A story of anxiety, agoraphobia, panic disorder, panic attacks, depression, suicide & PTSD

In this first episode of Unbuckle Your Fears, Melbourne based Megan Barrow shares her lived experience of anxiety, agoraphobia, panic disorder, panic attacks, depression, suicide & PTSD through to thiving with mental wellness.

She also shares how important it is for those with mental ill health to not just define themselves by their health and challenges you on how you would (or want to) describe yourself.

If you have any feedback, topic ideas or questions, email megan@joella.com.au.

For more information, head to https://www.unbuckleyourfears.com/

Follow on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/unbuckleyourfears/

Transcript

Welcome to Unbuckle Your Fears. My name's Megan Barrow and I'm here to share my lived experience of anxiety, depression, acrophobia, panic disorder and suicidality and even trauma. So to be honest, I've been meaning to do a podcast for a long time, years, and I have a few social media accounts where I share my story and occasionally people reach out to me and ask for help, and some people ask, how can I see you present? Or where can I learn more about you? And I've tried a few things over the years, but I've kind of copped out a bit of that imposter syndrome. So I've decided to just go for it. So we'll see how it goes. I did debate whether I needed someone with me and an interview approach, but I think there's a lot of those out there. And when I recently had a look at anxiety podcasts and mental health podcasts, it's a lot of theory being sort of spurted out and a lot of talking at you, and that's all great.

That's really important stuff. But I am coming from purely a lived experience perspective. I'm not here to tell you what's right or wrong for you. I'm here to share what I've learned along the way and what has worked for me. I think I have a pretty unique perspective as I've been managing mental ill health and not managing it for a long, long time. So I've seen the good, the bad, the ugly, and I've got to a place in my life where I feel really well better than I have in my entire life. And mental ill health isn't just something that happened to me one day. It's kind of been pervasive in my life ever since I can remember. So for me, I have a perspective of wellness that often is missed in the landscape. So a little bit about me and why I've started this.

So I have had anxiety my entire life, but in my childhood it was never discussed, never talked about, not even something that we were conscious of. So I was born in the 1970s and I'm just turning 53, so it's actually my birthday tomorrow as I record. So I turned 53 tomorrow, and my earliest memories are being anxious. I didn't define it as anxious. I was always known as the very shy child that didn't talk super quiet. The running joke in my family was that I was too scared to talk to anyone. I had the trust of my parents and my nana, my dear beloved Nana, who's no longer here. And they were the people I trusted more than anything. But I even had trouble talking to aunties. I was very confident or with people I knew, and in sort of small groups, but in big events, family function, school, I was really quiet and reserved. Also always being super sensitive, hypersensitive and things that my parents just had no idea about. Even though they knew that I had trouble sleeping, they didn't know the extent of it. They certainly didn't know that I would be up worrying all night. And these pervasive thoughts of things going wrong were just constant in my mind. Lots of stomach aches, lots of nausea, always feeling sick, not trying to avoid school.

But other than that, I had a pretty happy childhood, and I certainly had friends, but life wasn't easy. But I just thought that was who I was. In my early teens, I was 14 and I had my first experience of suicidality and wanting to end my life due to a rough time in my life, which I won't go into right now, but I did want to end my life. So that was when, again, I didn't really tell anyone. Actually, I don't think I told anyone. I reached out for help to two adults, and they both didn't quite understand the distress I was in. So I really was taught at a very early age that people weren't there for me, which kind of sent me back into further retreating into myself. So I already didn't have a lot of confidence and was the shy girl. Now I was even more crippled by it, but somehow I sort of stumbled through again.

I just kind of thought that was my lot in life, that things were going to be tough. And again, this is sort of in the eighties now and no one's talking about mental health anywhere. Then at 19, I had my first panic attack. Again, I had no idea what it was. My first panic attack was actually in a cinema. I was in university by this point. I was with friends, and all of a sudden I felt like my heart just was beating out of my chest and I felt like I couldn't breathe. I gasped for air. I felt like I was out of body. I felt tight in the chest, felt like I couldn't breathe, and I thought I was having a heart attack, but I didn't tell anyone. I just sat there frozen, didn't move. But I did put my finger on one of my wrist pulse and sort of checked it was beating away, which it was, of course it was racing.

