Tag: anxiety

Anxiety 101

Do you know anyone that suffers from anxiety?

I didn’t think I knew anyone but it affects so many different people at different times in their lives. And in different ways. The more it’s spoken about the more we learn!

When I’m having a good day, you may not know it if you were to look at me. Although I’m not the world’s most smiley person it doesn’t mean I’m upset, but I actually have the kind of mouth that turns downwards naturally so people always assume something is wrong. You could be completely fine on the inside and then someone thinks they are helping by telling you to cheer up, that is actually when you  start to feel worse! Most of the time people call it resting b**** face, it’s almost a cop out for you or an excuse for them, something to laugh at to make light of the situation. 

I remember a day when my anxiety was particularly bad. We were awaiting some news that would have potentially changed our world, our expectations or how we live the next couple of years of our lives and no matter what I did I sat there thinking the worst.

Isn’t that what we do? We think the worst of an upcoming piece of news, it’s unfortunate but it’s just what we do. So I went through every scenario in my head. How to deal with it. How to live our lives and I sat there petrified. 

I have so many supporters in my life, we both do, but ultimately, these kinds of trials and tribulations they test our individual mindset and outlook.  The outcome only affects the two of us. How it affects US is how it affects other people and I wish I could say I’ll be there for those people too but there comes a time when you really do have to take a step back and say I’ve got to focus on me. I’ve got to focus on us. 

I’m not the kind of anxious person that can’t go out during the day. I do actually find my own company great. I like the quiet and I like the solitude and that really isn’t me hiding away. I’ve been used to it for a long long time. Growing up, I was one sister with two brothers, so unless I went out to see friends, it was just me. I’ve got amazing parents and growing up wasn’t lonely. Being on my own isn’t something I have a problem with so I’m not going to force myself to interact with people daily just because others may think I’m shutting myself away. When you live with anxiety you need the time on your own to recharge before and after spending time with people. Gearing up to seeing a friend, for example, is wrought with lots of preparedness, and then there’s the talking and listening for hours, it’s tiring to say the least. Of course, I’d never live without it. But if you are having a particularly anxious day, you need the time after to be quiet and like I said time to recharge. Much like coming back from a fun and exciting vacation and someone saying ‘I need a holiday to get over my holiday!’.

People may think I shut myself away because isolation is one way of dealing with sad or worrying news. I don’t do that. I don’t shut down. The overwhelming anxiety that precedes a worrisome piece of news weighs so heavy on my mind, that I just need time to reset. I need time to re-calibrate. I’m no good to anyone when it gets really bad. So what I used to do is keep busy. I’d clean the house, have a little project going on and distract myself physically. It meant my mind got a little holiday from itself. 

And that’s what anxiety is. It’s something that hits you square in the stomach and you have no idea when it’s coming. It’s uncontrollable and it makes everyday just a tick of the clock. You might be the strongest person when everyone else needs you to be. You tell them everything is going to be ok. And you believe that wholeheartedly. It’s never the belief you have for yourself. You are never your own cheerleader.  

What I’ve come to realise recently is working through something and pushing it to the back of your mind doesn’t work for me. I want to deal with it in the here and now. Work through it instead of around it. 

And for me, the best thing is wanting to work through it. Wanting to live with it. Not suffer with it. Not letting it win. 

Photo by Dave Watson 

Please check out his work on https://www.instagram.com/davewatson_uk/ or at https://davewatson1980.picfair.com

Donuts

Today I’m struggling with my mental health. I was going to leave it at that and allow you, the reader, to decipher it quite simply. I’d chosen to take a break from writing today.

I’m all for that. Unfortunately there are times when my enormous fear of letting myself down storms to the front of my mind and declares war with rationality. Write. You’ll feel better. Write. You’ll only be disappointed that you didn’t. 

Write. 

