up, They don’t leave me alone, they get to work as soon as I get up, my whole life’s comes to a stand still, I can’t concentrate in class because their louder than my lecturers,so eventually, I just stop going to class, I can’t read books,I can barely hold a conversation,they love attention, they don’t want me to be side tracked, but fully listening to them. I feel trapped in my own body, my own little prison. When did this happen? Why am I waging war on myself.
The thing about mental illness is that it takes away your mental strength, everyone thinks it’s easy, to snap out of depression, or anxiety or obsessive thoughts, ya’ know “put your mind to it”, “just think happier thoughts” , “usamaganize kwambiri”, but what they don’t know is that mental health issues, compromise mental strength and it’s not as easy.
What is hiv hypochondria ? Hypochondriasis or hypochondria is a condition in which a person is excessively and unduly worried about having a serious illness. A hypochondriac is someone who lives with the fear that they have a serious, but undiagnosed medical condition, even though diagnostic tests show there is nothing wrong with them. Hypochondriacs experience extreme anxiety . In my case I was fully, with no doubt convinced I had HIV.
Growing up, I’ve always been passionate about positive change in my country and community,hoping for better days, always thinking our country had bigger problems and didn’t have time nor money for “white people problems” like mental health issues, I basically didn’t believed it was even really “there”, Jokes on me right ?
Mental health issues are real, mental health issues can ruin lives and should be taken seriously. I never thought for one minute, that I , the happy go preppy nerd, working to make the world a better place, would ever reach a point of seriously considering dropping out of school or struggle with thoughts of suicide.
So how do you survive hypochondria or extreme forms of anxiety ?
1. Do not isolate yourself, remain plugged in to people, especially when you can’t trust your mind, involve your friends, family and the church, refuse to allow the disorder to make you feel like you’ll be a burden, or they won’t understand. My sister called me every day, twice a day, for 3 months. I wasn’t stable, I didn’t know what was real or not real. But she did.
2. Be patient with yourself, and hold on to hope, my mind wanted to make me believe that this was it and I was dieing,holding on to hope that I would ever be “normal” was hard, but cling on to hope, that brighter days are coming.
3. Prayer and reading the Bible, a constant reminder that I am not alone, and that despite all that’s happening, I may not trust my own thoughts, as sad as that sounds, but I can trust God.
4. Screaming stop!! Weird hey, but in the middle of all those obsessive thoughts, it would sound like 10 people having really fast conversations, I could barely keep up, screaming stop, helped me disrupt the pattern of thought. Atleast for a while.
5. Getting help, i struggled with hypochondria for about a year, and was always reluctant from seeing a pshychologist, it’s okay to get help, it’s not weird, it’s nothing shameful, it’s your mental health, your friend isn’t struggling with you. I only saw a psychologist when I had already been through the worst of it and I was getting much better, he helped shed light on what hypochondria was and simple steps on how I can avoid obsessive thoughts.
I survived hypochondria, I look back to 2017 today and it seems so surreal, like that really happened, I thought I’d never get out of it, that my life would be consumed by anxiety, but here I stand, all I’d like to say is dear anxious, don’t give up, as corny as this sounds. It does get better.
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