For as long as I can recall, I’ve been a people pleaser. I hate disappointing people or hurting people more than just about anything else. In high school, I’d always be the first to respond to people asking for help on assignments, I was essentially my class tutor. Menial tasks, because others were too lazy to do it themselves? Ya sure, I’ll do it. In any sort to conflict or challenge, rather than true compromise, I would put a heavier burden on myself in order to please the other parties. I don’t say no well. I don’t stand up for myself well. Why am I like this? God, I don’t know, perhaps it stems from being bullied and struggling to make friends as a child, or maybe not, but I always feel like I need to do things for people for them to want me around, as though I owe them for putting up with me.

This caused me a lot of problems when I first arrived at university. I struggle with believing that people genuinely want me around, so I am afraid of “forcing” myself on them since I assume they find me irritating and annoying and are just too nice to say so. When I’d go to the cafeteria to get dinner, I would never sit with the other people in my rez, out of fear that I would be unwanted. I was terrified when making friends with my classmates because I often needed to step away from social situations and didn’t want to send the wrong message. Being with people for too long is completely and utterly exhausting for me, even if we were just studying, the hyper-alertness that I experience in the company of others often prevents me from truly getting anything done. I would apologize profusely or avoid leaving altogether, out of fear of upsetting other people. Then once I left, I was often too tired to work anymore.

I realize, that while difficult, this was probably a fairly standard experience for people in first year, particularly those who are introverted. I share it to give better context to what happened next.

For the record, I have struggled with anxiety since gr 9, and I am presently in 2A; not just social anxiety, I struggle with perfectionism and a desire to be the best at everything, comparing myself to others incessantly, beating myself up constantly. I tend to become obsessed with numbers, which is a little more frightening when I begin obsessing over my weight, weighing myself multiple time a day, fearing what I eat. Ultimately, this all linked to the mental illness I was diagnosed with a few months ago, Generalized Anxiety Disorder, and a difficult circumstance I faced in my first year, triggered a serious anxious episode.

I need to be careful sharing this story, since it is not entirely mine to share, so I will be brief where I can. I met an upper year student back in September of 1A, who seemed to take a disproportionate interest in me, which made me uncomfortable. I needed to request that they give me some space. I realize how horrible that sounds, telling someone “you make me uncomfortable, please stop talking to me”. And my fear about how horrible that was caused me to blame myself for the utter mess that followed. They were really upset about this and tried to talk through it with me. That conversation was a mess, and I honestly try to forget it, because I regret so much of it, and I feel like I should have seen red flags sooner, hung up sooner, etc, etc… I was confused. Shortly after we hung up, I had my first full-blown panic attack and ultimately requested that this individual leave me alone.

They agreed, but shortly after, they changed their mind, and so began a pattern of me requesting to be left alone, them agreeing, then changing their mind within a few days, and this went on for a couple months, putting me perpetually on edge. I could never seem to say “leave me alone” clearly enough. This person had some mental health challenges, and I was so scared of not being there when they were struggling. Ultimately, I approached the university to handle this on my behalf. This was harassment, and I haven’t heard from this individual since.

This ordeal fucked with my anxiety majorly. I couldn’t walk around campus without looking over my shoulder, waiting for them to appear. The prospect of entering a building where I had previously spent time with them cause me to dissociate (at least partially, I suddenly became unable to process people speaking to me, or what was written on the board). Months later, my brain still seemed to forget how not to be scared, I essentially spent 6 months straight in a never-ending anxiety attack.

So what is the point of me sharing this?

We are always told that when you are experiencing a mental illness, you should reach out to other people and ask for help, and that is 100% true, but people are not obliged to help you. I know that sucks, and I sincerely hope I don’t discourage anyone from seeking help, the only point I am trying to make is that if someone tells you they can’t help you, or needs some space, you need to respect that, despite your own challenges. Every person is entitled to their boundaries, and your illness doesn’t change that. That being said it is important to recognize that just because one person can’t or won’t help doesn’t mean there aren’t countless others who would gladly help you. And I can’t emphasize this enough. Please, please, please seek help, but please, please, please respect people’s boundaries. I know this is tough, my mental illness makes me fear that I am just a burden to the people around me, especially after what happened to me, I am terrified of doing what was done to me, to someone else.