I’ve been thinking of Scotland. In 2021 we took a few days out of our busy autumn schedule and travelled up to Edinburgh. I’ll put my hands up now and say the sole reason was to go to Edinburgh zoo to see the Giant Pandas. And it did not disappoint! I, in fact, spent the better part of 30 minutes sitting and staring at Yang Guang, their male panda. I may also have cried. It was a special, special moment for me. It was just Mr W and I for the viewing. The zoo is situated on the side of a large hill and the Giant Pandas are right at the top of this hill. Go figure! We quickly decided to slog all the way up the hill first, making no stops, so we could see the panda without interruptions. And who doesn’t love to get the crap bit out the way first. Walk up the hill. Enjoy the slow, winding walk back at your own pace. Roast dinner, veg first! It’s the rule!

Floating on cloud nine, I eventually had to leave the panda and seeing a donut cart, decided on a treat. Hot, sugary donuts! Mmm! You know the type you get at a fair or by the seaside and you can barely hold the paper bag because they’re so hot, but your stomach can’t wait, so you bite into the molten doughiness and find instant bliss and regret. Yeah, those kind. 

So, while I’m waiting in the queue for my 10am donuts, there is a lady in front of me who asks the server whether she can buy just a single donut. The server says “no, they come in batches of 4 only.” The lady says, “oh, okay, there’s no way I want that many.” I internally gasped and reminded myself to include Mr W on my donut haul. She walked away and I felt sad for the lady who was leaving donutless. I quickly get my bounty, and as I turn to leave, I see her with her family. I made a quick decision and approached her. “ Would you like one I ask?” She gives me the once over with her crazy detector and says “No, that’s okay.” “Honestly it’s okay”, I reply, “go for it”. And she does, I say “Enjoy” and walk away. Mr W is sitting on a wall, watching me, he asks what I’m doing and when I tell him, he laughs. My reason for sharing, it’s nice to be nice. 

There are such deeds in the world that have become a bit of a phenomenon. The ‘Pay it Forward’ movement is really quite special. It’s popular in coffee shops in particular. When paying for your tall skinny decaf latte you add a couple of pounds to the bill and the next person gets their drink free. With the reminder to pay it forward. I’d like to think that the zoo donut lady paid it forward at some point in time, but also don’t like to think of telling someone to do it. I didn’t do it because it was on my mind to do something that day, it was a spontaneous thought, and that meant something to me too. And one less donut.

It’s often when we are thanked for something we’ve done, an unconscious act of ‘nice’ that we realise its power. I have a 12 year old niece who I haven’t seen a lot recently. Covid, life, geography. She’s always been quiet, loves to read like me and is going through a tough time at school. Only recently was I told this. A few weeks ago, she popped up on my personal Instagram feed as ‘someone you may know’. I hit the follow button and sent a message asking how she was. It felt rude not to, to be honest. I wouldn’t add anyone to my online ‘social’ circle unless I actually planned to have a conversation with them. It’s one of the biggest reasons I delete people. If we don’t talk, what’s the point? We had the briefest of all chats and that was that. Fast forward to last week and my niece’s mum gives me a call. We’re chatting away, catching up after a long absence of calls since Christmas and she stops to thank me for messaging my niece. I’m taken back to be honest. It was just a hello and how are you. However it turns out things have been difficult recently, she’s been withdrawn at home and school and very quiet. The night after we spoke, she was very chatty and smiley and her mum felt more relaxed than she had been in months. Not knowing this, I said that it really was nothing, I just wanted to say hello. And I was told that it had made all the difference in the world. That my niece felt seen and not forgotten. I won’t lie, that hit me in the heart with a different kind of ouch. I know what it feels like to feel alone, I’m not alone, but my anxiety makes me feel isolated. I know the joys of someone reaching out because they want to. Not because they’re fulfilling a duty or checking up on you. Sometimes it’s the unconscious acts that make the biggest impacts.

