More than once I've had conversations with others about mental health, sometimes even family members, and I've always felt like I was limited in what I could say. I felt ashamed to admit that I had panic attacks quite often, and the idea of revealing to someone that I had PTSD was so daunting, because then people want to know what happened to me, or I feel like I have to defend it. Even worse though, people ask if I'm getting help - almost like I'm dangerous if I'm not? Recently at a family event, I let it slip and since then I've been grappling with the idea of recovery. I was asked if I was seeing anyone about it and at the time I said not really, even though that wasn't entirely true. I am in therapy and that does help, but my therapist is not a specialist; and while I talk to others my age who also have PTSD, it's not in any formal support group. And yet, I am making definitive progress. I just don't know how to explain that to others.

I now look back on my childhood and think about all of the times family members asked if I was OK, or if something had happened, and instead of feeling guilty for not speaking up, I've realized that at the time I couldn't. I was petrified of what had happened to me, and what was (for some of my childhood) still happening. Beyond that, I didn't know that what I was experiencing wasn't what the average teenager went through. I thought it was part of puberty and that one day I would just feel better. Obviously I now know that's not true. But my road toward recovery, if you want to call it that, didn't really start until I got to college. I finally realized for myself that having panic attacks numerous times a day wasn't healthy and that the fact that I was experiencing moments day-to-day where I relived my trauma over and over, to the point where I couldn't differentiate between past and present, meant I needed help.

There are a lot of people my age with PTSD, a lot more than you'd think or than the media would ever let you know about. What's worse is that a lot of young adults with PTSD don't realize that they have it. Part of that stems from how the media portrays it. I'd heard terms like PTSD on TV, but I never thought it was something that could apply to me, or anyone my age. Despite the fact that the word "traumatic" is in the title, to me, my trauma didn't count enough, and part of that stems from a lack of understanding. In the media, PTSD was always presented as something only ever associated with war veterans, and even then, it wasn't really explained or explored beyond being the go-to plot device that every crime show visits (and sometimes revisits). I never made that connection, because my trauma didn't happen in war-zone, but instead happened in my childhood home: in a tiled kitchen, on a staircase and in a bedroom with "The Cow Jumped Over the Moon" wall paper. As a kid I didn't have the tools to recognize that I needed help, and therefore was unable to move forward for most of my life.

That's a big issue. We need to be more open about mental illness - it needs to be something discussed in health class and it can't be something that's discussed with shame. Anxiety, depression, eating disorders, personality disorders and so many other mental disorders affect a huge amount of the population, and yet we pretend it doesn't. By pretending these things aren't real, it tells children and young adults that what they're going through is something abnormal, something that they should be ashamed of. And that way of thinking means people won't get help they need. Not every mental illness is one that you can recover from, but without knowing that something's wrong, young adults won't even think to get help that can really improve their lives through whatever means they choose.

I have PTSD among other things, and I'm not ashamed of it. But I do wish I'd recognized it earlier. Mental illness is a big thing that is affecting a lot of people, and pretending that it's not, through conversation, through media, etc., is really detrimental to the kids and adults that are affected by it.