Depression & Anxiety: Some mental illnesses take different forms over time and how self-awareness has saved me
- Sep 16, 2025
- 3 min read
By Boiketlo Lamula
Caution: the following article contains some anecdotes on suicide, which may be triggering to some. If you, or anyone you know, is battling and may be at risk, please seek professional help or contact the toll-free SADAG helpline on 0800 567 7576 or text 31393.
When I was younger, I used to get random anxiety attacks. With my mother being a nurse, there would be nights when she wasn’t at home because she would be working night shifts. On one of these nights, my older sister and I were left together. I left her in the living room still watching some of our favourite South African soapy dramas, and I went to bed; I don’t quite remember, but perhaps I did feel a bit uneasy. I turned off the light and slipped into bed, covering my whole body with the duvet blanket to avoid the chills of the night. I had hardly laid there for a few minutes when I started to tremble, and my throat felt like it was closing – this was not new to me, because that is how they would commonly start, and then my eyes would well up in tears. As much as it was not new to me, I never got used to feeling like I’m dying; it always scared me and filled me with great panic. That was mainly because I did not have a word for it; in fact, I used to believe that I had asthma that just disappeared from my life.
These anxiety attacks did just disappear; by the time I went through high school, I went through the years without having had a single attack. The difference between anxiety, panic, and asthma attacks is quite subtle, especially between anxiety and panic attacks. While I am not a mental illness expert, I have read some books and articles on topics that encompass psychology and the human experience of trauma and have been involved in things that have allowed me to interact with these subjects. The core of my interest in these subjects' stem from my own struggles and experiences. It seems to be a common human phenomenon, and a psychological principle, that all our lives, we gravitate towards what we are familiar with.
From what I have learnt, anxiety attacks are often more slow and gradual, while panic attacks are often more sudden. With asthma attacks, they often require medication for recovery, whereas the former two will often subside themselves with some breathing and relaxation techniques. Or, as I more recently learnt, slapping the person will help them to snap out of it.
As I have grown older, I have found myself with a major depression diagnosis. Being in a public university, with a counselling centre whose services are “free”, I have found myself being in and out of psychologists' offices and group therapy sessions. I have also found myself being in and out of medical doctors’ offices, pleading with myself to stay alive. What has delivered me from acting on these ideations has been the gift of self-awareness.
The ability to recognise my thoughts and feelings, and be able to name them, has allowed me to see them, acknowledge them, and watch them. While it might not be as easy as just watching them float away like clouds, it has allowed me to stay alive even amid them, because it pushes me to seek out help or find some other “not-so-dangerous” way of coping.
“While this is depression,” as one of these psychologists pointed out to me, “it seems the main problem is still anxiety”. Depression has become a manifestation of it. Anxiety makes the task of seeking out help even more difficult because of the debilitating nature of overthinking, even overthinking whether this is all an illness or just a thrilling tale that I am creating. Denial is crippling.
However, I am glad that I have sometimes chosen courage and vulnerability to seek out the necessary help where it is found. So, while the medication is there and helping, ‘community’ has by far been the greatest gift of my life.
Edited by: Erin Arends
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