But then I noticed it sort of calmed down and I just kind of put it to the back of my mind and thought, dunno what that was, but I'm alive and let's pretend that didn't happen. Now I can't really remember the timeframe between that panic attack and the next one, but let's just say they started to become more common than not. And I eventually went to a GP and told him in fear that I thought I was having heart attacks and please check my heart. And he was the first of seven doctors over the next couple of years who would say, your heart is fine, but I'm not sure what's wrong.

Now, I can sort of look back these days and think, gee, if only I had been diagnosed straight away that it was a panic attack and sort of sat down and someone explained the theory of a panic attack. But I didn't have that luxury, unfortunately. And now as I look back on my life, I was going through a lot of really difficult personal situations. So I actually think alongside the panic attacks, I was actually having a lot of trauma responses as well. So really tight chest, lots of spiraling thoughts. Essentially my body was shutting down.

So somehow in this timeframe, I did manage to go overseas by myself. I did the old tiki tour if people know of Europe. And I met some brand new friends. I went on my own. I sort of reinvented myself for a while there. But then everything caught up with me again, and I started having panic attacks again. One of the seven doctors were two over in London who didn't diagnose me. One in fact laughed at me, came back to Melbourne and was okay for a little bit. But then slowly through some personal situations, eventually the panic attacks just got worse and worse. And now I recognize that I was starting to develop panic disorder, which slowly got worse. And then that spiraled into resigning from my job, not coping at all, having a nervous breakdown, thinking I would take a little bit of r and r and a break from work and just rest for a month.

But I spiraled into agoraphobia instead. So I had three years of absolute torture, two of which were complete isolation. And at my worst, I could not get off the couch without freaking out. Just going to the toilet was massive. Having a shower was an event. Of course, in this timeframe too, I again had severe depression and suicidality and actually acted on a plan, but I thank God that I didn't end up going through with it and instead collapsed on the floor and cried. And at that point, people obviously knew that I was really unwell, but telling a few people that I really was about to end my life, we realized the crisis, but no one really knew how to support me. So again, honestly, not too sure how I got through all these things. I guess that's the resilience in me that you sort of learn. That's a word I'm not so keen on because I also don't think that if people don't make it that it's not resilient. I think sometimes it's luck. I think it's moments in time and I just clung on maybe I'm being a bit underestimating my strength a little bit.

So I got through and it was around the two year mark that I really decided I just couldn't live this way anymore. I was 26 and I just recognized people age were out living their best life and having fun. And I thought I didn't want to spend the rest of my life stuck in the house too scared to do anything. So I made the decision that I had to get better. And I saw a psychiatrist who was incredible, who I saw for 22 years until he sadly passed away. And I slowly started my recovery from agoraphobia. Within a year I was working, and that was about 20 years ago. So I have had a major rollercoaster life though, especially for the first 10 years. And in many ways, even though I moved out, I bought an apartment, lived by myself, was working and fairly independent, I did sort of spiral backwards a bit again through some personal situations. And clearly now I can see the trauma embedded in it in my life and how it fluctuates with my mental health.

So I started to go backwards in the agoraphobia, but I kept my job. I kept getting to my job. So to me, I felt like I was still okay because I was still getting out and being independent, but I really wasn't coping much and I certainly didn't have any social life. I'd sort of do work and then go home and not do much else. But at 37, I ended up with depression again. But this time I had my amazing psychiatrist. So for the first time, I was able to be managed properly and he actually put me on the right medication. And that was kind of the start point of me really starting to really get well. And I kind of realized at that point how much my physiology had affected me. So we can have people sort of talking at us in terms of the recovery space, especially with agoraphobia and anxiety and talk about, right, this is how you recover and you kind of have to suffer through it and you will learn and it will be gone.

