Mental Health Awareness Week: Lauren Aquilina on mental illness and the music industry

'We don’t stop and appreciate our successes because it’s always straight on to the '"next step up"

Lauren Aquilina: 'As artists, we’re conditioned to believe that if our lives are so fast paced and busy that we constantly feel like we’re about to throw up from fatigue, that’s success' (Press image)

"Wait, so.. how can you get up on stage and sing in front of hundreds of people?."

This is probably the most common response when I first tell people that I suffer from anxiety and panic attacks. I don’t think it’s meant maliciously, more from a place of genuine curiosity, but not being taken seriously when you open up to people can be pretty frustrating.

In some ways, mental illness and the music industry are two things that people completely associate (the romanticised ‘tortured artist’, channeling their depression to produce beautiful, heartfelt ballads), yet most of the people I’ve talked to about my own issues have been initially surprised.

I started experiencing anxiety properly when I was about 17 and since then it comes and goes in waves. Physically, a panic attack for me is 50% uncontrollably crying and 50% feeling like I can’t breathe.

They can be triggered by a multitude of things - from nightmares about a significant previous trauma in my life to less predictable causes such as getting ready to go out with my friends for the evening. I will always know they’re coming, and I will always try and find somewhere I can be alone for when it happens. Even though medication and counselling have helped me manage the physical side, one of the biggest issues I still have is the guilt I feel about ‘bothering’ other people with my problems, or disturbing anyone.

Sometimes I’ve had panic attacks triggered purely by the guilt of having one in front of my flat mates the night before, and therefore keeping them awake.

As an artist (especially a female artist) society has deemed it pretty socially acceptable for me to be emotional, and to talk about how I’m feeling in an open and honest way. I know lots of creative people have mental health issues and use music, or whatever they create, to help them. It’s a blessing to be able to turn my emotions and darkest thoughts into songs and I’ve definitely utilised that as a tool to help me manage my mental health; there’s even a track on my upcoming record which references my first experience with suicidal thoughts. However, I can’t help but feel like my choice to make music my full time job has also impacted my brain in a pretty negative way too.

In my experience of the British music industry, it’s one extreme or the other. My career is either going amazingly and I’m riding the high or I’m in bed watching everyone else’s success on Instagram.

As artists, we’re conditioned to believe that if our lives are so fast paced and busy that we constantly feel like we’re about to throw up from fatigue, that’s success.

Anything less than that? Failure. There’s no healthy balance. We don’t stop and appreciate our successes because it’s always straight on to the ‘next step up’. My calendar is either full to the brim or I have a month with nothing to do, and the uncertainty of it all has caused a huge increase in my overall anxiety levels.

I’m lucky enough to be signed to a major record label and have enough money to comfortably live in London whilst I write, but as recently as the past fortnight, I’ve considered going and handing out CVs to local shops and cafes just because I’m craving some kind of routine, some kind of normality. I hate to think that I’m sounding ungrateful for what I have (I wouldn’t swap it for the world) but I’m just trying to rationalise and explain why being an artist can be both incredible and horrible at the same time.

That’s a massive part of mental health I think, allowing yourself to try and explain the effect that other factors have on your brain, even if they seem stupid. No matter how small something may seem to someone else, if it’s causing you to have intense fear/panic attacks, it is a real issue and it does deserve to be dealt with.

I know my problems are meaningless on a worldwide scale but I can only hope that the more we each talk about our own experiences, the more we decrease the stigma and encourage people to ask for help and understand that what they’re going through isn’t their own fault. I still have no idea why being on stage in front of hundreds of people doesn’t phase me but making a phone call does, but talking about it has helped me to learn that my brain can get sick just as all my other organs can, and you know what? That’s ok.