In the autumn of 2013, Mr W’s sister, my now sister-in-law, had a major car crash. She was taken to Whitechapel hospital in London. Working in London at the time meant I could travel easily from work, meet MR W on the station platform and see her for a few hours. At this point we’d only met a handful of times and I still felt like the new kid on the block. One particular evening Mr W had to travel for work, so I went alone. Unannounced. I took magazines, sweets, food and my dry sense of humour. All the things I would want in that situation. I only stayed an hour or so. My sister in law is a loved lady and had other visitors arrive after me. I went home and thought nothing of it. It’s what you do. Fast forward to our engagement, there’s talk of me becoming an official family member and how I had fit into the family from the start. I had made quite an impact on my sister in law. Dumbfounded, I asked why. Back then, and even today 9 years later, my sister in law would talk about my solo visit to the hospital and what it meant to her. She said it showed I cared,not just for Mr W but for his family. I shrug it off. It’s what you do. Someone you love, someone you care about, someone who needs you. You are there. It. Is. What. You. Do. 

I think about these moments and others when I’m sad, upset and anxious. It makes me feel better. It puts me in my place. It grounds me. I don’t know why. I don’t do anything to be seen or heard. I do it because it costs nothing to be nice, well maybe the price of a donut, but it literally doesn’t have to cost a thing. Whether the lady paid if forward. Whether I got told about my niece. And even if I was told of my sister in law’s gratitude. It makes no difference to whether I, we, everyone should be a little nicer. The reward should be secondary. It’s a selfless act. I’m no saint. No one is. But just because we’re not saints, doesn’t mean we’re automatically sinners. Maybe we can be floating in the middle. Being nice. Eating naughty donuts. And sending a hello out into the world. 

You never know who might need it. 

Little Excerpts. A Day in the life of.

Just a few glances at how living with Pcos and my mental health changes day to day:

25-2-22

As I’m doing the crap job of putting washing away (although it does help quell me on anxious days by being organised etc) I’m listening to a podcast on being plus size called Go Love Yourself. 

I’m not a podcast listener, but thought why not. And tbh they’re very upbeat, and it’s way out of my comfort zone to even think about being as confident as they are. However it has brought to the front of my memory block how many times I’ve been called out for my weight. 

I’ve found photos from nights out where someone in my friendship group has zoomed in on my stomach because it didn’t look flattering in a certain outfit or at a great angle. 

I’ve had someone draw me as a head on top of a circle when drawing a ‘stick’ person. 

I’ve even been flirted with on a night out and then had the guy go back to their mates laughing because they got the number of the big girl. 

This was all over a decade ago. Which seems so long ago and like yesterday all at the same time. And I was smaller then than I am now. And yet still wasn’t seen as normal or worthy of being treated like everyone else. 

So I’ll continue with the podcast, until it makes me cry, or rage, but it’s not been easy having those memories flood back. 

I’m not my weight. Nor my dress size. 

I’m a girl who has PCOS which 

– causes my weight to fluctuate whether I eat a salad or a burger

– makes my body cells stress out and alter the hormones in my system,whether I’m sitting down or running 5k

– go from laughing until tears are streaming down my face and then switch to actual heart wrenching sobs because my emotional well-being is shot to shit

– causes a vast number of fertility issues which can’t be solved by getting drunk and just ‘going for it’ with the husband or relaxing and let motherfucking nature take its course. 

– so many other issues that I tackle every single day

And yet PCOS is not my personality. I’m caring. I’m kind. I’m sarcastic as fuck. I love entirely and unconditionally. I’m awkward when I first meet people so I’m really really loud! I’m actually really shy. I’m quiet. I like to be quiet. I’m intelligent. I’m artsy. I’m creative. I have a filthy sense of humour. And a proper cackle. I say sorry way too much. I’ll help pretty much anyone just so they never feel bad about themselves or their day. 

I’m me. Not my weight. Not my dress size.

9-3-22

So for the last three days I’ve been in Birmingham. A trip I latched onto for a free hotel stay with Mr W while he worked here. I’ve been left to my own devices in a new city for 13+ hours a day. And if you’d have said to me as little as 3 years ago this would have been an issue for me I’d not really have thought about it. But I have been a nervous wreck! And I truly believe this is down to covid and lockdowns and losing that sense of independence.

So I’ve wandered aimlessly around shops, toured the old town, gone up to a rooftop garden and today I’m going to the cinema alone! Originally I planned to stay in the hotel room, sleep, veg and pamper. But my inner explorer could not be quietened. It’s that voice that helps me more than I know!

