I've been reading things about self-care recently, as I've been preparing myself to deal with my anxiety without therapy or medication, which I do feel ready for, but only because I feel like I have good support structures in place. A lot of those structures come from CBT, I am able to recognise when I am getting anxious, and the ways my thought-patterns are affected, and I have coping-strategies for once I am enxious, in case I am not able to prevent the anxiety before it develops.
Self-care seems to be talked about in two different ways, by professionals, and by people practicing it. This is what NHS Choices has to say about self-care, but a lot of what is mentioned is not really what I think of as self-care, as it is often day-to-day stuff, eating well, exercise etc, which I do try to do, but what I really think of as self-care is what I do when I feel my anxiety coming on or am having a really bad day.
For example, I find it really different to read the news, I often find it overwhelming, depressing and frustrating. Though my anxiety is mostly social I do sometimes get the endless worrying over events, feeling that I cannot do anything about them, and then feeling worse because I feel so powerless, I become paralyzed by worry. There are several ways to deal with this - I don't read the paper, especially something like the Sun, Daily Mail or Metro. I will back off Twitter if I feel I need to, for example EverydaySexism is an amazing, inspiring project, but sometimes is just too much. This post of the 60 happiest dogs on the internet can seriously help too, if I need cheering up.
Another good thing for my anxiety is colouring. Most sites about self-care will mention yoga or meditation of some sort, I find meditation either boring or not helpful, sitting with nothing to do makes it too easy for my mind to fixate on whatever is worrying me, making the anxiety worse. However, colouring in can be used in a therapeutic manner, it is a fairly simple, repetitive task, that requires just enough attention for me to think about what colour to use next, not that I am an awful person or everyone is just pretending to like me. My mum bought me a few colouring books for Christmas, I spent the other day avoiding Twitter and colouring in ladies in pretty Victorian dresses, and felt so much calmer afterwards.
I also find taking care of myself, as in literally doing nice things to my body, to be very helpful. I imagine masturbation would be an obvious thing, I like to put on face masks, do my make-up even if I'm not going to leave the house, or paint my nails pretty colours. Olivia Singer, a writer for XoJane and XoVain, writes a lot about beauty as self-care, and I am so on board with it. I do also find buying pretty things makes me feel good, but self-care can look like an excuse to be totally selfish, whereas an at-home facial is free and makes me feel cared for.
The official sites that talk about self-care are useful, but seem to talk about looking after yourself as a duty and a necessity, I tend to think of emergency self-care as more of a luxury. I don't need to spend an hour giving myself glittery pink nails, but if I'm doing that instead of being upset at the treatment of women in society I'm doing better. Especially if afterwards I'm feeling well enough to start being angry rather than upset, and to donate to a women's charity or sign a petition.
Friday 28 June 2013
Monday 24 June 2013
Positive proof
Last week something that I had been suspected would happen soon did - I officially have one session of therapy left. In other words, I have officially made enough progress that my therapist and I no longer thing that I need weekly Cognitive Behavioral Therapy to manage my social anxiety. I will have one more session, in 5 weeks time, to see how I am managing my anxiety on my own and make sure that I am doing ok. I'm still taking anti-depressants and have a written list of trigger warnings and ways that I can try to prevent my anxiety becoming worse in bad situations, but other than that I will be managing my anxiety on my own.
This is obviously a really good step for me, I've known I've been doing well for some time, and that I have the skills in place to hopefully carry on doing well, but it is still a big step. I liked having someone to make plans for conversations or social situations I would be finding myself in, and I liked having homework, I work well when under instruction and now I am going to have to try to motivate myself to carry on trying to make new friends and leave the house for social situations. However, I still have this blog, which I hope will be enough inspiration to push myself, until eventually I don't need to try to be sociable, I will just do it.
The next step is stopping my anti-depressants, something I will obviously need to talk to my doctor about. Luckily I have been really really lucky with my doctor, she is really good, she listens to me and has given me really good advice, so I know that she will take into account how well therapy has been going, and how much better I feel I am managing at the moment.
