An Open Letter: The Anxious Mind of a Marine Scientist World Mental Health Day - October 10
BY LAURA DE LUCA
It is not easy to expose my feelings and thoughts while writing this letter. I guess it is the anxious mind crying out to be concealed; telling me that I am making a fool of myself in being vulnerable in front of many strangers. “What will they think of me?”, is the first question that rises in my head. ‘‘Are they going to think that I am a ‘weak’ person?’’ I’ve come to hate that word ‘weak’ but it still resonates in my head when I’m being caught in a whirlwind of thoughts. Despite this noise, I will tell my experience of being a marine scientist and engineer with a general anxiety disorder.
The importance of mental health was not something that I was taught when I was child. On the contrary, it carries with it a lot of stigmas and discrimination especially in Colombia, the country where I was born and raised. To have a mental illness has been so wrongly associated with notions of weakness or not being a ‘normal’ person. Immediately, these notions isolate the person and make them feel as an outsider. At least that was how it made me feel.
Anxiety has always been present in my life, but I’ve only come to realize it just 3 years ago (I’m now 31!). Before that, I was not aware of it and didn’t understand where all this nervousness was coming from. When I was a child I was extremely shy (I’m still quite a bit) and found it difficult to interact with other children. In addition to this, I was overweight for a long period in my life which completely shattered my self-esteem and there was no one to tell me that I was alright the way I was. Instead, I was always reminded that I needed to lose weight by my family and society. This strongly impregnated my child psyche and it became part of my belief system. I convinced myself that I was a flawed human being and became extremely insecure about myself.
I believe no one can imagine how you can impact a person’s life with words and conscious or unconscious actions. I wish that someone would have noticed my pain when I was younger and told me that I was enough. I wish I knew that I needed to ask for help. Instead there was a big open wound in my heart that led me to develop a destructive behaviour with food. The worse I felt, the more I suppressed my sadness and anger with food. It was a vicious circle. I also ignored these emotions by finding mechanisms that granted me happiness, one of those was being a good student and getting good grades. This made me forget about my pain and feel a ‘‘worthy’’ person: I was no longer ignored by the rest of people (or at least that was what my ego believed). How wrong and shallow I was to believe that the worth of a person is only dictated by academic, professional achievements and/or by the way you look. It is so sick to see how society programs you into believing these views.
I do not want to give the impression that my childhood was only defined by these unfortunate events. I am very lucky for being raised by my wonderful and supportive parents. I grew up in a family that was filled only with love, compassion and respect. My parents made sure that my sister and I didn’t have any hardship and worked hard for providing us the best life that they could. For this I will always be grateful for them and for teaching me what is pure and genuine love. This is to give you an idea that you don’t have to suffer an extreme experience to develop a mental health issue. It is silent and it creeps within you without you having a clue.
My anxiety took a complete hold of me when I moved to Norway to start a PhD in Bergen. I experienced imposter syndrome as soon as I began my PhD. This is a very common phenomenon that many researchers (but also in other careers) go through, and it is feeling that you are inadequate, incompetent and do not have the sufficient skills to do your work. You believe that you are a fraud and that your success was due to pure luck. I tried to conceal this feeling, again, by suppressing it. I still recall when I participated on a research cruise at the Norwegian Sea, where my happiness for being able to be there in the ocean was constantly overshadowed by the anxiety. Those two weeks at sea were the build-up of a perfect storm; a storm that unveiled into one of the most horrible experiences I have had in my life. After returning back to Bergen, I decided to take some days off by myself in Oslo. I was convinced I just needed to clear my mind so I could have a fresh start when I came back. But this ‘alone’ time meant having more time to submerge myself into dark intrusive thoughts until I exploded and experienced my first panic attack. I cannot put into words what I felt but it was an unimaginable fear, pressure on the chest, shallow breathing, fast heartbeats and unstoppable crying. I felt that I was losing control and that I was going to die. I didn’t understand what was happening to me and I was alone. I felt completely ashamed. At that time, I had just started a long-distance relationship with my boyfriend, Joris, but I couldn’t tell him how bad I was feeling, we were just starting a relationship and I was afraid to scare him away.
My mental well-being started to deteriorate further after Oslo, until it reached an unbearable point where I had to ask for help. I talked with my boyfriend, and I told him that I was feeling very bad but I didn’t understand what was happening. He was and is the most supportive man, and was not afraid to embark with me on this journey for seeking my mental health well-being. I also talked with my supervisors and a few colleagues who were extremely comprehensive and helped me whenever it was possible for them. Even my loving father travelled from Colombia and stayed with me for more than a month because I was so afraid of being alone (at that moment my boyfriend was still living in Belgium but eventually he moved to Bergen).
In Bergen I started therapy with a psychologist, who was the one that diagnosed me with a general anxiety disorder and early symptoms of depression. The sessions helped me to see many things about myself more clearly (which obviously my ego tried its best to deny again) and allowed little by little to feel all those feelings I had been suppressing all this time. After being forced to “look myself in the mirror” for a long time, I slowly came to the realization that I couldn’t continue the PhD I was doing. Firstly, I was not comfortable with that particular research and, secondly, I needed time and space to heal and put my well-being first. Being in a high-pressure environment such as academic research was not an option for me at that time. As it was to be expected, the voices in my head started to attack me by questioning what I was going to do now? Was my academic career over? What do I really want for my life? Am I a loser? Am I a disappointment for my country, my family, my friends and my boyfriend? Am I ungrateful? Is the love that I have for nature and the ocean not enough? Why am I wasting this huge opportunity in my life? Am I making the right decision? Who am I? I also felt that I was betraying my supervisors after all the support they granted me during many months. I felt very ashamed. If my supervisors ever read this open letter I want them to know that I will always be very grateful to them for all the kindness that they showed me despite the outcome of not finishing the PhD project.
Time passed and I can say I feel a bit better every day. I now live in Belgium with Joris and we can now look back on these crazy experiences we had in Norway. It has not been an easy road and from time to time I can still have breakdowns, but thankfully not as strong as before. I started a new PhD and I am ready to begin this new adventure without the demanding expectations and the need for certainty. I just want to live every day at its own pace. There is no magical cure for anxiety. I have learned to live with it, I’m more aware of myself and I listen to the message that anxiety wants to send me. It may sound weird, but I needed this breakdown to learn to love myself again, to reconnect to my inner child and to find my real self worth. I still have to work on my healing process and that will probably be a never ending path. But I gladly want to follow it everyday. I have been able to heal through acceptance and by learning to look at anxiety and my feelings with curiosity and not as an enemy. The support of my boyfriend, parents, sister and some friends has been crucial, especially at moments where I’m not able to give myself the compassion that I need. My sister has been my mentor and role model, and I admire so much how she has been able to overcome her anxiety with love.
There is an urgent need to normalize anxiety and other mental health issues, as it is something that happens to millions of people around the world. We need to be more empathic and less harsh with each other. This world would be so different if it was governed by love, sympathy and empathy. You do not know the suffering behind a smile. It’s very easy to judge and discriminate. Mental illnesses are silent diseases and are not less important than a physical disease. If you ever feel completely overwhelmed, please ask for help or just talk to someone that you trust. For the people that have no experience with this and are unsure how to react: if someone does approach you, just be there for them. You do not have to say much, just a hug can be enough. With this letter I want to say to people that are going through a similar situation: know that your life is yours and not to please others, that you are not alone, that you are enough and that you are beautifully imperfect.
P.S. If you would like to write to me please do not hesitate (instagram: @vittoriadeluca1989). I am not a therapist, each case is unique but I can talk from my experience.
