I’ll hyperventilate, and when I’ve built myself up into a panic attack I can’t think logically. The only thought that seems to go through my brain is I’m going to die. This is it, I’m dying, I’m dying, I’m dying. Because you can’t breathe properly and things go fuzzy cos the blood rushing around, you can’t see properly, and although you can be told, it’s okay, you’re not gonna die it doesn’t help. I don’t really know of anything that helps properly. Paper bag obviously helps the hyperventilation but the headache afterwards is horrible [laughs].

I’ve passed out a couple of times because my breathing just won’t even out. I’ve had some particularly bad ones where I’ve passed out several times in the same panic attack. Cos I come back round and I start hyperventilating straight away, which is an achievement I think. I deserve a badge for that really, they’re not fun [laughs], they’re very scary both witnessing them and having them is very hard.

I used to get pushed down stairs a lot, people would swear at me and spit at me, throw compasses at me. My friend who tried to kill herself, she cut her wrists in front of me, and I told one of my then friends about it, we then fell out, and she spread it round. Because I’d then developed a thing where I could not have my wrists exposed, I got very edgy about that, people then took to drawing red lines over their wrists and waving them in my face. And throwing compasses at me, throwing rocks at my head.

I still can’t handle compasses. I’ve had a complete phobia of them for ages now. And take compasses as an example, that’s a good one, if I know I’m going to have to go into a maths class where people are gonna be using compasses, even if I’m not going to be using them myself, I can worry about it for hours. And then build myself up so I’m so anxious, or like for a week, and go with what happened in my maths exam, where they told me I didn’t have to do the questions involving a compass, they got permission from the exam board for me not to do those questions. But one of the helpers in the exam didn’t know this; saw I didn’t have a compass on my table, threw one down at my desk. To which I screamed and ran out of the room [laughs]. I react in such a good way.

But, when it really, and I don’t know whether this is this isn’t really related to depression really, but when it really hit was when the massive physical symptoms came in, panic attacks, panic attacks and stuff like that when I realised, I felt, I don’t think I was actually properly actually looking at everything, I think I was still ignoring a few things. Because I was adopting this massive scheme of structure and organisation, I was saying, No I can’t have any emotion in, within this, very, I don’t know, business, not not business, but organisational thin.

And so I think I was ignoring my feelings and eventually I think my head was going, Look no no you’ve gotta, you’ve got to deal with this stuff and so it just sent out these messages of panic attacks. I couldn’t be in, first, I remember the first ones I ever had were in school assembly and stuff, and I couldn’t escape. And I said, Oh I have to leave, I have to leave and just you know so that was, obviously that was when you know everything kind of happened very physically and so I just thought well I’ve got to get some help.

I would say be sat in a night club and everyone was having fun and I’ll be having fun and I wouldn’t necessarily be drunk at all and suddenly I’d feel like I was all by myself, completely closed off in like a bubble and I’ll, aah it was just the weirdest feeling, I would feel like, Oh my God, I have to get out of here, I have to get away And I’d look around and all I’d really want was someone to say, Are you okay But obviously you’re so good at the act it was just smiling and no-one would ever knew unless I told them, and I knew in my head I would be thinking these things in my head, if I told them right now how I felt everyone would be asking if I was okay, and just things like that, everyone, I would get, but I didn’t want that.

I am the party goer, I am the person that’s always fine and does okay, so I didn’t really, I didn’t feel like too much pressure was on me but I didn’t want to kind of let that slip. I didn’t want the looks of sympathy that I got from my Mum and that kind of thing. I wanted to you know escape with my friends.

And it would happen every now and then, I just had to get away from the place, and then I’d wonder if anyone would even notice and obviously you’re in a busy club, so who would really notice anyway. And every now and then I would just go home, and everyone would think I’d done that White Ninja thing where you drink too much, and then kind of just wandered home, but I would never ever say the real reason.

Worries like, worrying about being sick, when I was a child I used to, used to have cold sweats, I couldn’t, wouldn’t be able to get to bed, and like my Mum had, my Mum and my Dad used to pat me to go to sleep because I used to worry about being sick. I’d say, I’m going to be sick this evening. I’m gonna be sick this evening And another point about the whole, how physic, how everything turns physical is that whenever I used to worry about being sick, I felt sick. And and you know I actually felt sick, and you know, and thatI can’t think of any other silly worries, really but it was really fear of germs as well, that was the first ever worry, silly worry I had and. And that was you know having to wash my hands around 7 times a day and a lot of people say, well that’s a common symptom of obsessive compulsive disorder, but I know I am and they’re still trying to kind of diagnose that. But I don’t know it was that, I used to have to wash my hands all the time, it was justand my skin started to crack because I used too much soap and stuff like that, but yeah stilly worries like that.