I don't think this will be the last time mental illness will affect me in my life, it's already the second documented, treated time, and I'm only 26. However, I am lucky that my body reacts well to medications and that I have had really good doctors and therapists so far. If, or when, I have a recurrence of anxiety or depression, or a first occurrence of something else, hopefully with good treatment I will be able to recover in the way I am now.
This is obviously a really good step for me, I've known I've been doing well for some time, and that I have the skills in place to hopefully carry on doing well, but it is still a big step. I liked having someone to make plans for conversations or social situations I would be finding myself in, and I liked having homework, I work well when under instruction and now I am going to have to try to motivate myself to carry on trying to make new friends and leave the house for social situations. However, I still have this blog, which I hope will be enough inspiration to push myself, until eventually I don't need to try to be sociable, I will just do it.
The next step is stopping my anti-depressants, something I will obviously need to talk to my doctor about. Luckily I have been really really lucky with my doctor, she is really good, she listens to me and has given me really good advice, so I know that she will take into account how well therapy has been going, and how much better I feel I am managing at the moment.
I don't think this will be the last time mental illness will affect me in my life, it's already the second documented, treated time, and I'm only 26. However, I am lucky that my body reacts well to medications and that I have had really good doctors and therapists so far. If, or when, I have a recurrence of anxiety or depression, or a first occurrence of something else, hopefully with good treatment I will be able to recover in the way I am now.
Thursday 13 June 2013
Not so happy Father's Day.
This is one of the times of year I feel unusually awkward and defiant - the run up to Father's Day. On one hand I feel the need to prove that I don't care about it, it's just a day. One the other hand, there is the awkward conversation when someone asks me what I'll be doing for it, do I just blurt out 'my dad's dead?' Do I saw he 'passed on'? That conversation is never going to go well, and that's before I get to the really sticking point, my dad didn't pass on, he chose to kill himself. Not the best subject for polite small talk.
This blog post got me thinking about Father's Day, and fathers, in a slightly more critical sense. My dad was not an especially good father, the very fact he chose to remove himself from my life pretty much shows that, but that's not the only reason. I spent a lot of time being very angry at him, and also trying to prove that I didn't care, I didn't need him anyway. It's only in the last year or so that I've started to admit to myself that I do miss him, we got on very well, all my geeky interests are inherited from him, I used to borrow his 2000AD comics and watch Star Trek with him. If he was still alive we would have a lot to talk about, I'm sure he'd have loved A Song of Ice and Fire for example.
I feel that society expects things to go in a certain way, at least traditionally. I didn't go to my graduation, and one of the reasons was that there would be no family to be there in the photos with me, my mum had had a baby a month before and had no childminder, and of course my dad wouldn't be there. I'm pretty sure I'll never get married, and if I do it won't be a traditional wedding, there's no father to give me away, no father-of-the-bride speech. I hate talking to people about my family, for example boyfriends parents, there's no easy way to answer the 'and what does your father do?' question. The worst thing is that I don't even care about the way things are supposed to be, I know all about the importance of fathers to daughters being to do with how women were either their father's or husband's property.
Perhaps the worst thing is my own fault, the total erasure of my father from my life. Maybe it's just his manner of death, and if he had died in an accident it would have been different, but my mum and brothers and I don't talk about my dad. My older brother looks exactly like him, but it barely gets mentioned, though sometimes I'll look at a picture of my brother and the resemblance is uncanny. I don't know how my brothers feel about Father's Day, or most things, we're not close at all, and haven't been since we were really small. My mum's ex-husband did a pretty good job of being a step-father, in that he pretty much left us to get on with and didn't try to replace our father. I'm quite close to my mum's dad, though he lives in France and I only see him occasionally, I don't think I'd say he was a father-figure either, probably more so for my brothers though.
My mum did a really good job raising us, and I think single mums are amazing, in fact I expect to be one myself, intentionally, but still fell a little like I'm missing out each year. It upsets me when people take their fathers for granted, I know so many people with bad relationships with them, but I don't even have the chance to try and improve my relationship with my father. This August I'll have lived half of my life without my father, one day shouldn't mean much more, but everywhere I look adverts are telling me how funny, caring and loyal my farther is, not so much, and I'm sure I'm not the only one for who those adverts just raise bad feelings.
