Aubrey Taylor called her grandfather “Papa.” When his casket dropped into the soil, she couldn’t handle seeing the shovels of dirt cascading down onto him. For months, tears accompanied her morning rituals, with fear of the possibility that this harrowing feeling might be permanent. She felt numb and empty and isolated. A Google search aligned her symptoms with depression. She was 12 years old.
“As soon as I’d wake up in the morning, before my feet even hit the floor, I’d be in tears,” Taylor says.
A freshman at Auburn planning to double major in biomedical sciences and neuroscience, Taylor is one of 16.1 million Americans affected by depression, according to the Anxiety and Depression Association of America. At The Bean, she sits on an olive-colored couch, and her dark brown hair matches the espresso being served. Through the sound of coffee grinders inside the shop, the dulcet tone in her voice still comes through.
“This place is pretty cool, right?” she asks while looking around.
When she first searched her symptoms, she was part of the 11 percent of adolescents in Alabama that experienced at least one depressive episode in 2013, as tracked by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. To be diagnosed with depression, the symptoms, persistent sad moods, feeling worthless and losing interest, must be present for at least two weeks. Taylor had been feeling this way for months after the death of her grandfather, but now, it isn’t sadness she feels. It’s emptiness.
“Everything felt dull and numb, and nothing could stimulate me. Not to say that I didn’t have interests ... but I just did them by myself,” Taylor says.
Eventually the depression morphed into anxiety leading into her sophomore year at Enterprise High School.
“It’s not uncommon for someone with an anxiety disorder to also suffer from depression or vice versa,” ADAA states.
Taylor realized just that while walking inside her friend’s house for a party.
Dozens of people crammed her vision, and the noise seemed loud enough for a punk concert. Her head felt weary and her chest got tight, as if a snake was quickly wrapping itself around her, engulfing her lungs, squeezing stronger and stronger. She recalls feeling like she couldn’t breathe.
“If I hadn’t rushed back outside, I would have had my first panic attack,” Taylor says. “It was just overwhelming, and I realized I didn’t have depression. I had anxiety.”
It’s important to note that anxiety is when one gets nervous when there is no fear — a malfunctioning of the fight-or-flight system, just as it happened with Taylor. When she suffers anxiety, the stress is on steroids, and even if the situation improves, the anxiousness doesn’t let up. Feeling nervous when doing something fearful, however, is not anxiety — it’s a natural response.
“You can’t control it. Sometimes I’ll be sitting in my room, popping my knuckles nervously for no reason,” Taylor says.
On college campuses, anxiety has overtaken depression as the biggest reason students seek counseling, according to a survey by the Association for University and College Counseling Center Directors. The ADAA reports anxiety disorders are the most common mental illness in the U.S., affecting 40 million adults in the United States age 18 and older. That’s about 18 percent of the population every year.
Despite the prevalence, anxiety disorders are highly treatable, and Dustin Johnson, a licensed psychologist and assistant director for outreach initiatives at Auburn’s Student Counseling Services, doesn’t view the surging numbers as a sign of terrible times.
“More people are identifying having anxiety today, I think, primarily because more people are willing to admit they have anxiety than in past generations,” Johnson says. “I don’t necessarily think students today have more problems. I just think more students are willing to seek help and talk about it.”
Johnson also notes that just as students use the Campus Recreation and Wellness Center, the mental health services offered on campus should also be utilized.
In school, though, Taylor wasn’t using mental health services. There was a sustained stretch of time when she would get home from school, be in bed by 5 p.m., and sleep until the next morning.
She said talking about her anxiety disorder proved difficult because of how normalized the word “anxiety” is. People would say to her, “Everyone feels nervous sometimes,” or “just be happy and smile.”
“Of course, I wish I could be happy. Trust me, if it was a switch, I’d flip it,” Taylor says. “But it’s not that easy, and sometimes it’s genetic.”
The ADAA confirms anxiety can be induced by genetics, as well as a complex set of risk factors like brain chemistry, personality and life events.
She says when friends are empathetic and remind her that everything will be okay, the support feels immensely helpful. Johnson agrees and recommends friends do the same.
“Sometimes people go down an anxiety rabbit hole, and they need a reality check, a sense of, ‘Look, you’re safe right now, you’re OK,’” Johnson says.
When Taylor finally went to a doctor during her junior year of high school and talked about her mental health struggles, the relief was powerful, she recalls. After years of bottling up, speaking to someone wasn’t agonizing — it was pure relief.
The anxiety and depressive thoughts haven’t gone away, and when Taylor mentions this, she says it with a matter-of-factness and normalcy. When she was younger, she felt like she was the only person in the world that felt this way, she says. Even after accepting she wasn’t, she still felt imprisoned by her sense of self-victimization.
Now, that’s changed.
“I’m still figuring it all out, and I think I’ll always be,” Taylor said. “Yeah, I’m a little twisted in the head, but it’s comforting to know that there’s been studies, and I’m not the only one.”
Her most recent struggle came on her first trip to Chick-fil-A on Magnolia. It was a Saturday night, and the drive-thru line stretched out onto the road. There was a packed crowd inside, and she felt her body shaking. A panic attack seemed to be building.
“I couldn’t get in the line, and there were so many cars downtown,” Taylor said. “I had just moved in, and I was by myself, so I just parked and started crying a little bit.”
Her journey with mental health, like many on campus, is not over. Still, she finds strength in studying neuroscience and assurance in knowing her ailment can be treated.
Discovering why her brain is that way and how to cope with it better motivates her, she says. Taylor was unaware of mental health resources available on campus.
With that in mind, here are some:
To schedule an appointment with Student Counseling and Psychological Services, call 334-844-5123 or visit auburn.edu/scs. If the situation is an emergency, SCPS has on-call staff available or visit East Alabama Medical Center.
Student Counseling and Psychological Services’ offices are located on the second floor of the Auburn University Medical Clinic at 400 Lem Morrison Drive in Suite 2086.
East Alabama Medical Center is only a few miles away in Opelika.
Do you like this story? The Plainsman doesn't accept money from tuition or student fees, and we don't charge a subscription fee. But you can donate to support The Plainsman.
