Truth about Australian woman’s ‘concerning behaviour’ at school
An Australian influencer has revealed the mysterious symptoms that plagued her since her childhood, and how she finally got answers.
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As a young teen, Yasmin didn’t believe she’d make it to her 20s.
“Everyone used to ask each other, ‘where do you think you’ll be in 10 years?” she told news.com.au.
“I was always like: ‘I’m not going to be here’.”
The 24-year-old, who thankfully is still here and is managing the mental health conditions that have plagued her since childhood, says the first time she had a panic attack she was in primary school.
“I didn’t realise it at the time,” she said. “But looking back now, I can remember the first time I had a panic attack, and it was when I was seven or eight years old.
“We were at Luna Park as a family, and were on one of the rides, and I just felt this intense need to get off the ride. I was shaking, and crying, and yanking the bar to try and get out.”
Yasmin said after her parents’ divorce, her panic attacks became more frequent, though for years she mistook them for physical ailments.
“For me, it was always a very physical thing,” she said.
“I always had this overwhelming urge to throw up, always had a stomach ache. I’d lock myself in the bathroom, shaking whenever I went to a friend’s birthday party because I’d be so overwhelmed.”
Fuelled by issues at home, Yasmin began to exhibit concerning behaviour at school as a symptom of her depression and confusion.
Australia is in the grips of a mental health crisis, and people are struggling to know who to turn to, especially our younger generations. Can We Talk? is a News Corp awareness campaign, in partnership with Medibank, equipping Aussies with the skills needed to have the most important conversation of their life.
“I was a bully in primary school,” Yasmin said. “And this isn’t trying to make excuses, because there is no excuse for it, but I really couldn’t cope with what was going on at home, and I was lashing out. I began self-harming, I was suicidal, it was awful.”
Yasmin began seeing a school counsellor, and from there was referred to a psychologist who diagnosed her with dysthymic disorder and recommended medication.
A few years after that, in 2020, Yasmin began researching her symptoms online and via social media, and came across panic disorder.
“I went to my GP and said ‘I think this is what I have! It fits perfectly with what I have been experiencing,’” she said.
“All of a sudden I looked back on all the panic attacks, it all made so much sense.
“I’ve been on different meds ever since, but it’s been a long road to getting help, especially for anxiety. Help for the anxiety and panic disorder has come separate from the help I got for depression, and I didn’t even realise they were connected. Like I said, it’s been a really long road.”
Research by News Corp’s Growth Distillery with Medibank found social media actually outpaces healthcare professionals as the primary source for mental wellbeing information in this country. Almost two thirds of Australians are relying on social media platforms to access information on mental wellbeing, compared to one third for healthcare professionals, with Gen Z and Millennials the heaviest users of platforms like Instagram and TikTok for such information.
Yasmin, who has 146k followers on TikTok, frequently shares her own mental health experiences on the platform, including sharing a video in which she live-vlogged her experience of having a panic attack.
“I think the reason I filmed that video is that I have certain coping mechanisms for how I get through my panic attacks, and TikTok is kind of like my diary, or my journal in some ways, which it probably shouldn’t be,” Yasmin explains.
“But I figured I was having it anyway, and if I’d seen someone else experiencing a panic attack when I was a lot younger and didn’t know what was happening to my own body, maybe it would have saved me years of unnecessary pain and confusion.”
Viewed over 20,000 times, the video was a rare insight into an incredibly vulnerable experience, but one Yasmin says she believes is important.
“I feel like I would have understood myself so much better, and I could have got better help so much sooner,” Yasmin says.
“If I could say anything to the little girl who used to shake and lock herself in the bathroom and feel like she was going to be sick, it would be that it’s going to be OK. I’d tell her, ‘you can’t see the light right now because you’re in the tunnel, but it doesn’t mean the light isn’t there. You have to hold on, and you have to talk about what you’re feeling, even if you don’t understand it. You have to hold on, because we really are going to get through.”
Bek Day is a freelance writer
Originally published as Truth about Australian woman’s ‘concerning behaviour’ at school
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