A title ?

I guess it’s funny to me that whenever I started this tumblr page I must have been at least 18 and apparently thought naming it after a line from one of my favourite movies would be cool or edgy maybe . A line from a movie that now seems to me more serious than cool and more close to home than the edgy feel I’d been going for. What’s your diag-nonsense then?

I had thought about not writing this at all and after all what good does it do to dwell on your issues . Maybe this has been my problem all along and infact according to my counsellor perhaps is the same for many people in the West of Scotland . This inability to accept that dwelling on your own thoughts and feeling is not weakness . Beating yourself up for being unable to cope does not make you shit at life .Sharing your most mental thoughts with another can actually be refreshing even if its just to know you arent alone . Its funny to think how readily we read instructions for everything else but when it comes to our own brains - brains that are more complex than your tv or computer we are so ready to just handle them on our own with no guidance and shrug off all the issues.

I recently found myself at a music festival , a music festival that I had been excited for , a music festival that would not be something out of the ordinary for me “normal me ” to attend . Yet we got there and I felt sick, sick to my stomach and I was scared so so scared . I didnt understand why and so like most people when we don’t understand or can’t explain something rationally I shrugged it off and pushed it to one side . Making excuses like I’ve been in the sun too long or I’ve drank too much . Later that evening the feeling grew and I made my partner take me to the medical tent all the while feeling embarrassed and like I was ruining the weekend for other people . It’s there that after many checks I was told that my heart rate was possibly a little high but otherwise I was fine . How do you sit there and tell a medical professional , no I’m not fine and I can’t tell you how far from fine I feel and I think I’m going to die. Well the answer is you don’t, at least not in my case anyway . No I hopped off the bed and thanked him for his time and embarrassingly went back to my partner having to tell him it was nothing and return to our friends . Everyday for the rest of that festival I didn’t drink because I needed to feel in control of whatever this was my body was doing and so I got up and put on a brave face and did my best to go have fun . Every night though after the last band I’d feel so so tired more tired than I’ve ever felt before and I couldn’t stay awake and party with my friends. I Didn’t realise how exhausting it is to pretend you are okay all the time . This was just the beginning for me .

Right at the end of this festival I finally decided to try tell my partner what was going on as ridiculous as the sensible part of my brain thought that was going to sound . I did my best to explain the need to be sober to be in control just incase I got unwell or the overwhelming sense of dread that made no sense to me . I’ve been in large crowds before and I love music and I’m not unwell so what could this be . My partner was great I can’t fault him he comforted me and promised me as soon as we got home I could see a doctor and we would figure this all out .

So now I’m a few months on and my final diagnosis seems to be generalised anxiety disorder specifically health anxiety based . Now before I go into my healing process I want to say how hard it is for me to write that diagnosis . I am not someone that exactly believes in “anxiety” or maybe I should say I didn’t believe . My own father has suffered from depression for many years and I viewed it as an excuse for his bad behaviours and his tendency to mess life up for himself . I was that person moaning about all those people sharing anxiety posts on Facebook and complaining about how badly it messes with their lives . I thought anxiety was just something everyone had at some point and surely if you wanted to overcome it well then you could. I’d complain often about people not helping themselves but continuing to post these cries for attention . How wrong I have been . I think possibly I knew at that festival what it was I was experiencing but it felt like there is a stigma attached to saying I’m having an anxiety attack or I think I have anxiety . One that made me feel embarrassed that this could be happening to me . I don’t worry about all these things that I’m worrying about , normal me doesn’t burst into tears everytime I get a twinge in my head, old me didn’t wear a fitbit to track my heart rate and call the doctor everytime I noticed an anomaly. I think it took a long time for me to process that all those versions are the same me . Where am I now ? After a few months of some highs and extreme lows and plenty of tears I found the strength to admit I needed more help to conquer this. I signed up to counselling sessions through occupational health and began seeing a wonderful woman Maragaret . As you can imagine I went to my session a sceptic or at least doubting that talking about it more was going to solve it but alas you cant moan about others not helping themselves if you aren’t willing to do it yourself . My first session I have to admit I mostly cried , I couldn’t tell whether they were sad or happy tears but there was relief there . Just relief to speak about it , relief to finally admit this is real and to finally stop playing it down for the sake of people around me . We established straight away that I am not alone and what I was going through is not unusual . We also talked about loss and I couldn’t understand why loss related to my situation as I had automatically assumed that loss refereed only to losing a person . Maragaret was quick to tell me I had lost a person , id lost me or at least the me I was familiar with the me that ended up with a kidney infection because I couldn’t be bothered going to the doctors when I was in pain and not this new me that poked and prodded herself so much it was no wonder I was worried about that weird red mark on my wrist or that tender feeling near my knee . In the past few months I had been to the hospital convinced I was having a heart attack, the doctors because I was so sure I had a blood clot in my leg and then received a referral for the headache clinic because I was so sure I had braintumours . Now writing this I know it’s total nonsense what person in their right mind does those things. Well apparently I did … Some days it got so bad I thought I might just go to A&E and stand and shout till they gave me all the scans and tests that I thought were going to finally put my mind at ease but of course it doesn’t work like that. So loss I had infact lost myself.

I was given a task to write down things the little evil person on my shoulder might say to me and I did and when I read it back they were awful . It was then ten times worse when Margaret read them out , like really how can you help yourself when those are the ways you put yourself down all the time . So compassion, compassion was a lesson to learn for me . A way to make myself take time out in an anxiety fueled situation and compassionately talk myself down and give rational , sensible advice that didn’t involve just yelling things at myself for not working how I think I should . For not being good enough to go out and enjoy something that should be happy without ruining it all being a panicked mess. So my method as awfully simple as it seems is when the closing black walls start moving their way in I breath and I count and I remind myself that this, this is nothing and that I am 26 and I have already made it through so many things . I am strong and healthy and I have so much to see and I am going to live for this moment right here because as wise Margaret told me “if you have one foot in the past and one in the future you are effectively pissing in the here and now ” .

Be understanding also , I watched a mindfullness seminar recently I believe it might have been on tedtalks . A suggested method from the speaker was to give your brain a name , you know like an old friend . So when your brain starts running off on it’s crazy train pulling out every bad thought and possibility of the day you can answer it . Sensible you can tell Brenda , you know what Brenda I’ve heard what you had to say but I don’t think I’m gonna take that road today . I know it sounds ridiculous but it made me laugh and I liked it and those are small things to live for .

I know this has been a long post but I think I wanted to write about how something that I didn’t believe was real happened to me . I wanted the chance to take back all those negative non believing vibes I’d put out and be upfront and honest about my experience. Life isn’t Instagram perfect and sometimes I think we forget that. I am not healed and I am far from finished my journey but I am happy and well and alive and that right now is more than I’ve felt in months. I wanted to remind anyone going through anything at all that’s it’s alright and it does get better. I wanted to remind myself so I can read back how horrible it was but not to dwell on the bad just to remind myself of how good it feels to have anxiety free days and of how good it feels to know it’s not something to be embarrassed about and I did something about it and I’ll continue doing things about it so that I can live always in the here and now. So don’t forget compassion and understanding and remember to laugh at yourself in between. It’s alright to be a bit crazy