It feels so stupid to say I’m proud of myself because to be honest this is just an every day activity in the mundanity of life. If I hadn’t had such a breakdown when we got up here I’d not have realised what a big deal this was.

I have to remember to be kind to myself. But also remind myself that life has changed so dramatically and yet brave I’m still here. Deep down.

18-3-22

I look at this picture and feel sad. (the picture if you can imagine is me in jeans, a wrap top, posing in the mirror, I must have been going somewhere.)

Sad that this body turns 34 next week and hasn’t achieved what I want. Upset that it has let me down.

I try to be positive all the time, tending to my mental health daily and forgetting my body needs me too.

My body has let me down, it’s true, but more often than not I’ve just given in to it. Let it do its own thing. I’m kinda feeling the need to fight against it more and more. Which is hard because my mental health doesn’t let me fight much these days.

How can I control so much about my life to feel safe and secure,  without taking control of my physical health?

In a way, my body letting me down has led to me letting my body down too. I need to fight back. And I’m starting to believe I actually can. 

Today

So there we are, my biggest outbursts of the year. And it’s only May! We have an appointment looming with the NHS in August. I know they’ll mention my weight. And as I’ll discuss in the next Pcos blog, it’s been a rough ride just getting this far, and because of this, I’m angry. I don’t like being angry, it’s self- harming to the max and does nothing but add fuel to a fire. Except no one else is tending this fire. The NHS disappears and comes back at their own will. God love them for what they do for us Brits but it has been hell! My actual mental health plunges at every single mention of Doctors and hospitals. I’m yet to have a reasonable experience. I have to play a particular game of 2 steps forward 4 steps back with them and where I used to get depressed and shrink away, I can feel the sense of rage fuel actual determination. For the very first time, I’m sitting and thinking ‘Oh, so you won’t help me until XYZ is done? Well, let’s just do that then eh? Let’s get you to do your bloody job! Because I DESERVE THIS. Mr W deserves this!’

Deep breath! Breathe out the anger. Breathe in the determination. 

I’m off for a run now, pray for my back, knee and shins. Ta-ra! 

Pcos and Me

This is a highly personal piece today. It’s a part of my life every single day. There is no ‘cure’, but there are ways of handling it to make it easier. The amount of information out there is absolutely overwhelming so if you suspect or have PCOS please don’t think I’m the oracle or that my research is all there is to know. There will also be opinions that have been built upon emotionally because of years of discrimination and sheer lack of help and awareness. I’m here to discuss my relationship with this condition and try and try to work through some of my issues of embarrassment I have when talking about it and  hopefully, also giving you the absolute promise that you are not alone.

My pcos symptoms started in my mid teens. I had my first period at age 13 and then nada. Nothing. It didn’t happen again for over 6 years. To be fair at that point, I didn’t know about the condition and I wasn’t educated enough to think there was a problem. I simply thought that periods took a while to get going. In school, our sex education lessons saw us separated into groups of boys and girls and taught the ‘important’ things about our changing bodies. The boys were led to a different classroom, where undoubtedly condoms were thrown at them and they were told to be safe. I’d like to point out here that my disdain for the ‘lesson’, yes you’ll notice the disdain with the amount of apostrophes I’m using, comes with my learnings over the years about my condition. In the girls class, we were given a magazine about what it meant to be a teenager and it came with a tampax. How about that! And that was it, nothing about being safe during sex, and absolutely no information about irregular periods. I appreciate that talking about fertility at such a young age may be inappropriate but it is an education I feel needs some major attention. Because where these conditions can cause infertility, they also come with a vast range of physical and mental health implications too. It’s also important to point out that life is not a fairytale, getting pregnant is not always easy, marrying the prince, living in the dream castle and getting pregnant on your wedding night isn’t always the case. If you’re anything like me, you’ll marry your prince after living together for four years and fall asleep on your wedding night. Romantic! As important it is to tell children the lesson of being safe during sex, because you may catch something or indeed fall pregnant, it’s so damn important to tell them that there is another range of stories. The couple that struggle with infertility. The couple that sadly had a miscarriage. The couple who had children young. And the couple who did not want children! There is not just one narrative. So this needs to be taught or at the very least discussed. 

