Photo taken by contributor Jaeda DeWalt, a conceptual self-portrait artist in her forties from Seattle, Washington. Her battles with mental illness hearken back to her earliest memories, at age four, when she became obsessed with the number four and performed exhaustive rituals in patterns of four. During her teen years, she began noticing extreme mood swings, manic one moment and depressed the next, and in her late twenties she finally sought treatment and was diagnosed with Bipolar, OCD, Anxiety, ADHD, and PTSD from the trauma of being sexually abused as a child into her young adult years. Her life was filled with self-destructive coping methods until she went full force into creating, in her mid-twenties. The process of creating and putting herself in front of the camera felt cathartic, liberating and healing. The photographic medium opened up a new world to her and ignited a kind of passion within that she didn’t even know she was capable of experiencing. She has been on an ever-evolving, healing journey, ever since.

About this photo: “I liken anxiety to living inside a box. As the anxiety intensifies, the box seems to get smaller while the outside world looms larger. And I become overwhelmed by the dark, panicky feelings and heavy emotions. I feel isolated and confined. I am simultaneously desperate to break free and paralyzed with fear.”

Find more from Jaeda at Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and on our YouTube channel.

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