The only person you can compare your feelings to is yourself

“It just kind of hit me that my other friends didn’t get this sad, that they didn’t completely freak out about having to call someone on the phone or showing up a little early to an event when you don’t know anyone.” - Vicky, Class of 2021

I was in about 7th grade when I first started becoming aware of mental health and having problems with feelings of anxiety and depression. I was told that narrative ‘All girls hate their body’ and ‘Everyone’s a moody teenager’, and I remember thinking, ‘Oh it’s just normal, everyone feels this way, that’s just what I’m experiencing’. So I tried to be happier around my friends, but one time I told my friend about how sad I was, and she said it scared her because whenever we were together I seemed so happy. It just kind of hit me that my other friends didn’t get this sad, that they didn’t completely freak out about having to call someone on the phone or showing up a little early to an event when you don’t know anyone.

It didn’t go away in high school. I once tried to bring up my feelings to my parents, but they reacted very poorly at even just the mention of it, so I was very scared of bringing it up to them again. I had a very negative self-image, more so than the whole ‘Teen girls don’t love how they look’ thing, and it made forming relationships very difficult because I would constantly question the validity of them. I would get upset really easily over things that I probably shouldn’t have been upset about, and I would randomly have days where I couldn’t talk to anyone. My friends would get mad at me, but I didn’t really know how to explain why.

Every year when I went to the doctor, they would ask me ‘Do you ever get sad sometimes?’, basically asking do you get depressed, and every year I would be like ‘Nope!’. When I said no my junior year, it finally hit me that I should’ve said yes, that this wasn’t getting better on its own. So my senior year I went back to the doctor prepared - that was the only question I was waiting for - and I said ‘Yes, yes I do’, or something along those lines probably less confident, but they were like ‘Wait until college, college will have some great resources for you’. So when I got to Northwestern I got very lucky with CAPs because I called during Wildcat Welcome, and I was able to get a spot. I started meeting with a counselor there, and they were like, ‘You have the signs of major depression’. I was like, ‘Oh, really? I thought I wasn’t that bad’. It was weird at first going to therapy - I wasn’t really sure how to feel about it - but I’m so glad I did, though things didn’t get better right away.

Over winter break, I was fighting with my parents about something and it came out that I was going to therapy. They did not react well. The next day I was in the car with my dad, and he just starts asking questions like ‘Why is something wrong?’. That question of why kept getting to me because I didn’t know why, and they didn’t really understand that. They were more just like, ‘Well great, now we have to like watch out for you’, and I was like, ‘No, I’m not saying that I’m suicidal, I’m just saying that I’m sad, like I’m depressed, and I get social anxiety very easily’. By the end of break, they had come around enough that they were like, ‘Okay, you should keep going to the therapist, we want to do what’s best for you, whatever you need we’ll be there for you’, and so now I can talk to them a lot more openly about it, but those first few weeks were really really negative.

Since then I’ve started taking medication, which obviously didn’t cure everything, but definitely makes things more manageable. I feel like I’m more in control of my emotions, at least I’ve stopped randomly crying for no reason for the most part. Spring quarter, I tried to take that negative energy and use techniques that I’d learned instead of just being like ‘These are ridiculous, like really breathing?’ and found that they can actually really help manage things. Maintaining my mental health has been one of my biggest priorities. I’ve tried to start reaching out to people when I do feel upset instead of just bottling it in. There’s a balance, because you don’t want to put all of your emotions and feelings onto someone else because you don’t want to make someone else feel responsible for your happiness entirely, but I feel like I’ve started to like live the life that I’ve wanted to live, where I go to bed at 10 pm and am proud of it.

My advice - more people are struggling than you think, and all your feelings are valid. I think a lot of people struggle with not knowing why because you feel like you have to be validated. It’s like thinking, ‘Oh, they have it worse’, and then you start to feel guilty because you don’t necessarily know why you’re feeling the way you are, so you don’t feel like you have it that bad or that it’s justified. I think downplaying your own feelings is a big problem. Your feelings are valid because they’re your feelings not because they compare to anyone else’s.The only person you can compare your feelings to is yourself.