It’s been twenty or so years since that enlightening experience, and where then I would have wondered why endometriosis or Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome, among other fertility and debilitating conditions, was important to learn about, I’m now a 34 year old woman teaching myself about it all. I suppose moving forward after this piece it would be prudent to ask some teens about the sex education they are receiving, or better yet, the teachers who have to give it. I dare say they are working from a guideline set out by some high seated council that knows best! Anger unfortunately will spill out from time to time. This is your warning. 

Daily symptoms of this condition are so surprising that at first most of them seem like a joke. However after countless medical texts, research pieces and noticing the patterns within groups of likewise women, the actual list of symptoms is enormous! When it comes to myself, I have all of them bar one or two. It’s only through my self education that I’ve found symptoms I wouldn’t have thought were out of the norm for everybody to be honest. But hey, ho, they are all part and parcel of this condition. Which in a way, makes me more accepting of the symptom as a whole. One of these for example is anxiety.

Ah the ‘A’ word. It has been brought into the glaring spotlight for the past 3-4 years and it’s creating awareness where once there was none. In my eyes, there are two forms of anxiety. There is the dread of going to a party and wondering what to wear/eat/drink, the feeling of shyness you know will creep onto your being as you are presented with a room full of people and there’s definitely nervousness such as when you read a piece of news. Covid-19 has reached the UK for instance. This type of anxiety comes and goes with the occasions that are making us anxious. It’s something everyone can feel at any time. And in most cases you live without it more than living with it.

And then there’s the other type. The complete saturation of anxiety into your whole being. The utter lack of sleep when analysing something minor. Maybe text that hasn’t been returned from a friend. Last year I had a full on meltdown because a friend hadn’t replied to my messages and I thought I had done something wrong! The heart racing and yet immobilising fear of new situations; answering the door to a stranger, talking on the phone, starting a new job. There have unfortunately been times when I’ve let the doorbell ring, or the phone go unanswered because I’m panicking on the other side. And quite surprisingly, I have avoided job interviews too. When you live with anxiety, you develop around it so fully that you don’t initially recognise it as anything, you fully believe it’s just how everyone is. Everyone at some point in their lives has surely travelled for 90minutes on the train to university only to turn around at the lecture room door because people will turn to look at you when you walk in, right? It seems when looking back, I’ve been struggling with anxiety for a long, long time. At the time it just felt like I was a nervous girl. 

Anxiety is a big symptom in the world of Pcos, how it affects people mentally is absolutely draining. Pile on the other symptoms which will make your anxiety worse and you’ve got a condition that needs more attention from the government and healthcare institutions. Some of the biggest symptoms I deal with are:

Weight gain – I’ve always been the bigger girl. At age 14 I was a size 14/16 and was very aware of it. Now I’m bigger and yes I’m still aware. In the beginning I was conscious of the fact that I had pcos because I was bigger. And in the most recent of years I have discovered that it is simply not the case. Weight gain is a symptom of PCOS not the cause. I’ve started owning the fact that my weight is partially not my fault. I’m not going to sit here and tell you I eat a lettuce leaf smoothie everyday, because I don’t. But what I do know is that exercise and the things I eat aren’t as simple as ‘get up and move, whilst digesting a tiny salad’. My body is in a constant state of fat storage behaviour because of my insulin resistant cells. My body’s cells are at war with my brain. It’s a difficult feeling to process when someone glances at your stomach and must think you are a lazy cow, when you aren’t choosing to be this way. 

Inflammation – so my body is also in a hyper alert inflamed state. So I’m more likely to suffer from IBS and stress. Apart from the physical side effects, the stress is on my cells which doesn’t help them when they’re already not functioning the way they need to be. Fun! Which is why, when I’m told to ‘relax’ I find it hard not to implode there and then. 

