Mental Health
Fun fact: May is Mental Health Awareness Month. I think mental health should be a priority every month, but in honor of awareness I’d like to talk about my own mental health journey. The people who are close to me know a little bit about my personal struggles, but I’ve never talked about it publicly…. Here goes nothing!
Let me reintroduce myself for the occasion. Hi! My name is Colleen Young and I’m a 3x Paralympian and 3x Paralympic medalist for Team USA. I’m 23 (which surprises people), I swam D1 at Fairfield University all 4 years of college, becoming a 6x conference champion in both individual events and relays, hold multiple American Records, former World Record holder, currently getting my Master’s degree in Business Administration with a concentration in Healthcare Management, and a list of other things. All these accomplishments you would think I’d be doing okay in the mental health department, right? Sike. Let me explain.
Here’s the thing about mental health and the stigma. There’s no set example of what going through depression and anxiety looks like. Every person goes through their own individual experience. For me, it’s humor. I use humor to mask a lot of how I’m feeling…a lot of the time. On the surface when people meet me, I’m bubbly, funny, talkative, charismatic, all the things that would never make you question how I feel on the inside. Outwardly I haven’t changed much over the past couple of years, but two years ago that whole outward personality was a front to disguise my irritability, anxiety, sadness, and all the other things that WOULD make you question If I was doing okay.
Going through high school and even into college I had a hard time accepting I was different. I was a really introverted kid growing up, didn’t talk in class, didn’t advocate for the things I needed in school, very much to myself and my group of friends. I didn’t want to be different. I wanted to be just like every other kid in school who didn’t need enlarged papers and books or extra time to take tests. One thing I’ve learned throughout my years of growing up is that when you have a hard time accepting who you are as a person, you become a shell of the person you are. I would push people away when they were there for me and brush everything off as a joke. In college I would blow up randomly and try to cut my closest friends off. Everything would set me off, but that was all behind the closed doors. On the surface in public, I was still the same happy-go-lucky person I wanted everyone to see and know me as.
My senior year of college is when everything started to boil up. I started to resent swimming, the sport that has truly given me everything, and had a terrible last season. I would fight with my coach at least once a week, drank a lot more than I should have, started slacking off in my classes and stopped caring in a lot of aspects in my life. I was at my lowest point when COVID hit and shut down the last months of my senior year, forcing me to go back home. That was the best thing that could have happened to me though, which is ironic considering the entire world shut down.
Every day was a battle with my parents. I would start fights over the simplest things, didn’t get out of bed, and had pretty much stopped eating except for maybe a meal a day. My mom was the one who finally pushed me into talking to a doctor about my (bad) mood swings, irritability, and anxiety. I was prescribed antidepressants from that consultation and here we are, two years later, in the best mental space I have ever been. During that time, I started talking to a sports psychologist to get my love back for swimming and I recently started seeing a regular therapist as well.
There’s a lot more I could say about what I went through, but for a general overview I’ll leave it at this: your mental health should not be a second thought in prioritizing your health. I have learned a lot about myself in the last two years and have truly grown into one of the best versions of me to date. Am I done growing? Not even close, but the version of myself today is a complete 180 turnaround from who I was just a couple years ago. It’s okay to realize that you might not be okay. There’s no shame in being selfish when it comes to your mental health. You are not alone. You are loved and there are people who want you to be the best person you can be and that’s a fact!
I don’t want this whole post to be moody either, so did you know that May is also American Cheese month? Man I love cheese.