Inside My Head

To have anxiety is to have a million worries racing through the mind without being able to control them. Oftentimes, people with anxiety feel powerless when confronting their fears. Anxiety comes in many shapes and forms. For some, it could be public speaking, while to others, it could be the fear of hitting rock bottom.

 

Many people have heard the phrase “anxiety attack,” but to be in the shoes of someone who is experiencing it, is truly debilitating. When someone is suffering from an anxiety attack, the reaction he or she experiences—both emotionally and physically—is too extreme for them to stop and articulate. The feeling will eventually pass when they grasp their situation again.

The difficult thing about Autism is that it is different for everyone who has it. However, one thing that many of them have in common is that each is beyond capable of what is typically expected of them, but because of a block between their mind and body, they can’t do or act on their thoughts the same way that many others can. I created this piece to show that while someone with autism is just like everyone else, they are often restrained by their disability. 

 

Their brain feels so much bigger than they are because there is always so much going on. People who are on the spectrum often experience sensory overload, so sometimes they act out. The colors in the brain are to symbolize two things: the amount of creativity and wonder that their mind is capable of and the colors for the Autism spectrum ribbon.

Dementia is like a leaky roof. Some days are worse than others. Memories from earlier in life are still there, like late nights at the movies with friends as a teenager, but the newer ones, like a recent vacation, seep through the cracks and become lost like raindrops. To them, they just don’t have the memory they used to and may not even realize they have dementia. When someone has dementia, memories, words, and what’s happening around them often become fuzzy and confusing. 

 

The effects of dementia only increase as time passes, and they have no control over it. This can be incredibly frustrating as their mind becomes their own enemy, and there is nothing anyone can do about it.

Everyone knows what it is like to be sad or upset, but too often, people will use these terms as synonyms for depression. About 16 million Americans live with major depression, the most common disability worldwide (NAMI). Unlike sadness, depression does not require a traumatic or upsetting event to occur to trigger it. Sometimes tasks as simple as getting out of bed feels harder than running a marathon.

 

The image above depicts how getting out of a depressed state can feel. The weight of their mind is too much for them. For someone with depression, the stones don’t necessarily have to represent specific things or struggles. The rocks often represent the overall weight they feel without being directly linked to any one cause.

Most people can tune out the things that aren’t important, like the sound of the clock as it ticks from its place on the wall, but to someone who has ADHD, every little thing can become a distraction. At times, everything that they should be focusing on seems black and white, simply dull. In comparison, everything else is big, bright, beautiful, and filled with color. 

 

Some people with ADHD may write on their hands or use sticky notes, like in the illustration above, to remind them of what they need to remember because there are always so many thoughts running through their heads. They may change the topic of the conversation ten times before they even realize it.

Words, numbers, and letters don’t make sense. They can be flipped backward, rearranged, repeated, or even inside out. When someone with dyslexia is with their friends, they may act and appear healthy. However, when they have to read something for a class or write a paper, it may become more apparent as everything gets a bit more confusing and becomes difficult. 

The boy's glasses being betrayed show how disorienting letters, numbers, and words can become. Only five percent of people with dyslexia are diagnosed (Austin Learning Solutions), meaning most people just think they are slow learners, so they are pushed and pushed to do better. In this image, the boy has broken pieces of chalk surrounding him as he feels forced to write and rewrite what he is doing wrong on the walls. These letters encircle him to show that even though he is surrounded by what he doesn’t understand.

Imagine continually living your life in fear of consequences, no matter how unlikely they will happen. For someone who has Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, a risk that would usually seem minute becomes so much more. Fears manifest into “what ifs” and become more than what they are in real life. People with OCD are often associated with being clean and organized.

 

The idea that something is out of place, like the shapes the character in the painting is holding, means that they won’t be able to find it when they need it. In their mind, this problem may lead to another issue and another.

To someone who doesn’t know what bipolar disorder looks like, it may just seem like someone is experiencing extreme highs and lows within a short amount of time. One minute, that person may seem energetic and excited about what is happening, and then the next, they’re getting teary-eyed as they become flustered and frustrated over something seemingly insignificant. About 2.6% (6.1 million) of American adults live with bipolar disorder (NAMI), making it more common than many realize.

 

The highs and lows someone experiences can’t be attributed to anything specific, so people with this disorder often feel pulled between their emotions, like the illustration above. It can considerably impact friends and family as treatment can help control the symptoms but create harsh side effects.

Dissociative Identity Disorder, formerly known as Multi-Personality Disorder, is almost like two or more people are living inside one person’s body. People who have this cannot choose when each personality comes out or for how long. They also can't pick their personalities. Sometimes they don’t even realize that they have multiple personalities. 

 

Often when someone is first diagnosed, they feel like they don’t have control over themselves or their body. At times, they don’t remember what they did or what happened while one of their other personalities is in control. Personalities switch more often when that person is under a great deal of stress or in unhealthy situations. DID occurs because of a traumatic event that happened during their childhood. While many movies make this disorder look scary or to be malevolent, it is important to know that there is no reason to fear someone who has this disorder.

When someone goes through a life-threatening event, it can scar them for the rest of their life. Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder is often associated with veterans returning from war or victims of Human Trafficking. While it is common in that line of work, PTSD can be found in anyone. I thought it was important to recognize this fact. 

 

When a trigger occurs, like a loud noise or something that reminds the victim of that traumatic event, that person may tense up and relive that moment. Flashes of that night may be projected in their mind. All the feelings they felt then come back and are played on repeat.

To someone who has Anorexia or Bulimia Nervosa, what they look like is not good enough. They don’t see what everyone else does when they look in a mirror. As the painting above depicts, it’s like looking in a fun-house mirror. Even if everything else in their life is out of whack, at least their weight is something they can control. 

 

I created this piece to show how someone like this feels when they see their reflection. Her mind, represented by the measuring tapes, restrains her from seeing herself as everyone else does. Society tells people that skinny equals healthy and attractive, so that is what they aim to be, smaller than they were before.

Schizophrenia is unlike any other disorder; its symptoms become quite debilitating as it causes the victim to see or hear things that aren’t real. People who have schizophrenia have a harder time differentiating their imagination from reality. Hallucinations, dilutions, and made-up voices are not uncommon. While strange, it is not as uncommon as one may think, as one percent of the American population has it. 

 

Imagine hundreds of TVs playing at the same time, like in the image above. Now try to imagine focusing on just one over the hundreds of other voices playing from the other TVs. Difficult but possible. This is one way to imagine what it’s like in the mind of someone with schizophrenia. What the person sees or hears is entirely dependent on their situation. For example, a person in a first-world country may believe the government is spying on them or that there are rats all around the floor trying to bite.