Miss Mile High: Shannon's Mental Health Story

 As time moves on, I realize that I am not the only one who has suffered through the lonely road of mental and eating disorders, Shannon Hannaway, a fellow titleholder based out of Colorado, was generous enough to share her story with all of us!

1: how has mental and eating disorders affected you? 

Besides seeing it from the outside watching loved ones struggle and die by suicide, I have been impacted by mental illness for as long as I can remember. Growing up I had anxiety with panic attacks, but due to a lack of education and awareness I didn’t know that was what I was experiencing. It took a head injury and Children’s Hospital Colorado for me to get the help and diagnosis I needed from their concussion team. With their help, medication, and therapy I was able to get my anxiety managed and actually came off all of it completely by the time I graduated high school. Unfortunately, my freshman year of college I experienced severe emotional trauma that led to PTSD, and unipolar-psychotic-drug resistant-suicidal depression (it’s a mouthful but important to share because it’s confusing when you don’t know that it exists). I failed classes, stayed in a crisis facility, and ultimately stopped school for a semester while I recovered. Commitment to my recovery enabled me to return to school, where I was able to conduct my own National Conference research on veteran PTSD, speak at summits, and advocate for mental health awareness and getting help.

 

2:what was your first brush with these disorders?

The first time it ever occurred to me that I may have something going on was the summer before high school. I was going to volleyball practice for the club team I played for after I was cleared for a concussion (a different one than previously mentioned). Immediately upon walking into the building, I had a panic attack and couldn’t go to the camp. My parents were upset, and I wrote a letter that sometimes I get overwhelming dread and I can’t control my meltdowns. As I wrote, I realized that maybe this didn’t happen to other people, and that put generalized anxiety and panic attacks on my radar. My parents shared that they understood personally, and that they wanted to support me through what I was experiencing. Although I wasn’t diagnosed for another few years. It allowed me to give myself grace, I realized that other people weren’t always forcing themselves to overcome severe dread to do normal things, and that what I was going through was just as hard as it felt.

 

3: what helped you overcome them, if not, how are you overcoming them now?

For my anxiety, the help I got from Children’s Hospital Colorado was life changing. I learned to manage chronic pain and chronic emotional distress. They also gave me access to an excellent care team that helped me through biofeedback, talk therapy, and medication. In college, during the darkest time of my life, it was a lengthy series of things. Checking myself into a crisis facility has to be the greatest turning point. There I received treatment and a change to my plan of care that I only could have received from such a specialized team. I had no idea how bad my depression was until I met with a psychiatric nurse practitioner that asked me questions others had missed, and we realized I had been having mild hallucinations for months. Suddenly everything was put in perspective. My team made me aware that PTSD is not always helped by talk therapy, and directed me towards EMDR trauma therapy. I also was educated on the spectrum of medication options, although it was determined a few months later by a psychiatrist after I had adverse reactions to all categories that I was drug resistant. All around, my care was taken to a new level that I truly believe you can only get if you’re willing to reach out to specialists and fight the stigma in order to get more intensive treatment.

 

3: who was/is your support system?

Support systems definitely evolve as you get older and people change, but my family was always there. Trustworthy, knowledgeable healthcare providers also deserve a place on this list because they turned it all around. A note on that- not all behavioral health is the same, and for cases like mine I needed a different plan of care than the default starter treatment. It’s normal to feel challenged in recovery, but if you find yourself getting worse it may be good to look into a different provider. I needed a specialized trauma therapist as opposed to the counselor I had been seeing before admission to a crisis center, there was nothing wrong with my counselor but my mental health needs were not suited to that form of treatment. More people need to know that can happen, I blamed myself for a long time that I was putting in all that work only to feel continually worse. I just needed a change in treatment, not a change in me.

 

4: how has becoming a title holder given you passage to become a stronger advocate for yourself and others? 

Without a doubt, connecting with other titleholders has gotten me out of the bubble of what Colorado offers as far as advocacy and mental health resources. Other titleholders have unique programs and experiences, so coming together fills gaps that I have and allows me to learn from the mental health programs in their states as well as the ways these women communicate that to the world. Behavioral health is largely lacking in this country, so having a whole network of strong women with compelling stories and a will to make things better not only eases the burden of doing it on my own, but it allows states to work parallel to each other. My hope is that by doing this, slowly but surely we’ll build each other up enough that the battle doesn’t feel so long. 

 

5: what are some words of support and advice you’d give someone going through a relapse right now or fighting through their disorders? 

It sucks. It’s also temporary- even if it’s something you carry for your whole life. That isn’t deep, but it’s something I needed to hear when I was going to appointment after appointment unpacking my pain and grief, and it’s something I still need to hear on my bad days and for trauma episodes. Also, don’t let anybody talk you out of getting help. I had to beg someone to take me to a crisis center because they had such immense fear over what it meant. When I took a break from school, people repeatedly sat me down and texted me to tell me I was making a mistake and I wouldn’t go back if I left. In that situation, I knew that if I didn’t take those steps, I may not have lived long enough for it to really matter. Mental illness can be life threatening, never take it lightly or take it less seriously than you would take any other medical condition. It’s not dramatic, it’s life saving.