Hirsutism – that means hairy. I have hair growing everywhere on my body. Everyone does. But mine is thicker, darker and not bloody wanted. It makes me feel unattractive, self-conscious and it’s the hardest outward effect of this condition that I deal with. At times it stops me being loving with my husband. I feel like a man and it’s very difficult to live with. I often try to turn a situation around when you say ‘you suffer’ because more often than not, if you can find a way to come to terms with something, you can say you ‘live’ with something and in a way it stops controlling you and your quality of life. But for me, living in this hairy body is disgusting and I suffer its physical and mental effects everyday. It’s a physical reminder that I’m different. There have been a lot of times where I’m talking to someone and they’ll notice my face is different, and it’s unfortunate that I see their eyes move from my eyes to my chin. It’s not their fault, 

Infertility- I’m going to do another blog shortly on what PCOS has meant for me and my fertility journey (see journey, not struggle) because it’s just huge. Look out for it soon. But let’s just say, it’s fucking hard! Capital F!

Ance – I had horrific spots at school, I was bullied badly over this, even by ‘friends’ and at the time it was believed to be part of puberty. But I believe that as my puberty never really began properly because of the jumble of hormones my body was coping with vs the normal puberty struggles, I had spots competing in the hormone olympics. I’ll have the occasional pimple now and again, but nothing like back then. 

Hair loss – oh yes,how can I lose hair on my head if it’s everywhere else on my body. Don’t even start! My cousin first noticed some of the hair at the back of my head was shorter than the rest back in 2011. We blamed the amount of times I had bleached my hair and as it was at the back it didn’t bother me. A few years ago I started reading about hair loss and PCOS. It causes bald spots and thinning of the hair. Now my hair was so thick and curly when I was young that it regularly became knotty and matted. Nowadays, I estimate I’ve lost 50% of my hair due to thinning and the short bit at the back is still there. As a girl who suffers with her weight and facial appearance, my hair is my security blanket. Another physical reminder, that not all is as it should or indeed could be. 

Insomnia – well this one shocked me, it goes hand in hand with the theory of people living with PCOS having no energy. I’ve had insomnia since I started at secondary school. I would regularly not sleep or manage a few hours a night. Ultimately this came down to the stress I was experiencing at school but it also turns out to be a major symptom of the condition. It is said to go hand in hand with anxiety. It wasn’t until Mr W and I bought this house that I found myself sleeping better and permitting myself the time to nap if I needed it. I started listening to my body when it needed sleep. Before that I would muddle on through and had learned that being tired was just a natural thing that everyone felt. WRONG! PCOS also drains your energy from your body, so no matter if you’ve had no sleep, 3/5/10/14 hours sleep, you will, or at least I do, feel tired. The last couple of years have been better, and it’s only when I’ve had a severe anxiety attack, that I find I can’t sleep. But as I become more accustomed to what’s going on and recognising the signs, I can calmly go about my day knowing it won’t last forever. 

So there you have it, a day in the life of me! A lot of how I feel about the above is determined by my mental state. It’s my anxiety levels that will control my mental health. And a lot of the symptoms will cause me to feel anxious and my anxiousness will cause my internal symptoms to flare up and back to the beginning we go. So yes, I’m living within a vicious circle BUT somehow knowing there isn’t a cure but it can be managed makes me realise that there’s only so much I can do. 

Over the next two or three blogs I’ll be detailing my struggles with fertility, the NHS help I’ve gotten so far and the steps I’m taking to make my condition more manageable and in turn make my life just that bit better. 

I want to say now, that I have an amazing husband, beautiful friends and family, most of whom have not made me feel like a freak in any way nor stopped me talking when I’ve discovered new things about this condition. The wonderful power of research and owning your condition means you can take control and I believe that’s the first step on a very difficult and winding road. You are not alone. 

Validate you

When I get together with friends, I’ll always have news to catch up on. That’s the way it works right? Work. Family life. Love. Loss. The bad and the good. More often than not, I have a small collection of stories I have to share. As the saying goes, a problem shared is a problem halved. Joy that is spread, just multiplies that joy in my opinion. Not only does getting together with loved ones entertain the soul it cools a boiling pot of emotion. When I find myself ready to tell my story to friends, I have a small voice in my head telling me that I’m self-indulging in their kind words, hugs and nods of understanding. The small voice grows louder as I approach their front door, as I accept a cup of tea and it even starts screaming as soon as someone says, ‘And how are you?’. I often wonder if my tales are important to tell. Why should my problems and woes command their attention when their problems should go first, or be spoken louder or longer than my own?

