Making sense of ‘mental darkness’

Mental darkness.

When I tried to open up to friends about my decades-long struggle with mental health, their first responses would often have me clamming up and not wanting to share more. Mental health, they would kindly share, is when one has been diagnosed as having schizophrenia, bipolar disorder or an extreme case of depression. What I described to them is not considered an mental health issue. I would often feel brushed away as they start sharing about their own experience or knowledge on the topic.

A friend who recovered from schizophrenia shared that mental health is when one has to take medication to re-balance chemicals in the brain. Another shared about his daughter and how he considered her ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder) to be ‘mental health’ related. He considered what I shared with him as ‘mental wellness’.

Mental wellness? This term is new to me. How could what I feel be mental wellness if all I felt was darkness and I did not feel well at all? What is mental health, if what I experienced is something else altogether? I created a term ‘mental darkness’ to make sense of what I was experiencing.

So what is mental health?

What do people mean when we say mental health? According to Singapore Association for Mental Health’s website, mental illness is ‘a disturbance of the mind that impairs the way we think, feel and behave. It affects our daily activities, as well as impact the lives of family members and friends’. The same association states that at least 1 in 7 Singaporeans would have experienced at least a mood or anxiety disorder at some point of their lives.

This suggests that mental illness is prevalent in our society. Yet, mental health is often not a topic for conversation, even with friends. Persons with mental illness face discrimination, which impedes them from getting treatment.

At my former workplace, I was amazed by how open a colleague was in sharing about her regular doctor treatments for depression. The workplace management not only empathised; they made arrangements to allow the colleague to continue full-time even as she needed to take protracted leave and flexible hours to go for treatment. Even though I appreciated the management’s response, I was not ready to similarly open up on how I felt I was often not feeling well and possibly suffering from depression or some sort of mental illness.

Mental illness. This was certainly a term I did not want to acknowledge. As a university student, I walked out of a professor’s office after he recommended that I see a psychiatrist. I never talked to him again.

Making sense of my own experience

The conversation with the professor came up at a time when I was struggling with the transition to university life. The student life that I was used to was no more. My friends from school had moved on with their lives in other countries. While I did well in some modules, I struggled and did poorly in others. I got to a point where I started unconsciously introducing self-sabotaging behaviour in class, in relationships and with myself. I would hear words in my head and believe them, even when friends and people around me share other perspectives of reality. I lost friends because I could not believe that they didn’t say bad things about me (the voice I heard said they did!). I lost at least 10kg within a short span of time, and went from a bit plump to mostly skin and bones. This was probably accelerated with not having enough food at the hostel, too much exercise and not having enough rest.

I use the term ‘mental darkness’ to describe my decades-long association with mental health challenges as darkness was a common theme in my childhood and adult years. I share snippets of my own experience from two separate time periods below.

Teenage years ~

I don’t know how I survived my teenage years. If anything, it was only during the older teenage years where I found some reason to give thanks for life. This was thanks to a safe community of friends I had, where I chose to spend time with residents of one-room flats and like-minded school mates on a monthly basis.

I felt I had a lot less control of my own life during my secondary school days. I was mostly home alone. During the darkest days, I would howl and cry my heart out, hoping someone would hear. My home may be big and sun-lit, but all I could see was the corner of space I placed myself in. I would sometimes stare at the windows, half wishing I had the courage to push myself off the ledge. There was a little voice in me that whispered that doing so isn’t courage either, and I would leave the world without adding anything good to it. I didn’t know what good I could bring to world. On happier days, I would dream of singing at the same windows, and imagine that my action would inspire home after home to do the same. I would go to the pool and imagine that I was diving into the depths of the sea, or swim many laps with joy of feeling here and alive.

There were days when I felt a lot of anger. In my teenage years, I was wrapping a gift for a friend who was leaving. It was a carefully chosen gift, and I wrapped it up with much care and excitement. Just when the gift was all wrapped up, I hammered at it. The gift box and the wrapping that I spent much time on was utterly destroyed. I was stunned by my own reaction. It took me some time before I pulled myself together to take out the gift (it was cloth) and decide to still gift it but to leave it unwrapped. I felt shocked by my own action which I felt was random, and couldn’t understand why it happened. This was something I did not share with others. It was a moment where I made a mental note not to have children of my own, unless I knew I could truly care for them and not open them to untold pain and hurt which I saw in my own life.

Adult years ~

Moments of ‘mental darkness’ continued into my adult life. The moments where I howl in pain as a cry for help continued. These moments were strangely comforting as these were moments I was very familiar with. As years went by, I started feeling less helpless and wanted to find ways to feel better and more alive.

The ‘mentally dark moments’ stopped when I took a life coaching program that allowed me to dig deep into my memories, and reset some of things I told myself. I emerged from the program with a deep sense of peace and acceptance. The program helped me realise that I needed to accept what has happened in my life, and to accept the whole of me (including the parts I rejected) as I craft a new path going forward.

‘Mental darkness’ or depression seemed to be a thing of the past. Encouraged by the immense energy and courage that emerged, I went on to do more. I felt that I had wasted 30-odd years living life as if I was watching in from the outside, and wanted to finally experience life for what it had to offer. I started doing more, more, and more. I took on opportunities that came. I took on obligations, responsibilities, and expectations that I didn’t ask for.

About three years back, I felt that the old me that I had buried away was re-emerging. I didn’t know what to make of it, except that it was going to emerge with vengeance. I felt like I was being swept in a current that I could not get out of. Something was not right but I could not put a finger on it. I did not have the same dark howling moments that I was used to. This experience was something else altogether. Here are some things that helped me realise that something was off and I needed to find my way to feel well again:

• I would dream of home-cooked meals, but end up stoning outside for hours without having a proper meal or inwardly struggle with the food choices I end up making.
• I would go through my days, aware of the importance of the work I do at the workplace or community, but seemingly drifting and struggled with unseen currents. I would tell colleagues that I felt like a plankton drifting with the currents and wished I was a fish that could swim strongly forward and go to a bay to have some rest.
• I would have the most amazing things planned for the day or week, but feel that I couldn’t even pull myself out of bed. I had no motivation to do anything at all. I was in my room feeling stuck to the bed for hours, with no one at home realising that anything was wrong. Some people I know tended to label people who sleep in as lazy. I know from this experience that even mere minutes spent in bed could be utterly painful and difficult to bear.
• More shockingly, I realised I could not speak. I would try to speak or sing, if only to get myself out of my head. Except, I would feel that something was physically coming up from inside and blocking sound from even coming out. My own body was trying to tell me something, and I was totally clueless on how to interpret it. This thought totally scared me. How do you even bring this up to anyone else, especially when I could still speak normally at other times, like in the workplace?
• I started having difficulty breathing. Each breath became increasingly laboured. Depressive thoughts lingered at the doorway.
• The body started having rash of all kinds, to an extent that I had never experienced.
• … and so on.

There were many more signs and symptoms that told me, and others, that something was really wrong. I went from doctor to doctor. It was frustrating when after going through all sorts of tests, doctors told me that everything was fine. Finally, one said, “There is nothing physically wrong with you. You do need to sort out your underlying issues.”

Path to feeling well

In the last year since I chose to leave my former workplace, I have been learning, unlearning, re-learning what my latest mental darkness experience has taught me. I have been experimenting with ways to heal from the dark periods of my life, and intentionally making space to re-discover what it means to truly live and walk away from darkness that had been such a big part of my life.

I look forward with sharing with you my journey of healing and recovery. If you identified with the moments of mental darkness I shared here, may we move forward on our paths to healing and start experiencing what it means to truly live.