Their Story: Elyssa Giedraitis
You can listen to the podcast version of this narrative on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
I put off writing and recording this podcast for quite a while. It is quite confronting to write your whole mental health journey out like this and I needed to be in a good headspace to do so. I originally wanted to jump straight into telling other people's stories, but I didn’t feel like I could ask other people to tell such a deeply personal journey, without opening up about mine first.
My mental health journey started ten years ago when I was 14 or 15. It was about this time that I went from being a normal, happy-go-lucky teenager to a teenager who didn’t want to leave their bed, much less their house. I spent the end of year ten and year eleven in my house, doing school via distance education and not communicating with anyone other than teachers when necessary and my family.
My poor family copped a lot. I wasn’t just sad. I was angry. But I didn’t know what, I was just angry, all the time. I snapped at everyone. I barely left my bedroom. My little brother didn’t know me until he was probably three or four because I spent the first couple of years of his life cooped up in my bedroom and yelling or snapping when I came out. My family didn’t know how to help me, they hadn’t experienced this before.
I remember on the rare days that I attended school out of necessity, like in-person meetings and supervised tests, I would usually be pulled out of class at some point. The chaplain, the school principal, the school psychologist, and different teachers. They all got the same response, I was fine and there was nothing to talk about.
Eventually, I couldn’t take the anger and the feelings of emptiness, the feelings of worthlessness, and sometimes the feeling of nothing at all, just feeling numb. I could not do it anymore. My mum and I visited a GP, followed by a psychologist and I was diagnosed with depression, anxiety and something to do with anger, I don’t remember what she called it, but I remember thinking it was just a broad term for being angry.
I didn’t last long at the psychologist, I couldn’t connect with her and therefore found myself lying about how I was feeling because I just wanted to get out of the appointment.
At some point in year twelve, I did the work to pull myself out of my depressive episode. It was the realisation that I needed to put the work in to get where I wanted. It was like climbing out of a deep, dark hole. I started hanging out with people, going to parties, going to school, hell I was even the house captain in my last year. The feelings I was having, weren’t gone, but they were dull, they were manageable. I would still have short periods of depressive episodes, but I was managing.
During high school and for a couple of years after it I dabbled in self-harm, different ways that would be less detectable. It usually got to that when I was feeling particularly out of control over things - when I was rejected from the navy, when I had a car accident with my little brother in the car when I was not getting along with the new manager in my job and eventually had to quit. Small cuts in coverable areas, hitting myself with heavy objects, and burning myself with boiling water.
Between the end of high school in 2015 and 2021, I went through multiple depressive episodes, but there isn’t anything really that is worth talking about. Some episodes were me not leaving the house, me not eating, me not sleeping. After the suicide of a friend I started my first antidepressant tablets. It took me a couple of different types of anti-depressants to find one that worked for me. The first made me sleep for 20ish hours a day. The second made me not want to eat, and vomit when I did. I’m still on the third now.
I’ve been through a couple of psychologists and psychiatrists. Some notable ones include a $400 for 45 minutes psychiatrist who told me I was simply “doing too much”. An old white guy, a psychologist who told me to take a holiday. Eventually, I found a great professional team who I love and trust, but it is okay if you don’t connect with the first professionals you ask for help from.
In 2021, I fell pregnant. I was in a good place and had been for a while, so we decided to begin trying for a baby. My aim throughout the whole nine months was that I was going to put my mental health first, I was going to look after myself mentally in order to make sure I could look after my baby. This meant I stayed on my medication throughout the pregnancy. I chose to have a scheduled c-section so I know when and where I was going to have a baby. I chose not the breastfeed from the get-go, I took that mental pressure away from the beginning. I also chose to give birth in a private hospital, allowing my partner to stay with me during the time I was in the hospital.
I started struggling once the newborn bubble wore off. My baby was not a great sleeper for the first couple of months and that really started affecting my mental health. On the doctor's notes, my diagnosis went from “depression” to “post-partum depression.” I felt like I was failing at being a mother, like I was failing my baby, failing my family. Knowing I felt this way, my GP found me a new psychiatrist that he knew I would connect with, Dr Anu, and I did connect with her, I still do.
Dr Anu made me feel like I was actually being listened too, she didn’t dismiss my feelings as just being “doing too much” or being in need of a holiday. After bi-weekly sessions for two months, she changed my diagnosis. This was confronting for me. I went from being “just” depressed and anxious to having recurring depressive disorder, general anxiety disorder, ADHD and borderline personality disorder. It felt like a big step in the wrong direction.
Dr Anu adjusted my medications. Increased the dosage of the anti-depressants, added in a mood stabiliser, as well as some ADHD medication. Once everything started working as it should, I felt lighter, I felt like the heaviness in my chest was not as heavy. And it stayed like this for about a year. Sure, I still had my depressive episodes, but there was longer between them, and they weren’t as severe.
My last couple of depressive episodes, that was when I knew it was time to go back and revisit those medications and their dosages. I was getting up every day out of necessity, I had a son to take care of and a business to run, but I felt like I was on autopilot. Everything felt heavy, everything felt harder than it should have been. I wondered if my son would be better off without me. I knew he couldn’t hear my thoughts or the way I was feeling, but how was how was this affecting him? I couldn’t get the thought out of my head.. What if this just went away? If I just went away? Would that be better for him?
The lighter feelings, the times when I wasn’t feeling heavy, they were few and far between. The harder times were increasing in frequency and not only was it affecting me, it was affecting my family and my work. Once upon a time, I would enter these periods and do nothing at all. But, because I run my own businesses and projects, it meant I knew I had to get work done. It just meant that I was doing the bare minimum, what I HAD to do to get by.
A visit to Dr Anu resulted in her trying to convince me to be admitted as an inpatient. I considered it for a little bit, but I realised I wouldn’t get the intended result from being admitted. I would be stressing about where my son was, and even though he would have been in good hands, I would probably be in tears constantly wanting to be with him, at home. When not thinking about that I would be stressed about my clients, I would be letting them down, I would be undoing the hard work I had been putting in for them. I decided against it. But the suggestion seemed to change something in my brain.
That change in my brain, as well as an increase in dosages of my medications - they have helped for the past month or two. I don’t feel my best, but I also don’t feel my worst. I feel like I am on the right track at the moment. But who knows how long I will feel like that, but I do hope I continue to feel better and better. If not, I’ll deal with that when it comes along.
It was incredibly hard, to sum up ten years of pain into a simple narrative like this. I know I have missed things that would have been important. But through WELL in the Wheatbelt, I am sure I will have more chances to speak on my journey and answer questions that people might have on my journey to this point.
I am incredibly proud and excited for the WELL in the Wheatbelt project, including this podcast. I have big plans for this project and I am excited to help the Wheatbelt community make their mental health a priority and not an afterthought.
