My Battle with Depression, Panic Attacks and Nervous Breakdown

I decided to make this website thanks to Blondepoet, a very special an inspirational Hubber. I have written about my past before but here I will write about it more extensively, not only for myself, but for others as well.

Hopefully this can help some people who suffers from an existential crises like I used to and show them that there is light at the end of the tunnel. But I am also writing this for myself to get more clarity since I haven't found my true mission in life.

My past is something deep and dark, and I realize it's not something I can escape in a day. As you will find out, the past can leave a deep scar on you. But there is always hope as long as you believe in it.

The human spirit is stronger than anything.

For most people who suffer from nervous system diseases it all started back in their childhood. In the beginning you are at the mercy of your parents. If they are unloving and abusive then that is the picture you will have of the world. The world will be a dangerous place where your survival is constantly under threat. This is certainly the picture I had of the world in the beginning. It was truly a frightening place.

And it would remain that way for a long long time which seemed like an eternity. The fact that both my parents suffered from some form of depression as well did of course not help. It was therefor in my genes and given the right(or wrong) circumstances, I would be doomed to be depressed. I don't remember much about my early childhood, accept feeling profoundly unloved and insecure.

My parents divorced early and for a while it was just me, my sister and my mom(who has bi-polar disorder). During this time we still visited my dad during holidays, and that is where the sexual abuse started. This continued for a while until I couldn't take it anymore, and one day in primary school after I found out what was happening to me, I told my mom about it. I would no longer visit my dad.

But the damage had been done. I had been sexually molested by my biological father and it was going to stay with me for the rest of my life. In the coming years my mom would get married again and things sort of settled down. I didn't have a good relationship with my stepfather, but at least I was part of some sort of family with three more stepsisters and a step brother.

Things were far from ideal. Although i can remember some good times, I was mostly the insecure, frightened kid who had suffered severe emotional trauma. I felt unsafe in a hostile environment. At some point in primary school I was the most popular kid, but that kind of thing could never last. In high school I was always the freak/weirdo/outsider. I mean I was a pretty good tennis player, but on the social front I was non-existent.

I got invited to one or two parties in high school, but that was it. I was just deeply insecure and of course other kids took advantage of that to hide their own insecurities. Therefor i had no social life. I would spend weekends sitting at home in front of the television, which was my escape from the harsh outside world. I had no social life whatsoever. If I did happen to go out, I would mess it up somehow. So I just decided to stay home.

I became totally closed off to the other kids.This continued for the first three years of high school, until one day my mom said that my father tried to make contact with me and that I should go visit him. I was against it but eventually decided to give him a second chance. After all, people can change I thought. Maybe this was my second chance. A chance to find my father and set everything right that went wrong in my past.

I visited my dad and I found new hope. I started to believe that things were turning around. Eventually he would ask me to go live with him, making all kinds of promises. We would change my life drastically and I would become that kid I was always meant to be. I even agreed to go live with him, his new wife, and kid. But the night before the day he was supposed to come pick me up, my intuition told me that this was all wrong.

If I accepted his offer I would make the mistake of my life. I had seen things when I visited him that made it all too obvious that he had not changed. He still had some kind of sexual obsession with me, and if I decided to go live with him it would mean the end of me. For good. So at the eleventh hour I refused his offer. It may have been the best decision I ever made, but it also almost killed me.

The next day my dad phoned me and he was fuming. I would always be a failure because I acted in this unpredictable way. In short he had written me off. That response from him was a clear sign that I made the right decision, but instead of feeling good about it, I really lost it at this point. All my expectations were shattered. I have waited all this time for change, and it was an epic failure.

This is really the point where it all went wrong for me. Where I was staying at home over weekends, I now went out every weekend to get drunk. Some days I would come out of the pub in daylight and head right over to school. My grades took a drastic dive, almost to the point of failing. I also started missing school days. I would just show up at school for roll call and walk out the front gate right afterwards.

