I never knew it would hit me because I have never been the emotional type, but it did, and it has been a heck of a roller coaster ride.
Slightly more than a year ago, I gave birth to Kayla, and for the first three months after, I struggled with this constant ball of fear in my chest. I had no appetite for meals, I cried everyday, I lost weight, and my milk supply dipped so fast that I couldn’t breastfeed even if I wanted to.
As a first-time mother, I was overwhelmed by this new lifestyle that no amount of preparation could truly prepare me for.
Initially, we didn’t plan for Kayla to happen, as my husband and I were only married for six months at that point. And to be very honest, I felt fear the moment I knew I was pregnant. I knew motherhood was not going to be a walk in the park because of the stories I have heard from fellow moms. I was terrified of what's ahead.
Unlike in school where there are lessons and ten year series to walk you through each subject, there is no ‘manual’ for motherhood. Everyone's experience is different and the only way to know what motherhood really is, is when you become a mother yourself.
Nonetheless, I prepared myself for motherhood in the possible ways I could: by making sure we had all the physical stuff ready. Things like the baby’s room, the milk bottles, and the medications. It was an assurance that at least, whatever we need will be available at our disposal when Kayla is born.
The first 28 days was a whirl, but at least I had a confinement nanny around. I was still recovering from the natural birth process and my stitches still hurt. I wasn’t very mobile. As I was breastfeeding, I couldn't get more than four hours of sleep each time. It was really tiring.
Deep down, it started to dawn on me how scary it was that I am now responsible for this little human being. However, I also wanted to give her the best I can, and I tried my best to learn as much as I could from my confinement nanny before she left. And when she left after the first month, I started to lose control.
I lived in constant fear and anxiety.
I'm a self-professed worrier. I think a lot and cannot help but imagine the worst scenarios that can happen. This made me feel anxious all the time.
As a first-time mother, you find yourself forming an idea of motherhood based on what you read on the internet and from other mommies. For me, what I read and hear became a set of expectations for myself. I started to follow these set of 'rules' religiously, and even if the most little of things go out of place, it'll mess me up.
For example, I would expect Kayla to take this number of naps a day, or to finish drinking this amount of milk, and I would get really worried when those 'quotas' are not hit. The pressure of living up to these expectations I placed on myself and the stress of feeling inadequate consumed me over time.
I didn’t know how to handle a child. I felt so lost and lonely. Motherhood was something so new to me and I was just so afraid that I wasn’t doing things right or wasn’t giving my best to my child. I wasn't even in the right state of mind. I was just this person following a schedule: always on stand-by to supply Kayla her next milk feed, change her diaper, burp her, and bathe her.
As a chirpy and outgoing person by nature, I knew something wasn’t right as I was crying every day. I lost all appetite for meals. Waking up every morning became a dreaded affair because I will be filled with anxiety the moment I opened my eyes, and that awful feeling would intensify through the day.
It was so mentally draining.
I struggled with the thoughts of how it was possible for me to have depression. I was ashamed. A part of me felt like I had no right to feel this way since I had been looking forward to being a mother for the past 10 months. How could I be depressed now?
Fortunately, I saw what I was becoming, and I knew that this was not the kind of lifestyle I wish to continue with. It was so painful and stifling to be on the edge of a breakdown every single day.
I wanted the old Meiting back and with that realisation, I decided to open up. I sought help from my mom, whom gave me the chance to have a few hours off per week. I spoke to my husband as well, and I implored him to bring me to a doctor if I were to continue to cry for another week, as I knew I would need professional help.
When I did open up, things started to look better.
In reality, when it comes to handling babies, things rarely goes according to plan.
My mother and husband played a big part in my recovery and it is their support that helped me come out of postnatal depression after two months. The subsequent six to eight months still saw me having moments of anxiety attacks, but it was manageable as I had learnt to talk about my depressive thoughts. And my family and friends became my wake up call.
My husband always tells me to let go and to just follow our daughter's cues. It is reminders like this that remind me of the pressure I had unwittingly placed on myself, and how I need to take it easy.
It’s now my second year as a mother. Looking back at myself as a mother back then, I’m grateful for whatever I had gone through.