This blog post got me thinking about Father's Day, and fathers, in a slightly more critical sense. My dad was not an especially good father, the very fact he chose to remove himself from my life pretty much shows that, but that's not the only reason. I spent a lot of time being very angry at him, and also trying to prove that I didn't care, I didn't need him anyway. It's only in the last year or so that I've started to admit to myself that I do miss him, we got on very well, all my geeky interests are inherited from him, I used to borrow his 2000AD comics and watch Star Trek with him. If he was still alive we would have a lot to talk about, I'm sure he'd have loved A Song of Ice and Fire for example.
I feel that society expects things to go in a certain way, at least traditionally. I didn't go to my graduation, and one of the reasons was that there would be no family to be there in the photos with me, my mum had had a baby a month before and had no childminder, and of course my dad wouldn't be there. I'm pretty sure I'll never get married, and if I do it won't be a traditional wedding, there's no father to give me away, no father-of-the-bride speech. I hate talking to people about my family, for example boyfriends parents, there's no easy way to answer the 'and what does your father do?' question. The worst thing is that I don't even care about the way things are supposed to be, I know all about the importance of fathers to daughters being to do with how women were either their father's or husband's property.
Perhaps the worst thing is my own fault, the total erasure of my father from my life. Maybe it's just his manner of death, and if he had died in an accident it would have been different, but my mum and brothers and I don't talk about my dad. My older brother looks exactly like him, but it barely gets mentioned, though sometimes I'll look at a picture of my brother and the resemblance is uncanny. I don't know how my brothers feel about Father's Day, or most things, we're not close at all, and haven't been since we were really small. My mum's ex-husband did a pretty good job of being a step-father, in that he pretty much left us to get on with and didn't try to replace our father. I'm quite close to my mum's dad, though he lives in France and I only see him occasionally, I don't think I'd say he was a father-figure either, probably more so for my brothers though.
My mum did a really good job raising us, and I think single mums are amazing, in fact I expect to be one myself, intentionally, but still fell a little like I'm missing out each year. It upsets me when people take their fathers for granted, I know so many people with bad relationships with them, but I don't even have the chance to try and improve my relationship with my father. This August I'll have lived half of my life without my father, one day shouldn't mean much more, but everywhere I look adverts are telling me how funny, caring and loyal my farther is, not so much, and I'm sure I'm not the only one for who those adverts just raise bad feelings.
Tuesday 11 June 2013
Living a more fulfilled life
I have spent a long time doing nothing but going to work and chilling out with my boyfriend. Occasionally I'll go to Brighton and see my family, in the evenings I'll watch tv or read, at the weekend I'll watch tv or read, outside. My boyfriend and I go to museums quite a lot, or walks around London, but I haven't been to a gig in over 6 months, and it's only in the last month that I've very slowly begun the process of making new friends.
In a lot of ways I like my life, I'm an extreme introvert, one day at an unconference makes me want to sit alone in a quiet room for hours. However, it's not the most fulfilling type of life, especially at the weekends I feel like all I do is look at a screen all day, then go home and look at a screen in the evening. I don't have a huge amount of online friends, so it's not like I'm even being social in that way, though I am getting better thanks to XoJane.
When I was little I wanted to be a doctor, I spent years assuming I'd be doing something that would be helping people, and that doesn't seem to be happening. I'm in a bit of a career rut at the moment, I don't have the money I need to do an MA and so increase my job opportunities, and I don't get much fulfillment out my current role. Because my boyfriend and I live in different cities I don't want to give a regular weekend commitment to anything, because then I'll never see him, but the weekend is the only free time I have, especially as I work odd hours, starting late and finishing late. However, things may be changing. It's looking more likely that I'll be able to move in with my boyfriend in the next couple of months, this will free up my weekends, for the first time in 3 years we'll live in the same town!