And what I've really embraced, especially in more recent years, is that anxiety is embedded in me. And the medication helped me define where I never been in my life. And that gave me a launching pad of being able to push myself a little more. And it doesn't mean any of it was easy. Every new step was difficult, but I was more determined and I felt like I had the courage and the mental space to be able to push myself further and further. So things like I hadn't been into the Melbourne City by myself. I hadn't been on a tram or train and now all of a sudden I was doing these things.

And whilst I talk in speeches, which I'll get onto in a second, but I talk about in the last 10, 15 years, life hasn't been better. But there's still been really difficult times because life is not always easy and we can protect ourselves with a cocoon, with agoraphobia. I think that there's a lot of mental ill health areas where people, it's protection from harm. I think eating disorders can be that. I think agoraphobia is very similar. And I very nearly went down an eating disorder path, but ended up with agoraphobia and I can see how much I was trying to protect myself from being hurt anymore. I'd been in so many abusive and traumatic situations for my little brain and heart and body and soul since I was 14. And the last 10 years have really been about slowly getting my strength and moving away from some toxic relationships and getting stronger in what I need in my life and not placating to what people want from me. And being the people pleaser I've always been. So that can be a bit disruptive and people don't always like that. But I'm getting stronger in that. And in the last few years I've been working through and finally being diagnosed with PTSD. So post traumatic Stress Disorder. And again, it's not one thing that happened to me. It's been complex. It's been lots of situational and all and abuse over many, many years and many different events.

But in the last few years, I feel like I've never been better in my life. And I was probably one person who actually coped not too badly during say the Pandemic. And in Melbourne where I'm located, we had really extensive lockdowns. And all I could think was, well, hey, beats agoraphobia. I'm not scared. I might not be able to leave my home, but I can go for a walk. I can go for a long 10 k walk and enjoy it. Agoraphobia. I could hardly go to the bathroom. And even then just being in the home would terrify me.

So I want this podcast to kind of encapsulate this really big story and everything that I've learned along the way. But before I move on, I think it's really important that we don't just define ourselves, those of us that have mental ill health by our mental ill health. I remember my psychiatrist, one of the sessions I was in, and I was starting to date and he was talking, we were talking about first dates, and I can't remember what I was saying, but I remember what he said and he said, how about you don't tell on your first date that you have panic attacks and you had agoraphobia? How about you just talk about everything else that defines you, everything but your mental ill health?

And it was like a real aha moment of, gee, I really do define myself. Again. I think it was probably me saying all the negatives. So please run if you don't like this person. But as my doctor said, I'm going to call him Dr. M, even though he is no longer here. He did always want to be anonymous. So beautiful. Dr. M, he was reminding me that that's not who I am. That's a health issue. I am not my anxiety. I'm not my agoraphobia story. I'm not my depression story. I'm not my trauma story. So who am I?

As I say, I turn 53 tomorrow. I'm a Leo, a very proud Leo. I love being a Leo, which my sister says is very Leo, which is probably right. I live in Melbourne, Australia. I am not too far from the CBD. I live in probably the inner east of Melbourne. And I have lived mostly in this area since I was about 13. I live alone. Well, not alone. I have a beautiful little cat who's sadly very sick, so I'm not too sure how long she's going to last. But she's my little life and keeps me company and is very cute and very sweet and a really good cuddler. I'm actually self-employed. I started my own business. Well, it's not really a business, it's just me. But I decided in 2011 to just try and live without regrets has been my motto the last 10 years.

And I started my own marketing consulting business. So self-employed. And whilst on the surface that might seem easier than being employed, I have more flexibility. But it's so hard, especially at the beginning. And I had no clients and I didn't have any leads, and I had to do that by myself. And I really do. Every new client I go to meet, and I think how extraordinary, this girl that was so shy and at one point couldn't leave her house, she now just walks into a cafe, doesn't know who she's meeting, sits down and has to sell, why this person should work with you, work with me. So I've come a long way. I'm also someone that people cannot believe was shy. And I do now joke that I talk as if I didn't talk for 37 years and I'm now making up for it. I am the oldest sister of, I have a full blood sister, and I've got a half sister and half brother who are my world.

