In recognition of National Mental Health week our Operational Director and Co-Founder of Space2BHeard CIC shares her professional and personal insights in navigating her own mental health challenges. We are passionate about telling our stories and being seen for our authentic selves, we hope you enjoy!
“One of my most favourite things to do, given half a chance is listening to others share their experience of struggles and poor mental health. Podcast, or book I am there. I am fascinated by other peoples stories (that may not surprise you given the career route I have chosen) and more importantly for me I get great comfort in knowing I am not alone, I am normal (I think!) and that as difficult as it may be to accept, it seems that simply navigating life’s ups and downs can be quite tricky at times and at other times downright painful and almost impossible for a lot of us.
So I wonder why I have a resistance to telling my story more widely when I am happy to gorge myself on other generous peoples contributions and I am a co-founder of a Community Interest Company that, essentially is about telling your story.
Therapists are good at reflecting on why we do or don’t do things and we are often up for challenging our usual behaviours so I thought, given its Mental Health week that I would open a window in to my experiences in the hope that it may be a bit interesting to someone and that they may feel just a little better knowing they too are not alone.
For as long as I can remember I have been a “worrier” and have existed quite happily amongst others in an enthusiastic blur of traits such as over thinking, over working, over pleasing, overloading – the list could go on.
It wasn’t till I got a bit later in to life – mid 20’s onwards that those traits started to move from being quite useful and helpful (I don’t often miss a deadline, my house is more often than not clean and I think people quite like me) to derailing me and tripping me up at times of higher stress and pressure. Leading to difficult periods of anxiety and in turn depression.
I am in the fortunate position of training as a therapist and having a lot of therapy hours under my belt which has helped me to understand more about this process as time has gone on. What I have learnt is far to lengthy for now but what I want to tell you is a bit about what those lower times have meant to me and what has helped me to move forward and find the better times that inevitably are there for me to enjoy again.
The first time I knew that what I was experiencing was Panic Attacks and Anxiety was when I went to the GP in my mid 20’s convinced I had a physical illness as I felt so weird and spacey. Feeling of detachment, tingly hands, light-headedness, the desire to flee at unpredictable moments. Not obvious symptoms of anything I was familiar with and anyone that has navigated the surreal and often terrifying symptoms of Anxiety and Panic will know that nothing feels obvious or clear. I was sent away with 10mg of Citalopram and that was when my journey with Therapy started.
Fast forward to now and I have had several similar periods in my life ranging from mild to what I would say was quite severe Anxiety, particularly after the birth of my second child.
As I write this I can hear my internal Critical Parent (if you know, you know) berating me from the darkest part of my internal dialogue. It sounds a bit like this:
“why are you telling people this”, “Do you think you are important enough for anyone to be
interested”, “people will think you are a s**t therapist if you have your own anxiety and you
can’t manage it”, “what have you got to be worried about”
This kind of sounds like my thoughts quite a lot of the time but with growing awareness and a lot of discipline I have learnt to defeat the internal doubter with kinder thoughts and finding way to navigate the ups and downs of life.
But when I am really in the eye of the Anxiety storm my thinking veers in to obscure and at times awful thoughts like convincing myself that I have a terrible disease, the horror of what if I drive off the road and kill someone, what if I drop my baby on purpose, what if I never feel ok again. I would like to emphasise that as someone sat here feeling pretty grounded right now I can firmly say I have not ever had rational evidence that any of these things may be true. But in some way this is even more frightening in the experience as I sort of know these things are not true yet can’t control the thoughts. When this happens the thoughts start creating well trodden lines in my mind and it can be very difficult to move away from them and create new ones.
What I now know is that when I can get overloaded for whatever reasons, this can typically be driven by big life changes, keeping the balance across home, work and me time, not managing my own expectations and boundaries around what my capabilities and limits are and so on. I sometimes don’t realise until there is the little person inside me putting her hand up and saying “help”. Put simply the anxiety rearing its head is a sign that something isn’t ok for me and if I pay attention, it will probably lead me to what I need to change.