I'm looking at volunteering at the moment, I like the idea of being a mental health advocate a lot. It ties in nicely to what I've been interested in recently, and seems a nice way of 'paying back', I feel like I've been very lucking with my experiences of doctors and therapists, helping someone who is not having such a good experience would be nice. I would also love to do reading with children, or any kind of literacy work. The problem with these schemes is they tend to be week only, so not very practical as I work monday to friday. Ideally I'd find a job in a lovely public library and reading with children would be part of my job, but the way the library job market is now that won't be likely to happen.
The other thing that is beginning to make me feel more fulfilled is online activism, something I've only been dipping my toes into so far. I'm really enjoying twitter at the moment, I've learnt a lot from reading other people's tweets, and I've started to have some interesting conversations as well. Through Twitter I have also found a lot of good blogs to read, including The Fementalists, which I am in the process of writing an article for. This will be the first thing I've submitted to something organised, rather than just typing my ramblings onto this blog. It seems like a good first step though, after all a blog about feminism and mental health is right up my alley, and raising awareness for this blog would be good too.
I am starting to feel like I am actually accomplishing things, even if they are very small things. I've got two book groups to go to next week, which will be fun but exhausting, and I'm going to work on the article to submit to The Fementalists, and other articles for this blog. I'm also going to try to engage in more conversations on Twitter and XoJane, it's may be mostly online, but socialising of any form is good, and it all makes me feel more confident about doing it in real life.
In a lot of ways I like my life, I'm an extreme introvert, one day at an unconference makes me want to sit alone in a quiet room for hours. However, it's not the most fulfilling type of life, especially at the weekends I feel like all I do is look at a screen all day, then go home and look at a screen in the evening. I don't have a huge amount of online friends, so it's not like I'm even being social in that way, though I am getting better thanks to XoJane.
When I was little I wanted to be a doctor, I spent years assuming I'd be doing something that would be helping people, and that doesn't seem to be happening. I'm in a bit of a career rut at the moment, I don't have the money I need to do an MA and so increase my job opportunities, and I don't get much fulfillment out my current role. Because my boyfriend and I live in different cities I don't want to give a regular weekend commitment to anything, because then I'll never see him, but the weekend is the only free time I have, especially as I work odd hours, starting late and finishing late. However, things may be changing. It's looking more likely that I'll be able to move in with my boyfriend in the next couple of months, this will free up my weekends, for the first time in 3 years we'll live in the same town!
I'm looking at volunteering at the moment, I like the idea of being a mental health advocate a lot. It ties in nicely to what I've been interested in recently, and seems a nice way of 'paying back', I feel like I've been very lucking with my experiences of doctors and therapists, helping someone who is not having such a good experience would be nice. I would also love to do reading with children, or any kind of literacy work. The problem with these schemes is they tend to be week only, so not very practical as I work monday to friday. Ideally I'd find a job in a lovely public library and reading with children would be part of my job, but the way the library job market is now that won't be likely to happen.
The other thing that is beginning to make me feel more fulfilled is online activism, something I've only been dipping my toes into so far. I'm really enjoying twitter at the moment, I've learnt a lot from reading other people's tweets, and I've started to have some interesting conversations as well. Through Twitter I have also found a lot of good blogs to read, including The Fementalists, which I am in the process of writing an article for. This will be the first thing I've submitted to something organised, rather than just typing my ramblings onto this blog. It seems like a good first step though, after all a blog about feminism and mental health is right up my alley, and raising awareness for this blog would be good too.
I am starting to feel like I am actually accomplishing things, even if they are very small things. I've got two book groups to go to next week, which will be fun but exhausting, and I'm going to work on the article to submit to The Fementalists, and other articles for this blog. I'm also going to try to engage in more conversations on Twitter and XoJane, it's may be mostly online, but socialising of any form is good, and it all makes me feel more confident about doing it in real life.
Tuesday 4 June 2013
Reaching the end
This blog was supposed to be a way for me to chart and reflect on my journey through Cognitive Behavioural Therapy. However, despite a really productive start I quickly stopped writing. Now I am reaching the end of CBT, I have had 10 sessions, and am scheduled to have 2 more, I expect my therapist to tell me she thinks I won't need any more after that.