During the pandemic, during its most terrible and confusing moments, I felt unable to share how very bad my anxiety had gotten. People were dying, people were grieving, kept apart for months at a time wondering when and if they’d see their loved ones again. How did brain rattling anxiety compare? I felt anxious about catching covid, I worried about my loved ones and the world became a very scary place. I honestly thought people would band together more, I sometimes thought of the stories from WW1 and 2, about milkmen that still delivered to houses that were more rubble than homes. In such big ways, people did so much to help others, the children in the school playground singing loud so the nursing home residents next door didn’t feel alone is just one amazing example. This shouldn’t be dimmed by the few that were selfish and were fighting against the rules. But they were out there, and when you have anxiety you’ll often see the one bad person in a crowd of amazing people. 

It’s all too easy to be consumed by how personal feelings affect us when we are shut inside our own homes with no view of the outside world. It is all too easy to text someone and try to convey feelings, make a phone call and try to explain, but ultimately it’s when a friend is in front of you when the mask may slip and it becomes all too obvious that there’s more to the story. Unfiltered, unshrouded truth. And yet there’s a barrier to be found when you feel that your problems are tiny compared to others. Invalidation of feelings.

It was during 2021 that I started exploring the concept of how invalidating your own feelings can be dramatically damaging to your mental health. The most selfish way of explaining it is this: only you feel how you feel, it is happening to you and no one else. You can’t feel how someone else feels and vice versa. 

The more rounded way of describing this is likening it to a physical injury. A papercut is tiny. It slices the skin in an irritating way and stops hurting almost as fast as it happened. Now imagine the first time you got a papercut, you’d think what the actual hell was that! Now imagine the hundredth time, maybe you shrug it off, maybe you don’t. Maybe you catch it later on, snagging it and reminding you of the irritation. Maybe you forget about it and cook dinner and get some lemon, chilli, salt in it. Each situation produces a different response, from different people. Some people are more thick skinned than others and some people bleed like from a tap. 

A closer look at pain, makes me think of pain management in hospitals. They don’t see someone rolled up on a stretcher with a broken leg and categorise it as a 5/10. They ask each person. ‘On a scale of 1-10, how is your pain?’ This is down to how differently each patient can handle pain. If you were to punch me right now, I’d cry, from shock, from a new trauma and then the pain. If you were to punch Mr W, well first you’d have to run and second he’d shrug it off. We have vastly different histories when it comes to that kind of treatment. So why is it more acceptable in society to understand an individual’s tolerance to pain and not understand someone’s sensitivity to their own mental health?

I’ll say this, the pandemic opened up conversations about mental health and for that I am grateful. I’ll also be one of the first to tell anyone out there that their feelings no matter what. Invalidating your own feelings in favour of someone else does not push your feelings aside and out of the way, it pushes them down where they’ll rise to the surface again to harm you once more. It is compassion that dictates the invalidation we put upon ourselves. Where this can be a kindness to others you are doing damage to yourself. And it needs to stop. Once you start to look on others with more kindness than yourself, pushing the nurturing smile to your face and the care into your eyes, you are taking it away from yourself. Believe it or not, you have enough in you to care for both yourself and others. By looking after yourself and validating YOU, you’ll find yourself a mentally stronger person and in a perfect position to be stronger for others. Win win, right?

I know there is so much pain in this world, so much lost, so much feared and felt. I hope we learn to love as fiercely as ever. To protect. To nourish. To heal. Starting with ourselves first. Giving ourselves the changes we deserve. That the world deserves. You’ll never know how much you can change the world, until you change your world. Protect your mind. Nourish your feelings. Heal your heavy heart. Validate you. 

