(^38) | marieclaire.com.au
PHOTOGRAPHY BY THEO VERHOEVEN.
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Words from a 70-year-old physician changed my life.
It was a winter afternoon more than a decade ago,
but I remember every detail vividly. I was driven to
the appointment by my mum, and I was in disarray –
both physically and mentally – when I arrived. A few
months earlier I had been living in Sydney, working as
a junior lawyer in a big firm, but now I was effectively
unemployed and had spent the past four months
living back with my parents at their home in
northern NSW. I spent most days on their couch.
At the time, it felt like this change happened
quickly: that one minute I was a fully functioning
24-year-old member of society, the next I was not.
“Georgie, I am so sorry for what you’re going
through,” the physician said. He looked into my eyes
and his gentle, sympathetic manner was more than
I could bear. My own eyes welled with tears. “What
you’re experiencing is real, Georgie,” he said. “In my
medical career, treating patients for nearly 50 years,
I have learnt that whenever there are unexplained
physical symptoms, stress is always the cause. Always.”
That was the sentence that changed my life. The
“unexplained” symptom in my case was vertigo:
I had been unsteady and nauseous for months.
I’d had every test and examination to explain the
debilitating dizziness that had been dogging me for
months. It had started with a vertigo attack one night
at work. I was knocked off balance and felt woozy.
Once I arrived home to my apartment, I made a
beeline for bed. I pulled a pillow over my face to
block out any light, but also to hide. After a restless
night, I took myself off to the doctor and so began
my ride on the medical merry-go-round from hell.
Within a few weeks, I had moved back in with my
parents and left my job. I couldn’t function with the
dizziness. It wasn’t my first experience with illness.
At 19, I’d been diagnosed with Crohn’s disease, an
autoimmune inflammatory bowel disease. Around the
time the vertigo struck, my Crohn’s was particularly
bad, but it was familiar at least. I knew how to cope
with my wretched stomach,
but I couldn’t manage my
spinning head, so soon enough
my world went with it.
No-one could give me
an answer. That is until the
elderly physician said I needed
help. He wasn’t the first person
to suggest anxiety was a problem for me – it had
been raised gently by many of my loved ones – but
he was the first person I believed. He said I needed
to see a psychiatrist, probably start medication and
be admitted to a psychiatric hospital. Realising he was
right was shocking and relieving at once. For the first
time, I had hope I might recover and that, at some
point, I might be able to return to a version of life in
which I was a participant, not an invalid on a couch. A
week later I checked into a private psychiatric hospital
and was treated for generalised anxiety disorder.
A few years after my breakdown, I wrote an article
about it, which was published online. The response
was so overwhelming that it buoyed me to keep
writing. It’s no wonder my story struck a chord:
one in four Australians will experience an anxiety
condition in their lifetime – making it the most
common mental health problem. It’s worse for
women: one in three are likely to suffer an
anxiety-related episode in their life.
Despite how prolific it is and the fact that we
speak more openly about mental illness now than
we ever have, there is still a stigma attached. This is
the reason I wanted to write my book: to show that
mental illness can happen even when you spend
your life working hard to do all the right things.
And, importantly, that it’s possible to be treated
and recover. Anxiety remains an issue I have to
manage, but my life improved immeasurably
almost from the minute I realised I had it. Treating
anxiety was far, far easier than leaving it unchecked.
Breaking Badly (Affirm Press, $29.99) is out now.
Georgie Dent
ANXIETY
The journalist and columnist reveals how her
debilitating experience with mental illness forced
her to confront the issue and manage it head-on
WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT...
“I COULDN’T
MANAGE MY
SPINNING HEAD,
SO MY WORLD
WENT WITH IT”
sharon
(sharon)
#1