I'm grateful for my child, Kayla. We did not plan for her to happen. But she is now, to me, the greatest gift from God. Kayla has completely changed my perspective as a person, and I have grown and learnt so much from being a mother.
This Mother’s Day, I'm also super thankful for my mom.
Without her, I will not be able to go back to work with a peace of mind. Without her, I don’t know how I would have been able to deal with my postnatal depression. Her unwavering love and support for Kayla and me have left a mark on me, and has shown me once again, what unconditional love is. And now that I've experienced it myself, I know how fortunate I am to be blessed with the role of a mother.
No mothers talk about it, but postnatal depression is very real. It is common and 80% of my mommy friends have experienced it, be it in a mild or very serious form. Because nobody really talks about it, you will feel like postnatal depression isn’t ‘normal’ or ‘right’. I know this because those were emotions that I grappled with.
It sucked the life and joy out of me. It affected my husband and made him feel distanced from his once loving wife. It is important to acknowledge that these feelings of fear, doubt, anxiety, and sadness are very real, for this will help you get better.
The start of motherhood will seem scary and lonely, but it will get better. There will be bad days but the storm will pass and you will be fine.
Cherish the good times and learn from the rough ones. You’ll make it through eventually. There's nothing more rewarding and fulfilling than being a Mother. You'll love it. Maybe not now, but you will. We are made for this.
This story is written by Millennials of Singapore, as told to us by Lian Meiting.
Also read: These 14 Heartwarming Stories Show That A Mother's Love Is Like No Other.
(All images used in header image taken from Lian Meiting)
“Can you dabao McDonald’s home for your dad?”
I felt my palms get sweaty and my heart beat faster as I read the text from my mum on the way home from school one day. Should I think of an excuse to not do so? Maybe tell her I don’t have enough money to buy dinner for my dad?
Surely ordering a McDonald’s meal over the cashier wasn’t that difficult. And yet, the thought of having to talk to a stranger left me in a cold sweat. What if I messed up the order? What would the cashier think of me? I hated how these thoughts would consume me at every step of the way. Why couldn’t I be like the other kids? All I wanted was to be normal.
Whenever my friends ask me, “Why you don’t wanna join us? Don’t be so anti-social leh,” I wish I could’ve told them that it’s not that I didn’t want to hang out with them, I was just afraid that they wouldn’t like me.
Or when my secondary school teacher gave me feedback that went something like, “You’re too shy in class and should open up and take part in class discussions more,” I wish I could’ve told her that it’s not that I didn’t want to participate more in class, I was just afraid of the humiliation from answering questions wrongly. Would I become a laughing stock? And if I get it right, would they think that I’m just showing off?
In school, I pretty much kept to myself most of the time and I didn’t have a lot of friends.. To an outsider, I was shy and introverted. I guess I came across as antisocial at times.
Because everyone kept calling me shy, I believed that that’s all that it was. But no matter how much I tried to break out from my “shyness”, I couldn’t.
One day, my friend noticed that I would get panic attacks before class presentations. My heart would race faster and cause a lump in my throat that made it difficult to breathe. She encouraged me to talk to the school counselor.
My school counselor was the first person to tell me that I may have social anxiety disorder. She referred me to a psychiatrist, who diagnosed me with it.
I was finally able to rationalise everything I had been feeling for the better part of my life. However, I also came to realise that it is much easier to let people think that I was just ‘shy’, because when you start telling someone that you have a mental condition, chances are you’d have to start explaining why you feel certain things—how do I explain feelings that I don’t even want to have myself?
Admitting that I had social anxiety to other people was the most difficult part of coming to terms with my mental health. The first time I told someone about my social anxiety, they said: “Huh isn’t that just social awkwardness? I also have!”
I couldn’t blame them for reacting that way but hearing that from friends was still pretty hurtful. It made me feel that what I felt or thought didn’t matter. Them brushing me off made me even more resistant to tell anyone else about it.
Even today, my parents are unaware of my social anxiety. Growing up, I’ve felt the disdain my parents’ have towards mental issues through the passing remarks they make about mental health patients being “attention-seeking” and “weak”.
Because of this, I hid the fact that I had social anxiety to myself. And for the most part of my teenage years, social anxiety controlled my life because I didn’t dare to speak to anyone about it.
