I'm gonna try to start this up again. It's important for an artist to be transparent with their audience, so I want to let my audience know what I'm going through.
Some may say I've been very successful. I have a house, I play guitar in an awesome band, I'm in grad school, and I just got a new job with an awesome software company. The truth is though, I don't successful.
What many people perceive as success has just been me stumbling through life. Underneath it all I've been nearly silently dealing with an almost decade-long mental health struggle. Hell, I've dealt with it my whole life, but it hit the breaking point when I was in my early 20's.
It's a long story, but I experienced a series of events that I found difficult to cope with including a traumatic car accident with my best friends. Needless to say none of us left that wreck the same.
A surprising other trigger was graduating from college. Many people don't know this, but positive events like graduating, a new job, marriage, having a baby, etc can be just as triggering to mental illness as negative events like car accidents. After college I was determined to get my first really good job, live independently in Tampa, and really hit the ground running with music like I've waited to my whole life.
My career got off to a good start: I graduated with three internships, two degrees, honors, and landed a job at the largest accounting firm in the world, PWC. However, soon after all this I started feeling really anxious and having a lot of anxiety and really weird, automatic, intrusive thoughts in my head, thoughts like "I don't want work to take over my life" or "If I put myself out there I'll be criticized". I wasn't HEARING voices in my head. It almost felt like I had two brains and one of them was a complete asshole.
I tried to help myself, but everything I did only seemed to make things worse. It got so bad I couldn't hold a job because of lack of ability to concentrate. I sought therapy but everything my therapists recommended for me was very difficult for me. Eventually, I was finally able to get in with a psychiatrist who diagnosed me with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder.
After receiving this diagnosis, I decided it would be best to take a sabbatical to focus on my health. I asked my parents if I could move back in with them and take some time off before going back to work. I'm so grateful they said yes.
So, I moved back to Delaware, took off from work and sought intensive treatment. After six months I had improved enough to go back to work. I moved out of my parents house 3 years later, and successfully held employment for over 5, but I was still struggling with anxiety and intrusive thoughts.
What hit me in the face with a ton of bricks was when my therapist and I identified that the biggest problem was I was just way too hard on myself. What also really helped me was journaling. It really helped get the excess thoughts out of my head and, more importantly, develop compassion for myself. Once journaling had run its useful course, meditation helped me to relax and learn to let go of the thoughts instead of fighting them. Finally, keeping myself busy with things like work and music is helping me to avoid concentrating on the intrusive thoughts.
I've learned you're gonna be criticized no matter what so you just have to let it go. Hurt people hurt people so you really just gotta pay them no mind. Ultimately, it's important to take care of yourself and be your own best friend.
It may have taken a long as time, and my 20's may be over, but I finally feel ready to move forward with my art. Am I gonna make it? Probably not. Do I care? Fuck no. It can still be fun to work on developing a small online following. Today, I am reborn!
Comentários