This is Meghan's Story

Hey there! My name is Meghan and I am the Community Outreach and Development Coordinator for Cam’s Kids. While there were many reasons to get involved with the foundation, the driving factor for me was my personal connection with anxiety and mental health struggles. Like so many others within the foundation, I thought it was time to share my story. 

I will start off with an activity that has been very moving for me in the past - something I learned from a Leadership Camp in high school. It’s called “If You Knew Me”. In this activity, you begin by providing simple facts about yourself – surface level details. Then as you become more comfortable, you can choose to share deeper and more private details about yourself.  

Let’s give it a try.

If you knew me, you’d know:

• I prefer the country over the city
• I am a competitive figure skater turned rock climber
• I have my BSc and MSc in kinesiology

Okay, that part was easy. Time to get a bit more personal.

If you knew me, you’d know:

• Ever since high school, I have struggled to feel a sense of belonging
• I have experienced so much death that it has become expected to me
• I was victimized by my closest friend for 3 years

Here lies the birth of my anxiety and depression - particularly the last one. This is not to say I was aware of this as these events took place. Quite the contrary actually. For far too long, I chose to ignore what was happening, telling myself that everything was fine and that it would all just resolve itself on its own. Avoidance, detachment, ignorance. These were all “skills” I mastered as my “coping” technique.

Spoiler alert – that didn’t work. In fact, the opposite came true. This “tactic” sent me further into depression, and only allowed my anxiety symptoms to manifest even further.

Over time (and after meeting one particularly influential person in my story), I began to take charge of my mental health. I took time to examine the events in my life, how I may have been impacted by them. I would compare how I am and how I feel now, to how I felt/acted before these events. I began telling my story to people I trusted. Slowly letting people back in my life. Through all of this, I learned many lessons. One lesson in particular was the importance of owning your story, and when you're ready, to share it with others. Not everyone I met understood or accepted me at my lowest. I wish I could say they did. But what matters is that I kept telling it, and stayed true to who I was. Afterall, while my story does not define who I am, it most certainly helped shape me into who I am today; for the bad, but more importantly - for the good. The strength, the resilience, the ability to accept and appreciate those around you. Those are all things I gained through my dark times. 

The next lesson I learned was the importance of listenining to my body and learning what it needs at any given time. I call this creating my anxiety plan.

First stage of this plan was to recognize the various ways anxiety can present itself. For so long I thought anxiety manifests solely as excessive worrying. Through research, I realized anxiety can actually manifest in a variety of way. For instance, for me anxiety manifests as: 

• Severe overthinking
• Irritability
• Mood swings

Once I realized it was in fact anxiety I was struggling with, I took the time to learn what type of anxiety I had. For me, this originally manifested as obsessive tendencies and feelings of complete disconnection (from myself, my body, and others), but has since become a mix of generalized and social anxiety. Once I could recognize what it was that I was struggling with, I felt better equipped to tackle it.

Next, I took some time to reflect on what my triggers were – things that caused my anxiety to get worse. For me, some of my triggers include:

• Going to an event or gathering where there will be people I am acquainted with, but are not friends with yet (people who I know I will see again)
• Drinking too much caffeine or going too long without any form of physical actvity
• When I think I have misspoke or come across in a way I didn’t intend to

By understanding what these triggers were, I felt 100% more prepared to take steps to manage my anxiety.  

Lastly, I experimented around to find what worked and what didn’t in terms of managing my anxiety. There is no magic pill out there. No one tip or technique that will rid the world of anxiety. We are all different individuals. We all have different struggles and different interests. Luckily though, there are hundreds if not thousands of options out there regarding things you can do to manage your anxiety; you just have to find them. This does not happen overnight. I had to try many wrong things before I found what was right.

I also want to say that this doesn't mean once you find what works for you that you are suddenly "cured". I do not believe it is something you can rid yourself of forever - at least not entirely. The difference now though is I have the right tools with me to not just cope with my anxiety when it strikes, but manage it fairly successfully.

I know that I still have things to learn and that I likely always will, but I take that as a positive not a negative. It is encouraging to me to know that there will always be other options to try and lessons to be learned.

Mental health is a journey. I have come to understand that there will be peaks and there will be some valleys. I have come to appreciate them both.