Hi, I am Koren well Koren Acadia, the creator behind Acadia Design Company. I decided to start this amazing journey of creating my own company back in February of 2022. My whole purpose was to bring awareness to mental health and end the stigma.
One thing you should know about me is that I am an incredibly open and honest person, I love telling people about my life, the trauma, and rainbows of joy everything in between. I also have ADHD as you can tell lol...but let me start to tell you about my journey with mental health, grab a snack and sit back and read!!
Junior year of high school started, and everything slowly went downhill. I remember sitting in math class, suddenly, my throat felt as if it was closing and I became super dizzy, I just remember thinking “holy shit I am dying, oh my god.” I asked my teacher if I go to the bathroom...I remember breaking down in tears and then about 10 minutes later, everything felt normal. I have never been so confused in my life, typically as a teenager, I figured I was fine and went along with my day. But of course, also as a teen, Google was my doctor lol, so I googled “why does my throat feel like it’s closing” and of course that only made it worse. Some advice for you to read NEVER google anything, it will make you freak out more. Many results came up such as allergic reaction, cancer, death you know only the best things, like seriously google come on, anxiety was also one of the results. I thought none of this was true.
All throughout my life I have been a cheerleader, standing in front of crowds, talking to everyone who would just give me time, dancing uniformly in front of the whole student body, and metal stands filled with strangers. I loved it every second I was able to represent my school and be the one to be someone's friend.
Homecoming week came along, and we had to do a dance in front of the whole student body, I was extremely excited. The song began and everything was fine until halfway through the dance, my heart felt like it was going 1000 beats per minute, everything suddenly felt like it was shutting down in my eyes. The one thing that went through my mind was “I have to get the fuck out of here.” I ran out of the gym and into the athletic hallway. Where I was brought to the Athletic Directors office (shoutout Christian) and that is all I remember.
A couple of months went by and nothing else happened like this, I figured that it was my body telling me to eat, drink water overall take care of itself. 2020 made its way here and so did Covid-19, what a shit show to a new year.
Everyone in the United States was now home, not around others, no communication face to face. This disease had a HUGE effect on the Mental Health of America.
I would go on walks just to make time go on...days and months went on and we were still stuck at home... in a situation like this your mind wanders and wanders. Finally, after months of being in quarantine we were able to go back outside into the world masked up.
My family and I took a hike in a local trail area where we have always been walking. I remember just freaking out... I did not want to take one step further from where we were, my heart was racing, my head felt like it was not going to explode, then my throat felt like it was closing.
This would occur every time I would now take a step out of the house, my brain running a million miles a second, my heart trying to keep up and the world felt like it was collapsing right in front of me, and my throat always feeling like it was closing.
I decided after months of this happening to finally contact my doctor and that was the best decision I have ever made in my life.
Medicine is not for everyone, but for me it was...so many trials with different medicines till my doctor prescribed me Adderall and Prozac. I went to therapy for months and learned how to calm myself down and take control of my wandering brain. My doctor then told me to go to therapy to learn more about my anxiety and how to cope with it in everyday life.
Therapy, personally I think everyone could use a good therapist just to let yourself be able to share things and you know nothing will ever leave that room.
I wish I could say “yep I found the best therapist on my first trial with one” I would be full of shit if I said that.
So, so many therapists I went to just looked at me like I had 8 eyes and then pulled out a book just to tell me what they thought was wrong with me.... like ya'll come on now... yes let us tell the girl with anxiety everything that is wrong with her, I wanted to cry and laugh the whole time. Thank you, but next.
Then I found the absolute best therapist in the world for me someone who was honest and could tell me the truth without pulling out a book, someone who understood what I felt and the first time I met them I broke down in tears telling them about trauma that will forever affect my life. I went to therapy for months and learned how to calm myself down and take control of my wandering brain, and then going to fewer and fewer appointments.
Let's just say it got a lot better for me mentally, but I was far from the end of living with anxiety.