When Your Own Mind Becomes the Enemy

The silent war I didn’t know I was fighting.

There’s something terrifying about not being able to trust your own thoughts.

It’s not like flipping a switch, where one day everything is fine and the next, your mind turns on you. It’s slower than that. Quieter. Like a whisper that becomes a voice, and then a scream. And by the time you realize it’s happening, you’re already in the middle of a battle—one that no one else can see.

For me, it started on a night like any other.

I was lying in bed. The room was dark, quiet. My body was still, but my thoughts weren’t. They were loud. Mean. Unforgiving. I tried to brush them off like I usually did. Tried to tell myself it was just a bad day. But something about that night felt different.

I couldn’t breathe. My chest was tight, like someone had reached inside me and grabbed hold of my heart with icy fingers. I wasn’t crying, not really, but my eyes were wet. I kept hearing the same phrase over and over again: “What’s wrong with you?”

It wasn't just self-doubt—it was self-destruction.

I used to think mental health issues were something other people dealt with. People with “real problems.” I had a job, a roof over my head, friends who cared about me. So why did I feel like I was falling apart?

I didn’t know how to explain that I felt broken inside without a reason to be. And that guilt made everything worse.

I became good at pretending. Smiling when I needed to. Nodding at the right moments. Laughing on cue. No one saw the war going on behind my eyes. No one saw me clench my fists under the table to stop the shaking. No one saw how exhausted I was from just existing.

I wasn’t sleeping. I wasn’t eating well. My brain was running marathons while my body tried to keep up. Every day felt like walking through mud. Heavy. Slow. Hopeless.

And still, I said nothing.

Because how do you say, “I’m not okay,” when you don’t even know what okay feels like anymore?

I think the moment things started to shift was when I finally let someone in.

It wasn’t some dramatic confession. It was a text to a friend, late at night: “Hey, are you up? I don’t know what’s wrong with me, but I don’t feel like myself anymore.”

She called me immediately. She didn’t try to fix me or talk me out of it. She just listened. And in that moment, her voice felt like an anchor—something to hold onto when I was spiraling.

After that, I took a leap and started therapy. It was hard at first. I didn’t know what to say. I was scared I wouldn’t be taken seriously, or worse, that I’d be told I was being dramatic.

But I wasn’t.

My therapist gave me language for what I’d been feeling: anxiety, depression, burnout, trauma. Words I had heard before but never thought applied to me. And somehow, just naming them made them feel a little less powerful.

I wish I could tell you that everything got better overnight. It didn’t. Healing isn’t like that. Some days I feel strong, clear-headed, even hopeful. Other days I fall back into the darkness and wonder if I’ve made any progress at all.

But now, I know the signs. I know how to breathe through the panic. I know when to reach out. And most importantly, I’ve stopped shaming myself for needing help.

You don’t have to “have it worse” to deserve support. Pain is pain. And if your mind is turning against you, that’s real. That’s valid.

Some days, my mind still tries to convince me I’m not enough. That I’m a burden. That I’m unlovable. But now I have tools—and people—to remind me those thoughts aren’t the truth. They’re just echoes of an old story I’m learning to rewrite.

So if you’re reading this and you feel it deep in your bones—if you know what it’s like to smile in public and scream in private—I want you to know something:

You’re not broken. You’re not weak. And you’re definitely not alone.

The battle in your mind is real, but so is your strength.

And just by being here, still breathing, still trying—you’re already winning more than you know.