“My life amounts to no more than one drop in a limitless ocean. Yet what is any ocean, but a multitude of drops?” ― David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

Photo by Dave Watson

Please check out his work on https://www.instagram.com/davewatson_uk/ or at https://davewatson1980.picfair.com/

Still sitting still

When I was in University I was a mess, I was scared to enter the lecture room, and knowing now what I didn’t then, I know anxiety has ruled my life a lot longer than I ever realised. For a worrying moment, when I noticed how far back the anxiety stretched, I wondered if it had stopped me doing much in my adult life. 

Today, I had the most bizarre flashback, whilst sipping tea on a bench in my garden. I wasn’t covered in compost anymore nor was I chilly in the April breeze, I was in Paris. I was sitting outside a Parisien cafe, drinking coffee and watching the world go by. It was a Sunday morning, the early morning sun was making the cobbles blush and there was calm in the air. It seems it is one of my fondest memories, because it made me smile, really smile. 

It got me thinking, about other seemingly insignificant moments, that have created a collage of beautiful memories I unlock from time to time. 

New York, 2007, the Empire Diner, Sunday brunch. I’m wearing a lace tunic top and the waiter is parading up and down with peoples eggs and coffee as if he had just come from the Catwalks of Gucci. He had swagger. He had confidence. He had attention. And he loved it. He had a wonder woman tattoo on his upper arm, and paused by our table to say ‘Honey, I love your top’ in his American drawl. I have a photo of the two of us vogue-ing, it was fabulous and so was he. I picture him now, on Broadway in some garish and absolutely fantastic musical number, living his dream. 

Santa Susanna, Barcelona, 2014. The first sunny afternoon in 6 days, we dash to the beach to thaw our bodies and grasp back some of our holiday before the rain returns. The beach is busy. The sand is hot. Glorious! Women and men selling their wares stomp up and down; sunglasses, hats, scarves, coconuts. The cacophony of their voices, mingled with the muffled chatter and the gentle waves, just screams beach holiday to me. A sunbathing man calls over a small asian woman, selling her skilled masseur hands, I remember glancing over, and seeing her kneeling on the sand. She starts to dig a hole with her hands. Dumbstruck I continue to watch, the man waits, as if nothing is out of the ordinary. She continues to dig a deep round hole. In time, she stops and the man lays a towel over the hole, and it is only then that I realise the void is for his belly. I force my staring eyes away from the scene and tell myself to act normal. But for the rest of the day, I laugh internally, to the scene I witnessed. Lets, assume the man had seen this particular lady before and knew this was common practice, that’s one theory. Alternatively, I often think about someone being unprepared for the practice of the void/belly scenario and looking at the woman in complete disbelief. Much like I had. That memory generally floods back to me when I go to or see a beach. 

The Great Barrier Reef, Australia, 2013. I’m drinking a cocktail out of an enormous glass, my legs are over the side of a huge catamaran and all that stops me from plunging into the ocean is a thin rope that acts like a fence at the side of the top deck. I’m sunkissed, curly haired and tired. I have spent the day swimming the coral reefs and am in awe of where I am. I am nine and a half thousand miles from home, I have quit my job and am living out my dream. I am the luckiest girl in the world. No time to think of going back to England. No time to think if a brush will go through my hair later. No time to waste on anything but this moment. 

I often feel the best memories of my life, so far, are the ones that happen when I’m not moving. While I’m static, the world carries on around me, and I can appreciate the moment. What’s funny is in those moments, I never realise how much impact they can have, how much you’ll flit back to them in the future. How warming they’ll be when you are doing one of life’s mundane tasks. Maybe it was wishful thinking today to think of Paris whilst potting up some planters in the garden. Maybe I’m just grateful to have lived a life so rich in travel and culture. Maybe I’m starting to realise the small moments are the important ones. 

This is why when I had the truly horrifying thought that anxiety had stolen so much of my adult life it took me a while to come back to these memories. I have pushed and pushed myself to do and see everything when I travel because there’s an irksome voice in my head saying ‘make the most of it, do it all, miss nothing’. As lovely as it would be to see the world and run from experience to experience it would seem you aren’t in fact seeing all there is to see.  It is now that I truly believe when we stop, sit and look, we’ll find the world will continue turning, it doesn’t mean we are missing out, it means we are able to relish in it. Drink a cuppa, take a breath and appreciate it all.