Social anxiety is not being able to answer questions in class because I was scared of what my classmates would think of me.
Social anxiety is having my heart race 10 times faster when I hear the telephone ring, and then having to rehearse exactly what to say before answering it.
Social anxiety is the constant fear of having my friends talk about me behind my back, because in my mind, I'd keep thinking that they don’t actually like me.
Social anxiety is listening more than talking in group discussions because I’ve convinced myself that my opinions don’t matter, and that I will just be looked down upon.
It decided what I did and didn’t do, and this constant self-doubt and fear got so bad that it created limitations that hindered my everyday life. No matter how illogical the thoughts I had were, I would constantly find reasons to avoid situations that could trigger my social anxiety in the slightest way.
Back when I was on an internship, I called in sick on the day that I was supposed to head for a meeting at another office. The thought of facing the unfamiliar and embarrassing myself in front of my boss and associates scared me. It wasn’t just the nerves either. I genuinely feared the consequences of failure. In my mind, this just kept replaying: “If I mess this up, my boss would hate me and my entire six months of internship would become a nightmare.”
Slowly, I realised that I was letting my social anxiety influence my day-to-day decisions. I had let it consume my life in a lot of subtle ways and there was a point I thought I would never be able to overcome my social anxiety.
For years I ignored having to deal with it. I stupidly thought that ignoring it would somehow make the problem go away. But I realised that it was impossible to avoid situations that could trigger my social anxiety forever. After all, I’d have to meet people everyday, be it at work, in school or in public, I would always be surrounded by people. And with that, I would always be scared of what the people around me were thinking of me.
When I joined the workforce at 23, I found that the people around me were a lot more open-minded and accepting, contrary to the people I’ve met in school or at home. That made me comfortable in opening up about my social anxiety.
For the most part, having social anxiety means putting up an act everyday, because it’s difficult for someone else to recognise this disorder, or differentiate it from merely being shy. But finally being able to openly talk about it and realising that there are other people out there who can relate to my struggles made me feel less alone.
I would be lying if I said that I don’t get sweaty palms anymore when I get an unexpected phone call or if I have to share my thoughts to a group of people. And I still often struggle with the habitual thoughts that my friends or colleagues are speaking ill of me whenever I hear them whispering near me.
Social anxiety is probably something that I will never ‘get rid of’ completely, it’s every McDonald’s order, every first conversation, every phone call to a stranger, that has helped me get better over the years.
I’ve come to accept that my social anxiety will always be a part of me and that I should grow with it, instead of against it.
Also read: 8 Singapore Shared Snapshots Of What Depression Was Like For Them
(Header Image Credit: Budagchin Erka)
Violence was prevalent in my family ever since I was 10 years old. My parents struggled with finances and my dad turned to alcoholism. The mounting stress and tension caused my parents to fight a lot and they started taking out their anger on us. They would often punish me over the smallest things, emotionally and physically abusing me (hitting me).
And when my parents fight or have physical outbursts, I’d tell my sisters to hide in the room while I put myself out there to bear the brunt of my parents’ anger. Somehow, it felt like the right thing to do for my siblings as the eldest. I also felt like it was my duty to be the middleman in helping my parents resolve their disputes—a responsibility I carried on my shoulders as the first child. I even took on three part-time jobs while in poly so that I could help with the finances.
There was a lot of emotional void and I was constantly trying to do things to please them or make them happy, so that I would get more love from them. I grew to have a people-pleasing attitude because of that.
Those traumatic experiences took its toll on me and I started to have depression and anxiety.
Then, I had my first mental breakdown at 20.
For eight months, I locked myself in my room and tried multiple ways to kill myself. I was in so much pain internally that I felt like I really could not take it anymore. I felt like there was no other way out of the plight I was in. Everyday was just a constant fight to stay sane amidst the fights, emotional abuse, and physical beatings.
The details are all fuzzy now, but I remember trying to cut myself, hang myself, and overdosing. Fortunately, I didn’t know enough to properly take my life back then, and when the suicide attempts didn’t work, I continued cutting myself instead—to feel the pain. I could not process all those pent-up frustration, anger, and sadness I had, and in order to let out the pain that I felt inside, I felt like I had to feel pain on the outside.