The strange thing is that I hate being this way and I hate feeling this way, but with the anti-depressants they almost block out the part of my mind that triggers the OCD, and where that might be a good thing in some people’s eyes, to me I feel lost because I’ve depended on it for so long it’s become a part of me, so with the part of my mind being blocked out and you know suppressing my moods, I’m unable to function. And so it’s almost like, I know it sounds ridiculous, but I almost miss the OCD because it’s been my way of you know, it’s been my way of coping, it’s been my way of life.

So without it I’m quite lost, and I question well you know, Who am I now So it’s, it’s a difficult thing for me because the, you know the counselling I’m, I want to beat the OCD you know, it’s, I don’t want to live with it for the rest of my life, but at the same time you know, after ten years it’s like, well how I cope without it? And that’s something we’ll have to learn to deal with also.

I was referred up to the Children’s hospital in [place name], because of what we now know as Chronic Fatigue. But the doctors couldn’t find anything wrong with me and the blood tests came back normal. So they referred me up to the [hospital name], and when she found out I had depression, and when she found out I self harmed, she wouldn’t, she basically told me everything was psychological. And kept me in hospital for 5 days. I wasn’t allowed to go until I’d seen a psychiatrist, psychologist, and social worker, and it was when the psychiatrist asked me at one point, do you ever hear voices? And I went, Well yeah, doesn’t everyone And she said, No not really And that’s when I realised okay, this isn’t normal. I always knew that I was ill. I knew that I had depression, obviously from the diagnosis from when I was 13, and it wasn’t something that just went away after a couple of months. So I knew I had the depression, but I always thought the voices were something everyone heard, cos everyone always describes like a conscience or something, and I kind of connected it to being the same kind of thing.

Frankie’ They [voices] keep telling me to hurt myself, I tend to just like make sure I ring someone or I’ve got like music on as a distraction so I can’t hear them as much. but yeah it can be quite scary at times. They can be quite, it, it, you’re like, with paranoia’s fine but you feel like someone’s controlling you, you feel like someone’s in your head and it’s really not a nice feeling. When, especially when you’re not thinking rationally. it’s a case of, Oh Go you know, Someone’s controlling me, I’m not in control of myself But other than that when I’m a rational person I’m just, yeah I can pretty much ignore them. You know I’m sort of used to them now, I’ve basically had to accept the fact that.

Sian’ You get used to them don’t you?

Frankie’ Yeah.

Sian’ You get used to them but sometimes it can be hard to, to, you have days, good days and bad days where they sometimes they’re louder than others. Like most of the time they’re always there but sometimes they’re just a bit louder and,

Frankie’ yeah. And basically I’ve just have to accept the fact that I’m gonna have them for the rest of my life. Because that’s a, you know a physical manifestation of my stress and my depression. So anytime I get stressed I’m gonna hear voices pretty much, cos my body loves me, and it likes scaring me. So yeah pretty much it can be really scary.

Sian’ Can be scary, but at times, sometimes it feels like, to me, my voices sometimes give me advice on things, it’s like sometimes they tell me to do things that does help me out, but other times like they tell me to do things that really not going to help me out at all it’s stuff that’s going to get me into loads of trouble. And it’s just try and figure out what are the good times and what are the bad times. You have to like control yourself.

Frankie’ You can’t control them [voices]. Managing them in a way so they don’t affect you in a bad way, could it be like from listening to music so for you it’s a distraction or you can’t hear them as clearly or basically as like if especially if you’ve had them for a few years you build up sort of an immunity, to what they’re saying. And because they repeat it and stuff basically getting used to what they’re saying, you expect it, but as Sian said, it depends on how good a day you’re having or how bad a day you’re having.

Mandy’ Becomes like background noise doesn’t it?

Frankie’ Yeah.

Mandy’ Cos if you’re focussing on like a book or something and you’ve got the telly on in the background, it’s like that, it’s like background noise.

Frankie’ Yeah.

Mandy’ Mostly, music’s the main one that they suggest even so,

Frankie’ Yeah.

Mandy’ Try and help distract among other things but the rest are a bit weird.

[Laughter]