Influencer Ľubka Kováčik: The faith children have in me is scary

She makes funny videos, but at the same time she has no problem talking openly about mental health. Twenty-seven-year-old influencer Ľubka Kováčik started making videos out of boredom during the pandemic. Today, she has more than 191,000 followers on TikTok.

A few years ago, Kováčik was diagnosed with an anxiety-depressive disorder, which she has suffered from since childhood. During her worst period, she struggled with suicidal thoughts and spent time in a psychiatric hospital.

Today, she feels a little better, something she says she owes mainly to therapy. On social networks, she motivates people not to delay visiting a psychologist and not to wait until their condition worsens.

You became popular on TikTok quite quickly. What was your first successful video about?

It was a video about Igor Matovič. It was a short, parody skit. It was only my third video, but it took off right away – it had about 100,000 views.

In addition to humorous videos, you also create content about mental health. You talk openly about your anxiety-depressive disorder and inspire others. Did you talk about this topic from the beginning?

No, because I was still struggling a lot with my psyche and I wasn't ready to open this topic on a social network. I thought I knew very little about it.

The first mental health video was about depression medication that has depression as a side effect. I made a little joke out of it. Then I deleted the video because I wasn't ready for it yet.

I really opened up for the first time when I started working with the Hedepy website, which provides therapy. Hedepy mostly addressed psychologists (and psychology students) in other countries, but they addressed me as the "sufferer" with depression.

When did your anxiety and depression start to show?

I've always had anxiety, I just couldn't put a name to it because I was too young. My very first childhood memory was associated with anxiety. We were moving to another house and I remember crying at the window that we were leaving.

It gradually escalated. Once a year I ran to my mother and cried a lot because I didn't want her to die. These were the first obsessive-compulsive thoughts associated with panic attacks.

The older I got, the worse it got. During puberty, we lived in a very hostile environment, the relationships around us were bad, and it affected me a lot. Now I would say that I went through a trauma. Paradoxically, my condition worsened the most when the danger had passed.

How did it manifest itself?

At university I started to discover a new world. I found a boyfriend who is now my husband and everything opened up beautifully. I was free and finally happy. And at that moment, all the traumas from the past came crashing down on me.

One day I was travelling home on the bus, I was crying the whole time and I didn't know why. There was no reason for it. The same happened on the second, third, fourth day. I felt like crying. My family advised me to see a psychologist, so I went.

At the first meeting, she told me: "Well, you are a case for a psychiatrist." And I said: "Thank you." (Laughter).

Now, after many good experiences, I know that she was a terrible psychologist.

Did you listen to her and go see a psychiatrist?

Yes. The psychiatrist put me on medication, which I took for three years. But the medication helped me very little. When being treated with antidepressants, it is important that the psychiatrist listens to your story and, based on it, finds out what could be behind it.

But my doctor went through everything very quickly: Okay, I see you're laughing, we're continuing the medication. She told me therapy was a waste of time. Today I know it isn't, although it took years to find the right therapist.

What did you do when you found out that the medication did not work?

I didn't know it didn't work for me. It partially worked – I felt calmer, more subdued. But it was only now that I switched to medication with my new psychiatrist, which really got rid of the restless voices in my head and the intrusive thoughts.

The paradox is that you don't find out that the medication doesn't work for you until you try another specialist who prescribes something else.

I have gained 20 kilos from the medication I am taking now. I would never have thought that I would reach the 100 kilogram mark. It was a terribly difficult moment when I stood on the scale a few weeks ago and saw it there.

But I told myself, don't worry, Ľubka, you're on the right track. You have a new psychiatrist who takes this into account.

In the video where you described your story, you also talk about wanting to take your own life.

It was a difficult period.

I started having the first suicidal thoughts when my trauma from the past, which I had not fully processed, came to light. I thought that when it was "quiet" I didn't have to deal with it, which was a mistake. I found that the people who slandered me in the past still slander me today. A sense of danger washed over me and the thoughts built and built, to the point where I wanted to die. It was such an intense, excruciating pain that I can't even describe it.

Fortunately, you ended up in a psychiatric hospital. How were the first days and weeks in the hospital?

At first it was isolating, because after all it is a Slovak hospital, so no extremely nice environment awaited me there. But after a while I found great encouragement there in the people who fought with me.

I was separated from my family and friends for over a month. I could only talk to them on the phone. But I was there with people who were going through the same thing as me. It was nice to see people leaving the place in a completely different, changed state. Relaxed.

I will not retrospectively evaluate what my stay in the hospital gave me, because I don't know what would have happened if I had stayed at home – whether it would get worse or if something would happen. There I was under the supervision of experts.

If it gets worse, I'll go there again.

How do you feel now?

I'm stabilised, but I don't think it's just meds. Medicines stabilise, but therapy heals. When I feel bad, the techniques from the therapist especially help me. I learned to "embrace" my depression and suicidal thoughts in the sense that even though they are dangerous, they are still mine. They need to be received, accepted in a safe environment.

So when thoughts of death came up, I imagined that my depression was there with me somewhere, hugged her and told her that everything was okay. That worked for me the most. Everyone is different, it doesn't work for everyone, but it worked for me a lot.

Suddenly, I didn't fight those feelings, but I said to myself – well, you're here. I accept it. But I want to live on.

I always say that when it's too much for a person and they say they don't want to live anymore, it's not true – they actually want to have a happy life.

Do you hear from people with similar problems on social networks?

Yes, most often they are teenagers and mothers with children. They solve postpartum depression, anxiety, panic attacks, and feelings of danger. It gets me the most when children get in touch. Sometimes it's really difficult cases, with which they don't confide in anyone but me.

They write me long paragraphs, for example about domestic violence. They don't always say it, but I can feel the signs of abuse there too. The more I talk about it, the harder the messages get. I sometimes struggle with it myself.

I once experienced a case where a girl had already started planning her suicide. She wrote to me and I then communicated with her mother what to do, then I called 112 to see if she was okay, then to the hospital and so on. That was probably my most intense experience in this context.

You are not a mental health professional. How do you reply to these messages?

I always recommend them to psychologists, psychiatrists and helplines. I see myself as a mediator in this. They have no idea who to turn to, so they come to me and I give them options. I also try to educate myself and read a lot of books on these topics.

I am asking for God's wisdom in this, because I am a Christian and I know that the faith these children and people have in me is scary. They write really difficult things to me and their parents are in the next room and have no idea.

If I could delete one thing, I would not want to know how much weight the public space has. Because suddenly thousands of people have hope that you will help them. And at the same time, I am also an ordinary person. I studied journalism, I worked in marketing, and counselling in psychological problems is incredibly difficult.

In the videos, you style yourself in various funny characters, you have no problem making a joke of yourself. How do you manage to do it when you struggle with mental health?

I learned not to care. I was always too open and I was never afraid to say something to people. For example, when I first said on Instagram that I was suffering from depression, anxiety and had suicidal thoughts, people asked me how I could talk about it so easily.

The bottom line is that I'm not ashamed of it because I know it's not my fault. If you break your leg, you won't be ashamed to talk about it either. I've learned that even when negative comments come, I try to stay positive. I want to be a source of entertainment and encouragement for people.

What advice would you give to a person who doesn't want to go to a psychologist because they feel that "it's not that bad yet"?

About 90 percent of the people who wrote to me that they were still trying to manage it themselves eventually admitted that it was a mistake that they didn't go see a psychologist right away. Their mental health got worse. My recommendation is – as soon as you feel that something is wrong with you, go.

If you had a stomach ache every day, you wouldn't think you could handle it on your own. You go to the doctor. So why should it be different with psychological problems?

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