I started smoking marijuana. I just went completely out of control and became severely depressed. My mom had no idea how to handle this. At this point me, my mom, and my sister were alone again after my stepfather died of a heart attack. My mom had no idea how to deal with me, let alone with herself. Throughout my life she would spend many weeks depressed in bed not functioning at all.

She simply wasn't there for me. I was alone, as I always were. And of course me spiraling out of control didn't make her any better. One day she completely lost it. She started acting very strangely and irrationally. The doctor had to come give her an injection and I was the one that had to convince her it would be the right thing. It turns out she had something called bi-polar disorder, the most severe form of depression.

A bi-polar person has manic episodes where they become unnaturally happy and lose control. This is what happened to my mother and it was also the first time. She would have to spend several months in a mental hospital, and this was right before my final year in high school. It was going to be my most important year in high school and I had nowhere to live. In the end I ended up living with a friend for my entire final year in high school.

I had reached a turning point. Things were completely out of control and i had to seek help. I found a psychologist and started going for therapy. At this point I was a complete and utter emotional wreck. I was as lost as a human being could be. The shrink told me that with time we would sort things out though. It would take time, but eventually I would be a free, fully functional human being again.

But he made one huge, elementary mistake. He gave me therapy without the assistance of medication. He was going to cure the deepest, darkest depression of all time through talking alone. But I was desperate for help and I would believe anything he told me. I even convinced myself that I was improving as well. Yet deep down I fully knew that things were only getting worse.

The more he told me I was improving, the worse I felt. It made me feel guilty and confused. I was doing everything in my power to change, asking for help, but I was getting worse by the day. I also went overseas on a tennis scholarship during this time, still taking no medication. I can't say which was the hardest time in my life, but the time I spent in America was certainly right up there.

I was away from home in an environment that made me feel even more lost than before. Yet I was not going to give up. I was going to stay there as long as humanly possible. Things got worse steadily though. Soon enough the suicidal thoughts started. I was heading for certain disaster. With every day that passed I came closer to that fateful day when I would commit suicide.

It never happened in the end, but for many more years I would battle that suicide impulse. It was something I just could not escape. Even after finally getting medication, I would not get rid of these thoughts. It's something hard to explain. You don't actually want to kill yourself, but you are so lost that you feel you have no control over your own actions. You simply don't trust yourself.

Also, you don't want to live, but at the same time you are too scared to kill yourself out of fear about what lies on the other side for you. This was the beginning of my panic attacks. I would wake up in the middle of the night so scared that i would kill myself that I started taking sleeping pills. These attacks could also come when triggered by situations, or they would just arise spontaneously.

Soon I was addicted to sleeping pills. I would take half a pill at 3pm just to settle my shattered nerves. Then I would take another half every 3 hours. Before I went to bed I would take another one and a half just to be able to fall asleep. After years I was still a total nervous wreck. After a failed attempt to study in my home town, I finally decided to start a career in tennis.

Tennis was always my passion. It was the one thing that probably kept me alive. So I would follow me dream to become a professional tennis player. I started out in France where there were many tournaments. I didn't speak a word of French though and I was going to do this all alone. But I was going to do it anyway. I spent more time in France the first time than my three month tourist visa allowed, and when I came back I was totally drained.

I was also travelling with heaps of anti-depressants and sleeping pills to keep head above water. I tried several times to come off sleeping pills in the coming years but it was no use. It was too addictive and the panic attacks were brutal. During my time in France I also started coming off my anti-depressants. It bothered me that the psychiatrists told me I had to use it for the rest of my life.

When I came back from France I was so emotionally drained that I had a nervous breakdown. This was the lowest point of my life. All the emotional pain and torture had hit an all time low. It's hard to explain what a nervous breakdown feels like. It's like a severe panic attack times a thousand. The one thing that stood out about it is that I knew I would never be able to recover.

I had reached a certain point of no return. But I had no choice but to try and dig myself out of this deep, dark hole once more. I pretty much had to begin all over again. I was 24 years old and supposedly in the prime of my life, but I was as lost as someone could be. From there on the nervous breakdowns started happening in regular intervals, although it lessened in intensity all the time.