I'm auntie two, three beautiful little nieces who I also adore. I wasn't an auntie until I was 46. So talk about joy and perspective. I love music. I always feel like music has kept me company and kept me alive and sustained me in some of the toughest times. But even as a child, my first album was Abba, Abba Arrival. And I would sit there and put the album on at five years old when mom and dad would be sleeping and my sister would also join. We had a lot of ab games and I'd be at Niha because I had blonde hair. But I also have really strong memories of just having the headphones on and going through the lyrics and just listening to the album over and over.

Love a great movie probably. I actually really enjoy going back. I'm probably a bit dorky. I love all the old classics. I just love seeing how inventive and the originality of movies in the forties and fifties. So love finding an old gem. I love art. I really want to do a bit of painting, but I love walking through a gallery. Love all art forms. Something I've recently found my way into is I love my boxing training. So it's one I finally found a sport and a fitness activity that I truly love. And I can't miss my Friday lunchtime boxing, but I also go to the gym and do some circuit classes, which I really enjoy. I'm known for my laugh. I have a ridiculously big laugh, I think I like to see the humor in things. I think I'm pretty funny that won't have come across today in this podcast.

But I love being able to make people laugh. So if someone laughs at my jokes, I'm pretty happy. I'm really known for my laugh. A lot of people say they know me for my smile, that I've got a great smile. A lot of people I've got really, one of the few physical attributes I've always acknowledged is my blue eyes. So that's what I'm also known for. So that's a bit about me, and I think I might leave this episode here, what I do want to talk about in this season. So the thought is that I'll do 10 episodes in a block and release them as a season over the next few weeks. And what I will go into more is my recovery from agoraphobia. So I'll do a session on that. Someone asked if I could do talk about coping, how I cope with anxiety. So there's a lot of controversy, I think in terms of some people saying that some coping, coping strategies are security strategies or security systems, whereas I really don't agree with that. I think it's all about supporting you through a difficult period.

I had like to talk about what anxiety management means to me. I'll talk a little bit about the work I do in mental health. So I didn't mention in my introduction that I'm also, I am an ambassador with two big mental health organizations in Australia beyond Blue. And are you okay? And I go out and do speeches with both on behalf of both. I volunteer my time in that, but I also am now doing a bit more lived experience work. So behind the scenes, which I'm really enjoying and am part of an amazing organization called Every Mind, and I'm part of their lived experience advisory group. So that's really interesting work, which I can talk about as well. So until next time, I'd love to know and hear from you if you've listened to this and what you've thought. I'm going to try and keep them not too waffly. I might've waffled a bit today, so hopefully it's not too, it's been interesting. But what I want to leave you with, so each episode, I'm going to leave you with something to consider, I think because I love, I'm a really curious person and I love reading things and hearing things and seeing things where people challenge you to think in a different way or just to reflect.

So I want you to reflect on who you are. And I've kind of thought, I actually broke down my introductions into my mental health work introduction, how I would introduce myself to an audience that were there to hear my mental health story, but also party me or dinner Party me or social me, how I'd introduce myself. So I want you to think about, especially if you're feeling unwell at the moment or are unwell, are you forgetting the essence of who you are? And I know how it feels to think that that's all you are and you're not going to get out of it. And I hope I am part of the toolkit that can help you start the journey and to believe that you can get well and live and thrive with mental ill health. So if that's the case, who do you want to be? What's one thing that you hope that you achieve?

Is it that you would love to be able to talk about the latest movie you saw in a cinema? Is it I want to be able to talk about having visited a location? Is it I hope to talk about being in an art class or a fitness group? Just have a think. But there will be some essence of you that you won't have lost. And if you need help, ask someone who knows you well. So is it that you're happy in the morning? Is it you have a great laugh? Is it you love reading? Or that you're curious? Have a think. I'll leave you with that. Until next time. Do take care.