Could you tell me a time you felt shame?

By the time I learned about shame I was out the other side with a few years more life experience under my belt.

All I knew at the time was the dark almost suffocating sensation of wanting to be invisible, to not exist, take up space or be noticed.

My anxiety spiralled when I was 17 during my college years during A levels, when life should've otherwise been light and free of complications.

I distinctly remember being on the 7th floor of the college building and the walls closing in and my body frozen with terror. The lecturer continued, unaware of the internal meltdown and loss of reality I was experiencing. How my thoughts and internal dialogue stopped functioning, and sheer primal instincts came to the fore. My body, my heart and brain I resigned myself, are shutting down, this is where I meet the end of my existence.

It's so easy to say with hindsight that anxiety or panic attacks are just of the mind, and can be overridden. Once you've been vulnerable and terrified, wanting to retreat to a safe place and become foetal, cry and sob on your Mothers lap like a baby and make it stop. Then it's much harder to resign the sensations as just to the mind.

It strips you back to the very foundations of your being, removes layers of knowledge, wisdom, safety and security. The knowledge that such a departure from reality can happen in a split second, reduces you to an infantile state. The usual laws of humanity and the universe melt away and leave you open and exposed like a cliff face to the ocean. 

Without realising, the shame of knowing my mind could crumble and was weak, set me apart from everyone who loved me. I wasn't a human anymore, I couldn't validate existing with such an affliction. 

Twenty years on from these experiences, I can see where shame and fear held me from moving forward. Feeling broken and worthless can paralyse, it's tricks the mind into resignation, into giving up.

My reason for openness and honesty with my own mental health journey is to help unlock those trapped in the bubble of fear and shame. To give permission to feel those feelings, but to eventually challenge them, to work through them. To see the life on the other side. To experience humility for one's own self is a hard process but ultimately holds the key to freedom and joy.