Grief and Health Anxiety

World Mental Health day, which was on 10th October this year, allowed me to take some time to reflect on my mental health journey since my Dad passed away. 

My Dad was given a 95% chance of survival when he was diagnosed with cancer - three rounds of chemo and a simple operation to remove the tumour and he’d be as good as new. He was 20 years younger than the average person diagnosed with this form of cancer which also greatly improved his chances. We all thought we’d have a hard 6 months and then move on with our lives.

After a year, which included two operations and many many rounds of chemo, my Dad was given 12 weeks to live and passed on Christmas Eve 2018 when I was 21. Whilst my Dad was still alive I’d been given an opportunity to move to Dublin for work, and he really pushed for me to go for it - which meant I found myself in a new country with a new job and a very limited support system, and simultaneously dealing with the most painful thing that had ever happened to me.

At first it was little things - cleaning my work desk daily, not wanting to touch my housemate’s dirty cutlery to put it in the dishwasher, using my elbow to push the ‘stop’ button on the bus. 12 months into life without my Dad it had developed into rarely leaving my room so I wasn’t at ‘risk’ of touching things, and when I did I’d often have to go to the bathroom to wash my hands with scalding water for minutes at a time or calm myself down from panic attacks. There was one instance where a bartender put a straw in my drink and I couldn’t get the thought out of my head that I was somehow going to get very sick if I drank through the straw he’d touched. I ended up throwing the drink away and spending most of the night in the bathroom washing and re-washing my hands.

I never felt comfortable telling anyone that I was thinking like this. I'd struggled to ask for support from others when my Dad was ill, felt awkward inviting my friends to his funeral and health anxiety was no different. I once told some friends when drunk that I felt like I was going to get ill from using some toilet paper in a public bathroom and they laughed. Although I knew then that what I was saying and thinking was ‘stupid’ (how is it even possible to get ill from toilet paper that no one else has used?), becoming the butt of the joke after being vulnerable was so embarrassing that it confirmed to me that I should deal with it alone. It took me six months of dating to tell my (now ex) boyfriend that I was experiencing health anxiety, when a date night went downhill after I touched some chewing gum under a table. It took so much for me to open up to him so completely that I felt like I’d throw up, but his response was ‘Have you ever thought about maybe just not thinking like that?’ and never mentioned it again. I felt so unheard and unseen.

The pandemic actually didn’t trigger me at the start, until a housemate asked me to keep my distance after travelling back home for my Dad’s anniversary and Christmas (which was done within the guidance at the time). I spent a week and a half shut up in my room, spiralling out of control, barely leaving my bed to use the toilet or to eat. I had fully convinced myself that I had covid, despite no symptoms and a negative covid test, and would cry myself to sleep. I honestly cannot remember much of this time, but to think about how terrified I was of leaving my room makes me anxious even to this day.

My breaking point was in 2022. I was back living in England and had booked to go on holiday with some friends. We needed a negative Covid test within 24 hours of the flight or they wouldn’t let us on the plane and I was so excited that there was no way I was going to put myself at risk. I didn’t leave my house for two weeks, cancelled plans with friends, and forced my housemate to keep a 2 metre distance from me in our not-big-enough-for-2-metre-distance flat. I barely slept and ruined the skin on my hands with how much I washed them. The holiday of my dreams had turned into a nightmare because I couldn’t control the spiral of my anxiety. After I got back a friend, one who I’d cancelled plans with, sent me her therapist’s email address and said it seemed like I could benefit from it.

Naomi, my therapist, has been the best thing that happened to me. It was not a shock to learn that my health anxiety stems from my Dad’s illness and death which statistically he should have survived. I sometimes feel guilty, that I’m blaming my Dad for my mental health struggles in some way, but I know this isn’t true. I also know that he wouldn’t see it as me blaming him, just me trying to cope with the massive hole in my life his death left.

We did a lot of EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing) which is a relatively new therapy technique that allows you to process memories that are ‘stuck’ in the wrong part of your brain. I’m not in any way qualified to explain the method to you properly, but I can tell you that it worked absolute wonders for me. I now rarely count the seconds when I wash my hands, I don’t have to use scalding water, and I don’t have to wash my hands multiple times to feel comfortable. I can go on nights out with my friends again without crying in the bathroom because I’m panicking. I can use a straw that a bartender puts in my drink without throwing my drink away.

Of course I still have flare ups - when I’m stressed with work, or around Christmas time when it’s the anniversary of my Dad’s passing to name a couple of triggers. I’m just way more equipped now to deal with my brain patterns and have the correct support systems in place (including Naomi) to never let it get back to the way it was. Mental health is a never-ending journey, and ‘fixing’ it once doesn’t mean it’s fixed forever. I wonder what it will be like if I get married, or have children, whether I’ll start to spiral again or if I’ll be ok. I used to be scared of big changes because of what it meant for my brain, but now I’m ready for what the future brings. My ex-boyfriends’ words come back to me regularly, and I know I’ll never be able to just simply ‘not think like that’, but it feels like with some hard work and a therapist I trust I’ve been able to somewhat achieve this.

Since I’ve started working on improving my mental health, I have the space to grieve for my Dad more. I’m more open about talking about him to friends and family. I’m happy to sit and go through the memory box I made full of little stories of him. I can look at old photos. I can let myself cry because I miss him so much, or laugh because he was one of the funniest people I’ve ever had the pleasure of meeting, or smile because I am lucky that he’s my Dad. 

Looking back on this now that health anxiety doesn’t control my life, I feel like a completely different person to that 21 year old starting to face the reality of life without her Dad. I’ve learned in the last almost-6 years that no journey through grief and mental health is the same, and it is ok to not be ok. I’ve also learned that not everyone will understand what I’m going through and that’s ok too. The biggest lesson by far is that it’s ALWAYS ok to ask for help. 

Instead of living my life in fear of some unknown illness, I now live my life with the hopes of making my Dad proud, wherever he is.