100 Voices: Stephanie Rainey Shares her Mental Health Story: #NowWereTalking

When it comes to your mental health, talking about it is good. But it’s harder than it sounds – especially if you’re carrying something around that you don’t really understand yourself. It might be a sadness you don’t understand, a dread you can’t stop or just an uneasiness you can’t shake.

I had my first real experience of anxiety this year and I realised that I never really understood that word until I felt it; I also didn’t want to talk about it because it just seemed awkward and I didn’t know how to bring it up.

It started for me in Heathrow Airport in London, as I was about to board a plane. Out of nowhere I was feeling like I needed to get out of there, calling my boyfriend to say ‘I’m getting a hotel’ and that I can’t get on the plane.

I was completely overcome. I couldn’t hear or see anything. I felt blind panic – and it felt like it would never stop. Somehow, he managed to talk me ‘round and I boarded the flight – but when I tell you it was the longest hour of my life, I couldn’t be more serious.

That kick-started a couple of weeks of real anxiety for me and I was really struggling as this seemed to be becoming my new reality. It was at its worst the moment I opened my eyes in the morning, triggered by the simplest things; but then it just seemed like my body had learned this feeling – every day, for no apparent reason, until I found one.

The same went for being on the tube or getting on a flight. I was brought back to that first instance and my body almost assumed that it had to react the same way again. It began to feel like something I’d learned rather than felt. I think I was scared it would happen again – and that fear became the cause.

I’ll be honest, I had no other choice but to talk about it, because I needed it to stop. I talked to my boyfriend, my mum and one or two of my closest friends. I started to untangle the cause of what was happening and realised that so many people had been through the same thing, so they all had little tips on how to cope.

Genuinely though, even just sharing the fact that I was feeling bad helped. If you can turn to someone in a moment and say – ‘I don’t know why but I don’t feel right’, it just puts it out there and relieves some of the anxiety. It halves the problem.

For me it’s as simple as saying to someone, ‘I have to do *x* today – and I feel really anxious about it’. Straight away I feel better because I’ve said and acknowledged it, instead of letting the thoughts fester in my mind.

100 Voices was published in the Hot Press Mental Health Special in conjunction with Lyons Tea and Pieta House as part of the Now We're Talking Campaign. For more please visit hotpress.com/now-were-talking/

You can also get your free tickets to our 'Now We're Talking: The Town Hall Gathering' event, featuring a discussion on mental health with a panel made up of Eoghan McDermott, Dr. Ciara Kelly, Sene Naoupu and more, as well as performances from Stephanie Rainey herself, Wyvern Lingo, Lisa Hannigan and Emmet Kirwan.