Making friends with the crocodile

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A little while ago, someone I've met since being at uni asked me about my anxiety. They wondered why, during the first year of university it hadn't been there, why I'd seemed so much more happy and more confident? 

My alarm bells started ringing. I had no idea! Why had the anxiety come back? What was I doing wrong? Did they think I was a liar because it had seemingly appeared form nowhere? What was I supposed to say? I couldn't understand what was going on in my own head.

Project 365 - Days 31-40

Finally catching up, but you see there are a few more days missed here. I've noticed a pattern that if I'm not feeling brilliant, It end not to take pictures, even though they're the days I could really do with a distraction. 

I've noticed that more often the not, the times that we really need a distraction, to take break, or just take care of ourselves, are the times we're less likely to do it. At the minute it's something I really want to work on, and it'll be hugely beneficial in the long-run.

31/365

7.2.15

I'm a massive fan on Walking on Cars, and I got my hands on their EP, Hand in Hand recently, and I must say it's wonderful. So wonderful it inspired me to make a little doodle, which led to...

Project 365 - Days 21-30

More Project 365! Approaching the end of January and start of February I was still very much in anxiety's grip (well more so than now), and was struggling with tiredness and coping with the cold weather. But I started seeing the upside around that time, little by little. I had the first night out in a very long time which I enjoyed, and although it took a pretty bad turn, I was (in the end) proud of myself for handling it. So things are on the rise. 

21/365

28.1.15

Of course I'm a Snow Patrol fan - they tick all my music boxes. Soft Rock. Slightly gloomy. Irish.

Project 365 - Days 11-20

The next instalment of Project 365. This was the first time I slipped and missed a few days. Eventually I told myself to try to do it every day, but not beat myself up if I didn't. I've now decided that I'm not going to continue til I've got 365 pictures, but see how many I have by the time they year is up.

11/365

15.1.15

My first endeavour back into running for quite some time. Needless to say it was a little painful.

Project 365 - Days 1-10

It's fair to say that I don't always keep up with the ingenious schemes I come up with. So after being inspired by The Dainty Squid's version of Project 365, I decided to prove to myself that it was in fact possible to keep something up for more than a week.

The other side of it, was making me sit up and pay attention. Rather than letting everything pass me by, I thought that this could help me document the things that make me happy and appreciate them a little bit more.

I'm now approaching day 50, and even though I've missed the odd day, I'm pretty proud of keeping it up for this long, so here are the first ten instalments of my Project 365.

1/365 

5.1.15

My friend and I decided to visit the Conflict.Time.Photography exhibition at Tate Modern before we went back to uni after the Christmas holidays. It was a fantastic exhibitions, and the outing meant we had a good opportunity to talk about our degree, and the ups and downs of studying a creative subject.

It was as we were walking past St Paul's that I decided to bite the bullet and take on the Project 365 I'd been thinking about doing for so long.

Bigger Things & Better Perspective

A huge thing we slowly come to realise is that there are always bigger things to worry about - if anything has to be worried about, some are more worth it than others. 

As a so called chronic worrier, there are very few things I don't worry about. So until the day I can learn to stop worrying about things so much, it's really just a case of prioritising worries.

But it's not all some miracle be-all and end-all. Prioritising worries is one thing, but they'll always crop up now and then. When they do, it's a case of working out how to handle them. And that can be a challenge. 

It may be a little more perspective that I've been working with recently, that I think has partly come around through CBT and partly through being fed up of feeling so bloody rubbish all the time.
But a change of thought can makes all the difference. If there's one thing I've found, it's that all these nasty feelings come in cycles: things feed into one another. And sometimes finally seeing a diagram (they seem to like those in CBT) laid out in front of you can be the eureka moment you need to finally start laying those scrambled thoughts into place - or at least just start understanding what's in your head.

Here's an example. Since starting uni, I've put on a fair bit of weight. And sometimes it bothers me, it really does, but now and then I try to rein it in and try to say, 'Is it really that important?'. And if my head says 'Yes, it is', then I'll try my best to take a step back form it. Rather than me thinking 'Bloody hell I'm getting fat' I'll have a good look at the thought, and the actual situation. The thought I come to is something along the lines of: 'You're not fat you fool, you've put a bit of weight on, that's true, but food's making you happy at the moment so be happy. Plus you've finally got boobs. You've always wanted those!'.