Having reached the lowest point in my life, there was only one way to go. Up. I went back to France every year to play tennis and follow my dream. What else was I going to do? Tennis was the only thing that ever made me feel good. During the coming years I still suffered from severe panic attacks and was afraid I would kill myself all the time. I went back on anti-depressants, but because I came off it, this time I had to take three times the amount I used to.

I was now on the maximum dosage, and I had learned my lesson. I wasn't going off it again. I was still on the sleeping pills as well, and every year I went back to France I would take 6 months worth of anti-depressants and sleeping pills with me. If I ran out of either I would be in deep trouble, so I always made sure I has them with me. I had started using the sleeping pills during the day just to calm my nerves, and I would take it before I went on court if I played after 3pm.

Matches were often played at night there as well, so I would sometimes take it during a match. Can you imagine playing a sport where concentration is of utmost importance, where confidence is everything? Now imagine being an emotional wreck and taking sleeping pills at the same time. That was me. Yet I still loved tennis and I managed to win two tournaments the second time around in France.

As always tennis was my escape. It was the one thing I could hold onto in a hostile, dangerous world. I never had any girlfriends because of the mess I was and the amount of travelling I did. Tennis was my one and only refuge. In the end I was never going to make it in tennis. Who was I kidding anyway? But it was all I knew and it was the only thing that kept me from being completely lost and alone.

My final year before I went to France I had the opportunity to go to rehab to get off the sleeping pills and I took it. It was obvious that I was never going to get off that stuff on my own. And at rehab I got off it surprisingly easily. It was just the environment there that made it pretty easy. I felt strangely at home in the rehab with all the other lost souls, but at the same time it was far from fun.

Luckily it took me only two weeks to get off the stuff and then i was on my way. I have never fallen back since. I was also on my way back to France, where my mother needed rescuing after coming off her medication for the umpteenth time. She was on another manic episode and would eventually end up in the hospital again. The rescuing act took its toll on me though and my tennis suffered as a result.

It was time to move on. I clearly wasn't going anywhere in tennis. I came home and now live in a small town by the sea. I felt like there have been to much chaos in my life and i really just wanted a quiet life. I was still not rid of depression and panic attacks. In the years since my nervous breakdown things slowly but steadily improved. The panic attacks started to lessen in intensity and the depression was less severe.

The suicidal thoughts stopped at some point as well. It's not like one day it all stops and there is this major relief. It happens gradually and one day it's pretty much gone. These days I have hardly any of those problems. I still get the odd bad dream where I wake up and feel anxious, but I deal with it pretty easily. There is still an underlying fear that I have buried all these feelings deeply and that some day they may come back to haunt me.

But even that has lessened as I have dealt with it. If I have to deal with it again then so be it. But I'm not anxious about it. My nerves isn't shattered anymore. I have become a more calm individual and I am not addicted to any toxic substances. I am not addicted to alcohol, smoking, or sleeping pills. I still use my anti-depressants every day without fail. I hope to come off it one day, but I am in no hurry.

The biggest challenge for me these days is overcoming the effects my past had on me. There is always the temptation to feel sorry for myself and be angry about what happened to me. I never had a youth and throughout my twenties I was a complete emotional mess. It is hard to explain to someone what it feels like to have mental illnesses like these. For years I felt completely dead on the inside.

It's like someone had taken possession of your soul and you have lost the ability to feel. Looking back I often think the worst damage was done to me when I reached out for help. When I reached out to that psychologist he failed to realize that I had a chemical imbalance that could only be set right by medication. It is an extremely elementary mistake he made, and it caused me to lose many years of my life.

Instead of improving, I fell further backwards. Therapy turned out to be a nightmare. I reached a point where I thought my therapist was the embodiment of good while i was the anti-Christ. It sounds funny, but that is how the whole experience messed with my mind. Why am I telling you all of this? I don't get any pleasure from sifting through my wretched past once more. In fact it's been painful at times.

