When you ask me how I am, assuming we have some sort of established relationship going on, I’ll tell you the truth. When I'm sad, I'll tell you I'm sad. When I'm overwhelmed, I'll say it. And when I'm fine, I'll let you know just that. But until around December of last year, I was never so blunt in this way.

As a young teenager, in the midst of a search for perfection and the anxiety that resulted from it, my parents decided to drag me to counseling. I was the kid who took 7th grade more seriously than necessary. Some weeks I would even fake sick to focus on my Middle Year Program lab reports or my Design and Technology prototypes — although thanks to many coughing attempts, I’d manage to tint my throat so thoroughly that any doctor would be appalled with my ‘aaaa's.

I’d prolong the time I spent on these tasks by simultaneously watching TV shows, an act I’d feel bad for but now have to thank for my command of English. I’d repeat this cycle until I was happy. But I never could be, and luckily I had enough sense to know when to stop and step back through the school gates.

I don't know if my parents ever suspected this scheme, but they at least knew something else could be wrong. Finally, they forced me to get help.

In Hungarian culture, seeing psychologists or psychiatrists is not something people like to announce on a pedestal. I felt like an outcast, and refused to engage in this strange activity. Session after session I would stare blankly ahead and refuse to speak. My parents, wanting the best for me, took me from one place to another, but moving around didn’t help. I had decided that speaking to strangers, even professional ones, would not benefit me, and so it didn’t.

I could never answer the “why?” or “how did this all begin?” — questions that my parents asked about the times I would weep for hours. I tried to avoid them by giving my best guess, a different answer every time. “Why did you lie during all those years?” my dad recently asked me during a car ride, a question that took me aback. He assumed that I must have known the causes of my self-doubts all along. I did not – I never even attempted to put into sentences what was wrong – nor do I today. It’s a thing in the past that is hard for me to recall, given all of the hardships I imposed on the ones who loved me the most.

When I started college, I longed for a fresh start. Distanced from the guilt I had felt at home when my parents begged me to tell them how I was doing, I would scoff it off as nothing much, never sharing what was on my mind. I never really opened up about anything beyond academics or places I went with my friends. When I would leave late Saturday movie nights to study in my room, I sometimes wished that I didn’t care so much about every little thing. But I do, and I had to keep going.

Here at NYU Abu Dhabi, thanks to encouragement from students in years above me and the lessened stigma of reaching out for help, I decided to break my silence. As a first-semester freshman, I decided to walk into Health and Wellness, and take the first step in opening up: talk to a professional.

I started noticing several things. The most important of these was that after I told Jenny, my counselor, about something, it suddenly became immensely easier for me to share the same thoughts and feelings with someone else. Furthermore, when I distilled reality into words, I started making connections between things I had said. It was magic. Sometimes even without wanting to, during counseling, I omitted important information, but the piecing together of my stories didn’t stop. Once I started to make conclusions it was hard to unsee what I had envisioned. And that's how I began creating stories, trying to make sense of my reality.

While June was the last time I talked to Jenny before she left the university, my desire and ability to share have not diminished. Last fall break, for example, I was overwhelmed because of too many commitments. As I explained to people what had been going on, I realized that my story started solidifying.

By projecting my story onto my friends, I could give emphasis to what would resonate with them; each interaction became a point of clarification, a way to order everything that was inside my head. It began with an “I don’t know what’s wrong with me” moment, followed by a crying session with one of my close friends, when I struggled for the right words and blurted out all I could think of that would potentially explain the catalyst for my sudden breakdown. Within the next couple of days, I was already delivering the elevator pitch version of what had happened to me.

Though it can simplify things, talking to people – explaining what is up, constructing cause and effect relationships on the go, even leaving out details  – has helped me in ways I didn’t think possible. These conversations have become good starting points for self-reflection, far from my all-or-nothing attitude, where I wouldn't even try to find an answer.

Perhaps these small steps have been most important: opening up to others has helped me open up to myself. Each step has helped me develop a better grasp of how other people would approach situations – learning to step aside and pretend to be an outsider for a while – and actually seek help.