“This part of my life has shaped the person I am today” – Rebekah’s story

Rebekah has experienced depression, anxiety, OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder) and anorexia nervosa since her teenage years. Despite her challenges, she now works in mental health and advocates for positive change.

My mental health is something I’ve faced challenges with for the majority of my life. I am 22 years of age, but in some ways I still feel like a 16 year old teenager, trying to make my way through adult life. I used to think this would be a never-ending battle of feeling isolated and alone, but now I know this is only a part of who I am.

I’ve struggled with anxiety since an early age, dealing with feelings of fear, social anxiety and panic attacks. No one really understood how to help me when I was so young, with assumptions of it being “a phase” or that I would “just grow out of it” being very common beliefs from those around me. These ideas made me feel alone and out of control, which further led to my development of anorexia nervosa, OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder), depression and generalised anxiety disorder. 

Throughout my teenage years, I found both comfort and discomfort in the challenges I was facing. I felt alone, which at times was somewhat comfortable. It was a strange feeling - I craved understanding and support for what I was going through, but the feelings of safety or comfort that my eating disorder, OCD and depression gave me, was incomparable to the professional support made available to me at the time.

This made it hard to accept I even needed help. But deep down, I knew this wasn’t the life that I deserved to live and the behaviours that I was displaying were not healthy.

At the time, my school was not well equipped to understand and support complex mental illnesses, which further delayed my ability to access support. I was left feeling alienated and isolated amongst my peers and teachers, which further led to a decline in my mental health and multiple inpatient admissions between the ages of 16-18.

I felt a sense of anger for a very long time as I felt robbed of my teenage years and lacked the experiences that my peers had. “Why do I feel like this and why does no one else?” was a consistent question I asked myself.

However, what I now know is that this part of my life has shaped the person I am today, but not in the ways I could have imagined back then. I eventually began to realise that the thing that was keeping me in the cycle and comfort of my illness, was the belief I would never get “better”. This left me feeling stuck and decreased my will to even try.

Switching my mindset has helped me to accomplish so much more than I ever dreamed of! Since my last admission 5 years ago, I went back to college and completed courses in psychology and health and social care. I started university studying child mental health, worked as a mental health care assistant on an adolescent ward, similar to one I was once a patient in, and started my own business!

Though mental illness has caused many challenges in my life, I wholeheartedly believe that my level of empathy, ambition and values would not have been shaped if I didn’t go through these things in my life. 

I am very passionate about support for young people with complex mental illnesses. There is still a lack of support offered to those in the grips of illnesses such as anorexia and OCD. Increasing awareness and support within school settings is something I would’ve greatly benefitted from. I hope for a future where we can offer this to young people early on to decrease the number of inpatient admissions. No one should feel alone when struggling with any form of mental illness, and increasing awareness and support is the first step in ensuring this.