The last few months have been hard work, it always seems to be be the really hard sessions, the ones where I end up crying in the therapist's office, that made the biggest difference. I used to swing between blaming myself for all of my problems and thinking nothing was ever my fault. Realising that it would be easier for me to make friends if I would actually bother to talk to people more than once, and just just assume most people are boring, was not a great moment. However, CBT is all about breaking unhelpful thought patterns, and that is one one I am working really hard on, and it does seem to be working.
Over the last few months I have talked a lot about the things that make me anxious and sad, but I have also done exercises to get me talking to people. With my therapist I've rehearsed what to say and do in certain situations, it feels a bit silly, but it really works, I'm at the point where the embarrassment of doing something is not longer worse than the fear of doing it.One task involved speaking to one of my therapist's colleagues, just about normal stuff, two 20-something women in a room, oh yeah, and it was on camera. It was terrifying, but afterwards, realising the other person didn't find me awkward, didn't think I seemed like and awful person, didn't even know I had anxiety problems, was amazing. I was not upset that there wasn't time to watch the video though.
I'm even starting to make friends, lunch with one person, and we're doing it again this week, and a comic book group that went really well. When I get interested I can begin to forget my anxiety, even if I spend the time more keyed-up than I should be, and totally drained afterwards. IO'm making real progress, and think I will be able to carry on making progress without therapy, and, eventually, without anti-depressants.
I'm not going to stop blogging though. Recently I've been reading a lot more non-fiction, my feminism feels reawakened, I'm more angry and less exhausted than I used to be. I've always thought intersectional feminism is the only sort that makes sense, but now I am trying hard to live up to that, and to educate myself. I am especially getting interested in attitudes to mental illness, and disability as a whole, and want to broaden my writing to not just the personal pieces I've done so far on this blog, but more wide-reaching stuff. I want to be an activist, I want to feel like I'm helping people, and myself, like I'm doing something with my life. So, look out for more posts, I already have a couple of ideas, and I'm really excited about them.
The last few months have been hard work, it always seems to be be the really hard sessions, the ones where I end up crying in the therapist's office, that made the biggest difference. I used to swing between blaming myself for all of my problems and thinking nothing was ever my fault. Realising that it would be easier for me to make friends if I would actually bother to talk to people more than once, and just just assume most people are boring, was not a great moment. However, CBT is all about breaking unhelpful thought patterns, and that is one one I am working really hard on, and it does seem to be working.
Over the last few months I have talked a lot about the things that make me anxious and sad, but I have also done exercises to get me talking to people. With my therapist I've rehearsed what to say and do in certain situations, it feels a bit silly, but it really works, I'm at the point where the embarrassment of doing something is not longer worse than the fear of doing it.One task involved speaking to one of my therapist's colleagues, just about normal stuff, two 20-something women in a room, oh yeah, and it was on camera. It was terrifying, but afterwards, realising the other person didn't find me awkward, didn't think I seemed like and awful person, didn't even know I had anxiety problems, was amazing. I was not upset that there wasn't time to watch the video though.
I'm even starting to make friends, lunch with one person, and we're doing it again this week, and a comic book group that went really well. When I get interested I can begin to forget my anxiety, even if I spend the time more keyed-up than I should be, and totally drained afterwards. IO'm making real progress, and think I will be able to carry on making progress without therapy, and, eventually, without anti-depressants.
I'm not going to stop blogging though. Recently I've been reading a lot more non-fiction, my feminism feels reawakened, I'm more angry and less exhausted than I used to be. I've always thought intersectional feminism is the only sort that makes sense, but now I am trying hard to live up to that, and to educate myself. I am especially getting interested in attitudes to mental illness, and disability as a whole, and want to broaden my writing to not just the personal pieces I've done so far on this blog, but more wide-reaching stuff. I want to be an activist, I want to feel like I'm helping people, and myself, like I'm doing something with my life. So, look out for more posts, I already have a couple of ideas, and I'm really excited about them.
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