My Story: Coping with Depression and Anxiety

By Saniya Ghanoui —

LL talks about her experience with depression and anxiety.

Transcript:

OBOS Today: You mentioned mental health before, so I wonder if you could talk about kind of your experience with mental health?

LL: Depression and anxiety both run in my family— more so depression. I think I might have tipped the anxiety scale [laughs] when I started having anxiety, but I’ve also learned recently and, and my brother doesn’t really talk about it, about how he has anxiety and I’m like oh, I didn’t know you had this! When did you get this? You know?

Um. I think it’s always a struggle ‘cause it’s high functioning anxiety, so it actually is like beneficial, like being a perfectionist, always being on time, saying yes, being a people-pleaser so it’s that high functioning anxiety that places and people really benefit from and enjoy um, you know, and the overthinking and like that. Um, I’ve only really experienced like maybe two really depressive issues like times when I couldn’t get out of bed, like super sad, crying everyday situations, and those only lasted really about three weeks. So, I’m very blessed in that sense that, like I never had such bad depression that I couldn’t get through. And again, medication is fantastic.

Acupuncture is also fantastic. I am a person who does both. I um, you know, do the antibiotics for the infections, I do massages when I’m feeling stressed, like you gotta, there’s that balance of having, knowing what’s going to cure you and knowing what’s going to make you feel better, you know.