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.

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.

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.

Confidence raising through commenting on blogs.

My efforts to make friends through Girlfriend Social were not successful, but I have not been put of. I'm still not ready to start talking to people in real life, but I figure any little step I make is good, and so began commenting on two blogs I read, XOJane and Autostraddle. Between them these sites have, in just a few weeks, expanded my ideas and reignited my interests.
XOJane is the site that has sparked my interest in taking more care of myself, it's the reason I'm not eating sugar, the reason I now actually moisturise everyday (my skin feels so much nicer!) and gave myself a mini-manicure. It's matter-of-fact approach is perfect, real people recommending products they spend their own money on is great, but also the emphasis on self care as something that can improve the way you feel about yourself mentally is really good for me. Also, I often do a thing where I assume I won't like people, that I won't have anything in common with them. With XOJane I find myself wanting to be friends with so many of the writer's, because they are awesome, which has in turn made me think remember that a lot of the ways I think about friendship are informed by my social anxiety, but hopefully my CBT will help with that.
The other awesome thing about XOJane? It's reignited my interest in feminism! And not just feminism, the emphasis on intersectional feminism , so I've been reading posts that have made me want to read about disability rights, I've learned about fat acceptance. I've been more interested in wider things than I have been in ages, maybe this is just the antidepressants talking and I hadn't realised how much I'd been in a rut, but reading people's post, and the amazing comments section, has really had an impact on me.
Autostraddle is having the same effect on me, in different directions. It's a lesbian blog with a very queer feel, very inclusive, and very interesting. It's made me want to read about queer theory again, as well as reminding me how little I know about things like the Civil Rights movement. It's the only place where, when joining, I was able to tick the 'pansexual' box, normally I'm impressed if I can choose 'bisexual' or 'other'. Also, there is an amazing column that is just links to interesting articles, not generally about queerness, but about all sorts of other things, the KKK, child beauty pageants, medical insurance. I've been trying to read a wider variety of fiction and nonfiction, and this column makes it easy.
These two sites have made me feel part of a community, even before I started commenting, and I like commenting, I find it easier to talk to people online, and both sites are so friendly and casual. If I can talk to people easily online, even if it's just saying I liked their article, or that I too can't stand tinned tuna, it's a step closer to be being comfortable talking to people in real life.

CBT session 1

I had my first proper session of CBT last friday, after a couple of introductory sessions. I'd been looking forward to it because I'm really interested by the whole idea of CBT and I like psychology generally, I loved reading Freud and Jung at uni. I'm feeling a bit more comfortable with my therapist now, though it still seems odd how young she is, she's so nice and calm and together, while I don't feel like that about myself at all.
So, the session was great. We went through the 5 Aspects, using this worksheet, which I had done about two different situations as homework. The sheets are quite useful because they make me think about my reactions to situations, which is the whole point of them, and I am beginning to see the persistent negative or unhelpful thoughts that are such a big part of anxiety and depression. I knew I had them, obviously, but looking at them almost from an outsider's point of view is good. It feel like taking a step back, and I think that is the whole idea of the worksheets. I am a person who will endlessly analyse their actions, at least here I feel like I might be doing so in a productive way, rather than going round in circles, especially looking over the sheets with my therapist and adding to them as we talked about the situations.
The other thing we did was work together on a more general sheet with examples of situations that made me uncomfortable, and my reactions to them. We ended up talking quite a lot about body language, and also the conflict between not wanting to be noticed vs wearing almost aggressively noticeable clothing and hair, something I did more when I was younger. Also, we talked about 'safety behaviours', which are apparently something I do all the time. I hide behind a book, I clean my glasses when I don't need to, I hunch in a corner, all the way up to lying about being ill so I can go home, all the things I do in an effort to feel more comfortable. Clearly, some of them are more problematic than others.
The best thing about that one hour session was how interesting everything was. I tend to get stuck in a rut, read the same type of book, watch the same sort of things on tv, now I want to go and read about psychology, and mental health, and all sort of different things. It's so good to go into a therapy session feeling ok, and come out feeling really good.

Going sugar-free

Today marks one week of me having given up sugar. This is a pretty big deal because I like sweet things a lot, as the title of this blog hints. However, it was getting to the point I was comfort eating a lot, lots of pastries, chocolate and biscuits, and even the not obviously sweet food was mostly prepackaged and full of preservatives. I would keep trying to eat healthily and then have a not-so-good day so get a big pack of chocolates. When I read something online about someone who gave up sugar for three months and started to sleep really well I decided that a lax attitude to healthy eating is not getting me anywhere, so maybe a really strict attitude will, though not a diet, because I am very distrustful of dieting.
It's actually gone really well, apart from a slip-up on saturday when I forgot that cranberry juice is actually cranberry juice drink and so has sugar in, the sugar rush from that was pretty intense after 5 days without any. I discovered nearly everything I eat has sugar in, so I've been making a lot more from scratch, and I've ended up eating more vegetables than before, which is good. Because of my medication I also can't drink alcohol, which is annoying in pubs as nearly everything has sugar or alcohol in, but I've been drinking lots of coffee, peppermint tea and green tea with jasmine. I think I may end up losing weight because of this, but that's not why I'm doing it, I just want to feel healthier and sleep better. I will start eating sugar again, after a while, but not in the same quantities, and I'll try to stay away from white bread and food that's full of preservatives too.
This is what a typical day without sugar looks like for me:

Breakfast:
Banana
Tea
Porridge

Lunch:
Brown bagel with cheese and spicy hummus
Carrot sticks
Unsalted nuts with raisins
Tea
Water

Snack:
Apple
Poppy seed biscuits

Tea:
Couscous with vegatables, lemon and chili
Cheesy roll with butter
Natural yoghurt
Green tea with jasmine

Medication

At the moment I feel like if you were to shake me I'd rattle, I'm taking so many different tablets. I'm taking:
Sertrolene - anti-depressant
Birth control
Victamin C and zinc - to ward off colds
Vitamin B12 - to increase energy
Painkillers - for my bust ankle
Diazepam - to help me sleep or if I get especially anxious.
I don't overly like the idea of taking lots of medication, but the pill is the best thing ever, and being so stressed and anxious I snap at people all day and cry myself to sleep/ lie awake worrying so much I can't sleep is clearly not a good state to be in. I am a little worried by the diazepam, it's not for everyday, just for if things are especially bad, which slightly reassures me, but the fact I'm taking valium seems such a big thing. On the other hand, I found it pretty funny when I realised, like I'm a character from Valley of the Dolls or something. I took one the other night when I couldn't sleep and was actually really disappointed, it didn't do anything and it still took me ages to get to sleep. Hopefully my eating better and exercising more will sort out my sleeping instead, I will still try the diazepam if I have a really bad anxiety situation, but the fact I can't sleep beacause I'm anxious and worrying doesn't bode well.
I'm hoping to drop the anti-depressants and diazepam soon, in a few months, because hopefully by then the combination of exercise, good diet and therapy will have all worked together to make me a bit more stable and less anxious on their own. I'm ok with medication as a short term solution, I don't like the idea of it being long term that much.