[Serious] Mentally Ill people of Reddit, what is your illness, and can you try to describe what it is like?

Wow, it's my time to shine. Also, I do want to preface this by saying that a great many people in this thread have much more serious conditions than I do.

I have anxiety and moderate depression, even though they can sound like very conflicting conditions. The problem is that they cycle. I'm in college, and some days I'll feel too depressed to go to class or even get out of my bed. It's like I'm in some fog where, even if I've gotten an appropriate amount of sleep, both my body and my mind just feel too tired to do anything. Even going to get food seems like so much of a chore that I might only eat once in one day.

Then I get so incredibly anxious about having missed class and am so worried about what's going to happen because of it that I miss the next class. Then I feel guilty and awful about myself and get depressed again. Other times I'll have a random panic attack caused by some unexpected trigger, like realizing I have a test the next day that I forgot about because I missed so many classes. Or too many people coming over and being loud when I was expecting to just me hanging out with one person.

Panic attacks are the worst. The air feels like it's getting thicker, my heart pounds, and it feels harder and harder to breathe. Something terrible is going to happen if I don't get out of that situation.

My thoughts come so fast that I can't actually think.

I've just started going to therapy, and I don't have panic attacks too often, but I've struggled with anxiety for years. My shrink says she thinks of people experiencing things like anxiety emotionally, physically, and mentally. I don't really get the emotional part, I just experience it physically and sometimes mentally. Intense nausea is usually the main "symptom" for me. But since I don't usually experience anxiety on an emotional level, it can sometimes be hard to distinguish between sick an anxious.

Mostly it's just frustrating. I'm not someone to overreact to or worry about most things. No big fears, kind of reckless with my own safety. I'm the chill friend.

It feels like my brain is rebelling against who I am as a person. Which is awful and confusing and doesn't make sense to me, let alone anyone who hasn't experiences something similar. So I can't imagine how it feels for all of you here with much more serious illnesses.

This is pretty late to the game so I'm sure it'll be buried, but even just writing it all out felt good. Sorry for the wall of text!

/r/AskReddit Thread