We are also often told that we must be there to support each other at all times, and especially to support people with mental illnesses. It is important to note here that you are not a mental health professional (at least I assume you’re not since this is an engineering student blog), you are not obliged to be someone’s counsellor. Obviously, we should all support each other as much as we can, but you need to recognize your own limits. A friend told me Someone else’s mental health cannot come at the expense of your own. Their right to ask for help ends where your right to be well begins. I struggled a lot with this. I felt so strongly that I was obliged to help them, that I probably wasn’t suffering as much as they were so I needed to deal with my pain and misery to try to help them. It does not work that way. You cannot take care of someone else unless you have first taken care of yourself. It’s like those pamphlets on airplanes. If you need to get oxygen from the face masks, even if you are with elderly people, children, or disabled people, you need to breathe first, or you will lose consciousness before you can properly help another, and you’ll both suffer.

Mental illness does not mean you aren’t responsible for your actions. I feared that this individual may choose to end their life, and I was terrified that it would be my fault. Someone else’s choice to harm themselves is not your fault. Of course, mental illness can influence people’s actions, and challenges like hallucinations that some people experience can affect their actions, so I amend my statement to address complications that interfere with volition, but it remains true that you are not responsible for that. It is not up to you to “fix” them.

As I write this, I worry that it sounds heartless, like I worried that I sounded heartless back when I was telling my harasser to leave me alone. Please, please understand, I am not trying to discourage people from helping those with mental illnesses, the only point I am trying to make is that you need to take care of yourself. There seems to be a problematic trend that the people most engaged in mental health advocacy, and who go to the greatest lengths to encourage people to speak out are people who experience mental illness themselves. I wish more people who weren’t ill spoke out about mental illness. After my experiences I struggle to offer emotional support to anyone, it is genuinely triggering to me now, I respond to hearing about a friend’s struggle by panicking, and I hate that so much. It is such a core aspect of who I am to want to help people, I never want to abandon people, but in the process I abandon myself… and I honestly don’t know what I can do now. I feel like I am watching my peers fall apart this term, and I am not exaggerating when I say it depresses me. It genuinely triggers the mild depression that accompanies my anxiety, and I will go home at the end of the day and cry because the world feels really dark and sad after hearing that my peers aren’t eating or sleeping, feel stressed all the time, and obsessing over grades, or refusing to seek help for medical issues because they think they don’t have time to see a doctor. Watching people slowly begin to hate our program, or at least the way they speak seems to indicate that. It’s hard to push back against that all the time, and sometimes I still need to just walk away from my class, who I truly feel are my family here. I care about them, and I want them to be ok, but I can’t make it ok for them, and they make things less ok for me…

Please, if you are well, don’t joke about poor mental health here. Don’t encourage staying up all night for homework, or skipping meals because no one has time to cook. Stop saying “I want to die” when things get hard, unless you are truly suicidal, in which case please seek help. It’s not a chill thing to say, and I think that my own mental dialogue during that 6-month anxiety attack stemmed from it. When my brain kept saying “ I want to die”, even though I didn’t. In the past, that inner dialogue has convinced me that I am a nuisance, nobody wants me around, I am worthless and never good enough, I feared that it would convince me that I should die… Ya, this is why I’m on antidepressants now.

On-campus mental health resources were hugely beneficial to me throughout this. MATES is fantastic and underused, so it’s a great way to get help ASAP when they are open. Walk-in counselling in Needles Hall is also good, but try to get there right when it opens to get on the beginning of the waitlist. Physicians in health services are great, though I did feel like they were too quick to offer me medications (that being said… they were right, I should have been on meds long before I was). Seeing a counsellor in engineering on a regular basis is part of my regular treatment of my mental illness, and has been since I first got here, and my counsellor is fantastic. If nothing else, go see someone to get documentation about your challenges, if something goes wrong and you fail out, but you have proof that you were ill, that is grounds to petition for re-admittance. Finally, if you are experiencing harassment, find a university staff member that you trust, a don, a professor, an advisor, counsellor, whoever, and tell them. They will make sure you are helped. You are well within your rights to ask to be left alone, and if your boundaries are not respected, it is perfectly reasonable to escalate matters, though I know it is frightening.

So, long ramble short, take care of yourselves. There is nothing bad or wrong about walking away to take care of yourself. I broke last term because I didn’t walk away when I should have. I feared abandoning someone who needed me; and I was, but that someone was myself, and we owe ourselves better than that.