I was only fourteen years old when I first learned about anxiety. I remember being in a coffee shop with my parents when I started feeling funny, my hands were shaking and I was feeling unsettled, I could hardly explain to them what I was feeling, as they thought my blood pressure had dropped, they ordered me a coffee and all sudden I started to feel even worse. Heart racing, I was out of breath, my hands were shaking, crying unstoppably, sweating, thinking I was dying, thinking I was going out of my mind and would need to be admitted to a mental health facility, derealization, shaking from head to toe. Neither my parents nor I knew what anxiety was or what it looked like, at that time, in 2013, nobody was talking about it, so I had no knowledge of anxiety. We were going to the hospital. I got in the car, my dad was driving, and my mom and I were sitting in the backseat and my first thought was - This is it, this is my last day, these are my last moments and it’s ok, at least I’m with my parents, it’s ok – soon as I get to the hospital emergency room everyone stares at me. I was crying and panicking so I was definitely drawing a lot of attention. I went to triage and 2 hours later the doctor called me in, and after a few minutes says – This an anxiety attack - that was the first time I was told about anxiety. A few minutes later I was given a sedative and luckily stopped all symptoms.

When I was around 14 years old I started developing anxiety, depression and OCD. It was really hard to deal with these strange feelings, and it was even harder to understand what I was supposed to do with them. For some reason when people have a headache, they know what to do. When people break their arm they know what to do. However, it seems that society is, or was, not as prepared to deal with symptoms related to mental health disorders. Luckily, I was advised by medical professionals to meet a psychologist, and shortly after, a psychiatrist. My family was the most supportive family ever and helped me all the way, also asking for medical opinions on anything they might have been concerned about regarding, for example, medication. However, other people around me kept advising me to not take medicines (which were prescribed by doctors) for mental health disorders. They seemed to believe that thinking "I just need to calm down" would help change the biological imbalances that contributed to these mental health disorders. I was many times told by teachers, friends and other adults "I think you shouldn't take that kind of things. Try instead to meditate, say in the mirror you love yourself, and everything will be fine.". Non-sense. I have nothing against meditation, or even saying that you love yourself. However, I think that making people believe that these kind of techniques is the route to healing mental health disorders, might be dangerous. Now looking back, this kind of advice only created a delay in the treatment I needed. I think that as a teenager, having teachers (who were not educated in Medicine and Clinical Psychology) giving me medical advice, was quite detrimental, and delayed, in fact, my treatment. I got so bad, that sometimes I would stay hours repeating OCD-related rituals, not being able to get out of the house, with anxiety of being outside of the house and having another panic attack. Yes, because having OCD is not wanting the bedside table tidy. Having OCD is not washing your hands well because they are dirty. OCD is a lot more evasive than that. OCD to me meant having the skin of my hands so dry, almost bleeding, from washing them too many times, for fear of contamination. OCD to me meant that sometimes I would spend several hours a day going back to my Instagram to make sure I didn't put like in anything that my values were against. It took me several years of learning, medication and therapy to understand that, medicine saved me and therapy gave me the power to feel myself again. I understand that many people who don't or didn't suffer from OCD, anxiety and depression don't know how to react to their friends, family members, colleagues or even strangers. I understand that it is hard to understand their feelings and its reasons. However, there are always ways to learn more about it, from trustworthy sources. In my case, I know that when I am feeling anxious, depressed or having strong OCD symptoms, just having someone next to me that I know I can count on, even if in silence, has helped me immensely.