At that point, I had already been going to the doctor’s and had been taking medications for depression and anxiety. However, my parents weren’t convinced that I was struggling with mental issues.
My mom kept my medication and refused to give it to me. To my parents, it was their way of preventing me from overdosing, but even when I needed it, they wouldn’t give it to me—even when I had a full-fledged panic attack, my dad simply stood there and said:
“Don’t be a drama queen.”
As far as my parents were concerned, I needed to snap out of it.
Fast forward to 2014 when I was 25, I had my first major dissociative episode.
I had been feeling really stressed out from juggling a few jobs, and had to complete some work at home over this one weekend, when I already had another part-time job that weekend. I made plans to finish that piece of work on Sunday night instead, only to return home on that fateful night to see my dad and a relative drunk and passed out on the couch. The house stank so badly from alcohol and the pools of vomit all across the living room, and my mom was nowhere to be seen. That was the last straw and was what triggered my first dissociative episode.
I lost my memory and began acting like a child for three months.
I didn’t even have a memory of what happened or how I was behaving, and it was through the people around me that I learnt of it.
It is very scary to know that for three months, you were being taken over by this other personality. I didn't know what was going on and it was very unsettling and stressful to know that I dissociated.
Although, it also gave me a sense of comfort in knowing that there was more to what I’ve been feeling than depression and anxiety. After multiple visits to hospitals and various psychiatrists, I started getting treatments that effectively helped me revert to normal adult behaviour. However, the memory that I lost was still gone.
It was a year later when I got diagnosed with DID (Dissociative Identity Disorder), or ‘split personality’ to most people.
I was doing my Master’s in the United States back then, and it was at a psychiatric ward there that I was also diagnosed with major depressive disorder, generalised anxiety disorder, borderline personality disorder, and post-traumatic stress disorder—all of these with triggers that are rooted to traumas that go way back into my childhood.
When all you know about DID is from how awful and terrible it is portrayed in movies and media (like in Split), it makes you fear having DID yourself. I didn’t like any of my personalities when I was first diagnosed, and the denial lasted a while before I accepted my disorders. But DID is far from what is shown in the media.
Having DID feels like having 28 persons living inside me—which is the number of personalities I currently have.
I don’t have any recollection of what happens when one personality takes over. Sometimes, I dissociate within a snap of a finger when the trigger is very strong, like when someone approaches me from behind, at the stench of alcohol, or even men, because of the sexual abuse I’ve been through (I was naive and a people-pleaser). These triggers come from my history—traumatic experiences I’ve had since young.
My past has also made me very sensitive to stress, and I don’t have the capability to handle any change in behaviour from people around me. It’s made it almost impossible for me to get a full-time job. However, I’m also fortunate to be able to make a living from freelance marketing jobs.
But the scariest part of all is not so much of the disorders itself or having to face the people around me. The scariest part is not knowing when I will be suicidal and when I will act on those suicidal thoughts.
With the help of various treatments in the US and in IMH, medications, and focus groups, I have come to understand the significance of my personalities.
There are personalities that take over when there are triggers that make me angry. For example, Angie comes out when I’m really, really angry and when she’s in control, it makes me become uncontrollable, physically violent, and extremely strong. There was an event that happened in the US where three men with big build couldn’t hold me down when Angie took over, and I had to be physically restrained when they took me to the hospital.
Then, there’s Viyolante, who thinks of violence, gruesome and graphic acts, and is very specific about who and how she’s going to be violent towards or hurt, but she will never do anything violent.
On the other hand, there are a lot milder ones like Baby Gayu and Wava, who are childlike personalities, and a motherly figure, Moonlight, who takes care of everyone. There’s also a rescuer personality, Ressie, and a ‘non-living’ personality called Memory (or Mem), which is sort of like a treasure chest that holds all my lost memories.
I’ve learnt a lot more about my conditions, how to process my emotions, and to logically process the traumatic memories I have instead of dissociating upon triggers.
In the process of recovery, I’ve also had to make the extremely hard decision of cutting my family and husband out of my life, which I did five months ago. I realised that there was no way I could properly recover if I still had to face those triggers when I return home to my family every day.