If I don’t adjust at these critical times my body and mind is quick to jump in to dysregulated state, impacting my nervous system, finding myself in cycles of fight or flight and ultimately finding myself in a cycle of overthinking and attempting to rationalise my way out of the anxiety through “finding” and “resolving” the cause of this heightened state.
But what we of course know is this very physical and visceral response is a throwback to times when we were living with risk that could mean the difference between life and death. We live in times where thankfully we don’t run is to a tiger as we forage for food at the local co-op but I can tell you there have been inexplicable times in my life when a simple trip to the supermarket has felt just as unfathomably terrifying and impossible.
But instead our biggest challenges in these times are very different, with our attention focused on innumerable things from our phones, social media, emails after hours, working more than ever to defeat the cost of living increase, we can’t be too fat, we can’t be too slim, we can’t get ill because we worry about how quickly we get a GP appointment if at all, have the kids got their pack up, is the dog walked, I need to update my insurance through to big life things like loss, job changes, divorce…..the list goes on and I am sure we all have our own, individualised versions of this.
So what can we do with this very human experience? I know that loads of other people have similar experiences, fact. I am privileged to hear this from enough people day to day and what matters is how can we help people to find a way, live a bit better, believe that they are ok and that they are not merely a sum of their symptoms. And that this too shall pass.
Here are the things that have helped me:
People
- Having friends and family that accept me for who I am and sit very calmly by my side and give me the space for the storm of anxiety to pass, however long it takes
- A work community that I am very fortunate to be part of that understands that our capabilities are not defined by or limited to our most difficult days (we have to get better at helping people to work when they are struggling – now more than ever)
- Incredible therapist and supervisor that challenge me to reflect on how I can make change and move towards a life where anxiety doesn’t take over
Movement
- Even in the trenches of fighting the internal voice, if you can move a bit, a gentle walk, yoga, a run, whatever. I promise you, you will feel better about yourself and if nothing else you will have put one front in front of the other and that is amazing when it feels like the hardest thing to do (even better if you can get in to the countryside)
Good Food
- Again, a hard one to achieve if cooking is the last thing you want to do but I find nurturing yourself with the food you love is an act of kindness. Baked potatoe with lots of butter, salt, tuna and cheese will not solve it all for me but I will ALWAYS look forward to it!
Cosiness
- I am not sure its word but washing off the day with a shower, putting on clean pj’s and finding the cosiest space in the house (hopefully with at least a bit of peace and quiet) then making it even cosier and cocoon like with a heated blanket will always help.
Podcasts and Books
- I cannot emphasise how much some recent Podcast finds have helped me to reframe and understand panic and anxiety. In particular a big shout out to Disordered with Anxiety Josh, anything with Bryony Gordon and Stompast (the Owen O’Kane episodes particularly). Some books that directly tackle Mental Health, again Owen O’Kane, Anxiety Josh, Matt Haigh and Dr Julie Smith.
- Also books that are easy to read and you love can take you somewhere else in your mind for as long as you can manage which may help quieten the critical voice for a bit.
Other thoughts and learnings are these:
There is no easy, quick fix way over anxiety. A bit like the Bear Hunt book – you have to go through it. Going through the worst days to show yourself that you can tolerate the things that scare you, the things that are scaring you probably aren’t as bad as you think and eventually you will find things easier to do again.
You have to believe this even when you are in the pits, holding the hope of knowing if you keep going forward eventually you will pop out the other end will keep you going in the darkest of days.
Treat yourself with the kindness that you give to others, don’t heap more shame on top of the shame that you probably already feel. Its not your fault.
You are not alone, there is someone else feeling really similar to you. And if they don’t feel similar they will be navigating their own stuff with their own story and narrative. Nobody feels ok all the time.
Sometimes giving 50% is your 100% if that’s all you have in the bag that day. You probably give 110% on the days that you can. Maybe not putting too much pressure on can help you find a happy % somewhere in between.
Lastly, therapy can really help. If you are a first timer it will be one of the bravest things you have ever done in the hardest of times and also one of the best things as you will have someone walking the journey with you and that in itself is awesome.
