Tag: feelings

Because they care

Today I donned a blue dress. I’m not a fan of blue but it was a special occasion. 

A baby shower for my cousin. She is having a little boy. 

Hence the blue.  

The balloons were hung with care. The sandwich platters laid out just so. The sun even made an appearance. Do I like baby showers? Yes. Do I find them difficult? Also yes. 

It’s a reason to eat party food, which are just little bite sized morsels of foods of your own choosing, get together with loved ones and a chance to celebrate the future. Someone in your life is happy and therefore sharing that happiness is only natural. 

Today was no different. There was chatter and laughter. Quizzes and games. The games had us guessing the weight, name and arrival date of the baby boy. Even though when the event was announced I had been apprehensive about going, I didn’t feel anxious or upset by being there. By having time to prepare over the last few months, my feelings of insecurity around our own fertility was put on the backburner and I sat for hours with family enjoying the time together. 

As people slowly drifted out of the door to travel home, Mr W and I sat with my cousin’s wife and thier baby while the gazebos came down and the empty plates were tidied away. Baby Grace is 5 months old and so far I’ve managed to avoid the cuddles. It has to be said she is the smiliest baby with the most adorable chubby cheeks and so my trepidation about cuddles has nothing to do with her. I’m just very aware of being around baby’s and how it can affect my mental health. Nothing like a baby being in your arms to remind you that you don’t have one of your own. And then, she was in my arms. I didn’t crumble but by now my poker face is my real face. I’m getting pretty good at it. 

After everyone but us had left we stayed behind to chat. My Aunt got upset and said she wondered how on earth I had coped. Despite my insistence that I was fine she got really upset on behalf and it took a while to calm her down. In all honesty I hadn’t really felt sad until that moment. Like I said before, the time to mentally prepare for the day had helped a great amount. I was not however prepared to help someone who was sad for me. 

It is a difficult path to tread when struggling with fertility. If you keep it close to your chest you end up feeling alone. There is also the odd occasion when and if someone asks what the situation is that you’ll both feel awkward for needing to discuss it. Alternatively if you do tell those around you what’s going on, you open up the can of proverbial worms which can wriggle around at any moment. They should feel comfortable to ask how things are going whenever they want to. Unfortunately it can catch you at a time when you are quite happy ignoring the situation. It then brings the whole issue to the forefront out of the blue. 

So what’s the happy medium? How do we tell people so they are in the know and yet not have to talk about it when it’s the right time for them? There is now how. You can’t control it. You can perhaps ask to talk about it another time. But what if it’s a reaction like I had today, the sadness of tears. It almost feels strange to sit there consoling someone who is sad for yourself. I’ve thought about it a lot. Would I rather no one know? No, been there done that. Would I rather talk about it all the time? No. I need space from this reality from time to time. 

So what is the answer?    

Ultimately I don’t think there is one. I think as honest as we have been about our struggle is just how honest we have to be about our feelings when approached to talk about it. If today was a day I needed to ignore my feelings then so be it. If someone else gets upset I need to understand that too. If I need to scream I will. If we aren’t in the place to talk it is okay to say so. It all comes back to being honest and open. It’s the only way to be kind to ourselves. We told others to share a part of ourselves that is hurting. They ask because they care. 

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

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/