But what I want to show is that the human spirit can pull through anything. It is stronger than anything. There were a million times when I thought I have had enough and that I simply can't carry on anymore, but somehow I found the strength. Some days I still find it hard to believe that I am alive or not permanently insane. But I always believed in some kind of hope, something to hold onto.

Like I told you before, there were times when there simply wasn't any hope. I knew I had reached a point of no return. I was completely and utterly lost. Yet here I am today, and I don't feel lost anymore. I am still suffering from the aftereffects of my past, mostly the bad habits that I started and the mental conditioning that it all built up. In times when I feel down I feel like my dad was right when he said I would become a failure.

I really don't have much. I don't have a proper job. I don't have a wife let alone a girlfriend. I hardly have a life. Yet in a way I have so much. I have a place to live, I have enough money to survive. I even have internet and satellite TV. But most importantly my existential crises is gone. It is still there in a subtle form, but nothing compared to what it was. I can breathe again. I can even reach for real happiness.

I am not there yet, but the past will not be undone in a day. I still have to do the inner work and remove the obstacles that obstructs happiness to come to me. For instance I must believe that despite everything that's happened to me, I deserve to be happy. I deserve to have everything my heart desires. I can't allow myself to believe that it is too late. I am 31 years old, and although I have lost a lot of time, suffering has its positive side too.

Suffering gives a certain depth to a person. Almost every person who I meet that I have a certain amount of respect or admiration for, has suffered intensely at some point in their lives. Suffering has also awakened my spirit. No, I have not become a reborn Christian. Not even close. You often hear of people who have been through hell and found their way out through accepting Jesus Christ as their personal savior.

If that works for them then fine. But the very ideas that the Church sells is some of the most destructive ideas out there. I grew up in a Christian home and know all about it. My stepfather was a minister and we went to church every Sunday. I always heard from the church what a loving god the Christian god was, but at the same time I had to fear him? These contradictions never made sense to me, not even as a small child.

I always knew the church was deceiving. The idea of heaven and hell and Satan were all lies. The church was based on fear, and if I was ever going to find my way out of my misery, I was going to have to look elsewhere than religion. Someone with a deep existential crises have no choice. Because you feel deeply isolated and alone religion can never be the answer, because religion itself is isolated.

Each religion believes that they are right, and that all other religions are wrong. This in itself shows how flawed religion is. It comes from a place of fear and it serves to divide. As soon as I started looking outside of religion, I found what I was looking for. I found spirituality in its pure form. There are no labels or names for this spirituality. It is not organized in any way and there is no superstition and dogma involved.

It simply states that we are all one, that we are all manifestations of the divine. There is no judgement, no heaven and hell, no Satan. And because you are a divine being, the answer lies within yourself. You don't need to follow any set of teachings to find the truth. In fact any fixed set of teachings will only take you away from the truth. The truth is you, because you are divine.

For me everything is now about realizing that truth fully. I already know it on an intuitive level. I have also had several 'spiritual' experiences in my life that I can't deny. One such experience was the survival of my past. With everything I've been through and the emotional states I have found myself in, it is nothing short of a miracle that I am either still alive or not permanently insane.

But I continue to have spiritual experiences as well. I will not be satisfied until I completed my journey. I am not concerned about worldly things anymore. My sole(soul) concern is the spiritual journey, and the rest will take care of itself . I was once completely and utterly separated from my Source, and have since slowly but surely made my way back. I won't be satisfied until I am one with the Source again, at which point I will be in a state of bliss.

Ps. I realize that spirituality is something personal and sensitive and it is not my aim to discredit religion or bring it down. I am just saying it how I see it, and since I am not entirely sure of my own convictions(not yet anyway), I can't possibly tell anyone how it is. The most important thing I want you to take away from this website is that there is always hope. You don't have to agree with my spiritual convictions at all. My existential crises can only ever fully end until I am convinced that there is a very profound meaning and reason for being alive.