There are many times I feel guilty for leaving home and leaving them, as I feel like I’ve betrayed and ‘abandoned’ them. I’ve always felt responsible to ‘fix what’s broken’ in my family, and I still feel this way. However, I know that if I don’t focus on my recovery right now, there is no way I will be stable enough to face them, much less solve any problems.
I have a dream to be named one of the most influential women in the world by 35, or doing a PHD in South Korea and then settling there. These are ambitious dreams, but are goals I set for myself to remind me that I have to keep going as there are still things I want to achieve in my life.
But of course, living with mental disorders can be so overpowering that despite having all these goals and aspirations, I still feel empty and battle with suicidal thoughts and aimlessness. It’s a constant and daily fight and I still wake up feeling depressed and suicidal on most days.
However, the process of working my way through it, of recovery itself and believing that someday, I will be able to live a normal life, keeps me going—because I don't know what normal is, I never had a normal life.
These feelings come and go, and it’s always a reminder for me to take it one step at a time.
This story is written by Millennials of Singapore as told to us by Gaya.
Also read: “I Kept Hearing Voices Of People Criticising Me, And I Could No Longer Tell What Was Real”.
(Header Image Credit: Shirley J. Davis)
Depression has no face. There are no red flags, no clues, and no measurements to identify someone with depression because each person suffers from and deals with depression differently as well. To understand more about what people with depression actually go through, we reached out to 8 Singaporeans who have fought (or are still fighting) the illness. Here are photos that will give you insights into their lives when they had depression. *Names have been changed for privacy reasons.This is what depression looked like to us just 36 hrs b4 his death. He loved us SO much & we loved him. #fuckdepression #MakeChesterProud pic.twitter.com/VW44eOER4k
— Talinda Bennington (@TalindaB) September 16, 2017
“Depression has gotten the better of me more often than not. It comes gradually but also suddenly. I got these tattoos as they are of the dreams I have and the things I love. It's also a reminder that all things, good or bad, are temporary.”
– Marc
I could hear two voices when there was only one person talking to me.Despite all these, I continued with school and extra-curricular activities thinking it would eventually go away with enough rest, but that did not happen. Things got worse and at one point, I would even be hearing two voices when there was only one person talking to me. I eventually told my parents about it and we went to the nearest polyclinic for treatment.
How was I supposed to keep up with everything when I was struggling so hard to even be alive?Soon after, the doctor diagnosed me with depression. The fight against depression was long and difficult. It was especially tough when I had to go back to school. I hadn’t attended class for more than a month, my attendance was slipping, and I was often faulted for not contributing to group projects because I couldn’t turn up. How was I to keep up when I was struggling so hard to even be alive?
They were the reasons I held on a little longer each week.My spirituality and relationship with God were what kept me going. I stopped feeling suicidal after having my own revelation that regardless of how tough life is, I’ll always cherish this life I have. My family played an important role as well, for supporting me in every decision I made and ensuring that I was taking the steps I needed to get me through every day. I was also in this mental health community called the Early Psychosis Intervention Programme (EPIP), where a caseworker will check on me frequently to ensure that I was doing fine. Being in Club EPIP allowed me to hone and strengthen my cognitive abilities which had deteriorated over time. It opened my eyes to the fact that I was not alone in battling my inner demons. The Peer Support Specialists there inspired me to believe that recovery is possible.
Don't think that you aren't able to help someone suffering from a mental illness.Don’t compare mental illnesses because every symptom experienced by someone with a mental illness is very real. And if you think that you are not able to help someone with psychosis, depression, or any mental illness, know that this isn’t true. Your very presence in times of difficulty and distress means a lot to the person. A genuine “how are you feeling?” and listening to them sharing their deepest thoughts is perhaps all they need. Why should we treat mental illness as a taboo when mental illness is as important as our physical health? With World Mental Health Day round the corner, join us at the Voice Out concert at Singapore Botanic Gardens on Saturday, 7 October, to learn about mental illness and spread love. Also read, My Sexuality, My Right: “A Stranger Wanted Me To Apologise For My ‘Lesbian Appearance'”.
Copyright © 2023 GRVTY Media Pte Ltd (Co. Reg. 201431998C). All Rights Reserved.