Something I've found it that little changes in thought that can change perspective so much, and don't get me wrong, it's horribly hard to do if you're in a bad mindset, but I've found that when I have managed to banish the negative thoughts I've felt so much better for it.

Thoughts have so much power over us, and we have to try our best not to accept them as instant truth. I'd say to anyone to try to slow their thinking down a little, and just take a step back from them. It's far from easy (mine usually feel like water trickling away through my fingers), but when I have managed to catch one, and to cool it down and avoid the ensuing meltdown, it feels wonderful.

Mindfulness is a practice which, in my understanding, really encourages you to slow things down, and just observe things rather than mindlessly consuming things, or letting them consume you. It's something I want to practice and really embrace, so hopefully I'll be keeping track of that here in the future. If anyone's interested in mindfulness, I really can't recommend Headspace enough - the app gives ten free sessions (which I'm currently working through, along with other resources) and seems like a great place to start learning.

This Way Up

For any of you who read my introductory post, you'll know that one of my motivations for starting a personal blog was to document my dealings with worry and anxiety. I want to open up, share the experience and the positives with people and to learn about theirs too.

About a month or so ago, in the midst of a 'down' time (anxiety, stress, tiredness, low moods - the usual really), I realised that the amount of worry I experience just doesn't seem normal or healthy compared to the amount other people do.
In the meantime, the worry started to swallow me up more than ever; it seemed that by acknowledging it, the issue had come to the front of my mind. Without even taking real steps to fight it, I became terrified that I'd never overcome it and feel like my normal, human self again.

I started turning inwards, overanalysing myself, crying (a lot), sitting at my desk with palpitations and difficulty catching my breath. Despite the advice that opening up was the best way forward, I didn't want to, for fear of being a burden on other people and dragging them down too.

It got to the point that I couldn't take it any more and despite all my worries about it, I went to talk to my friend about what was going on. And it didn't change anything. But it felt so much better.
We talked again the next day and she told me that she and my other housemates had noticed a change in me lately.

Then it finally hit me that I'd changed. The lust for life and the curiosity had gone; it was like the life had been sucked out of me. I'd simply keep my head down and do what I had to do to get through to the next sleep.

The thought was always there, nagging away in the back of my mind that I really ought to do something, and not just feel sorry for myself, but I decided I was too tired to do much or that it'd just get better eventually.
It's now hit me that things aren't going to just get better on their own, instead I'm going to have to actively fight to get back to a reasonable state of mind. Tired of being tired and unhappy, I've decided that I'm reclaiming my head from the worry monster.

At one point, I was going to title this post 'The Only Way Is Up' but decided against it. The reason being, that this isn't just an upwards curve. but instead it's a huge zigzag of ups and downs of various sizes.

In the meantime since writing the first draft of the post I've had plenty of ups and downs, life interferences, tantrums, sleepless nights, cuddles, laughs, heart to hearts and revelations. Every day I know that this bastard thing's going to take some beating, but on a good day (like today) it's easier to see that there will be ups in the meantime. I just have to roll with the downs and learn how to not let them utterly consume me.

Short Term Goals:

• Eat better (more fruit and veg)
• Get some bloody exercise woman!
• Go outside when I feel too confined
• Take more breaks (as in at least one day a week of doing no/less work)

Long Term Goals:

Talk to people more

I find it bloody hard to talk to people, even my friends, about things that are bothering me. I've got a pretty good idea of why this is, but it's no good just dwelling on that. The only way to get over it is to bite the bullet and open up. 

Drop my guard a little bit

Same vein as the last one. Not everyone's out to get you. Not everything you say is going to be repeated behind your back. And if they are, and if it is; who cares. Any arsehole doing it doesn't matter and anyone who does won't believe a word and will be on your side. 

Cheer up Girl. It won't last forever.

Links:
Young Minds
RC Psych - Anxiety, Panic Attacks and Phobias
Talking Therapies Berkshire


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