Hi!
Sorry for the delay in posting - the past couple of weeks have been pretty busy and my brain has been a little bit all over the place.
I've decided I want to talk about that ... the fact that my brain has been a little bit all over the place. Mental illness is not spoken enough at all but that's not a new fact - but whilst I'm sitting here typing that, I know that I don't talk about mine because I'm scared. Scared of people's opinions, thoughts .... whether or not they think I'm just being 'a drama queen'. Being scared about talking about it though isn't helping the situation, which is ultimately not helping what I want to try and achieve in life; trying to help people feel more comfortable in who they are and talking about what's on their mind without fear of judgement. So as I have some time on my hands today - here's my story ...
A couple of years ago, I was diagnosed as suffering with moderate anxiety and mild depression. The depression, to be honest, I didn't quite understand as I had never felt like I had suffered with depression, but apparently the 2 come hand in hand. With the diagnosis came a round of 12 cognitive behavioural therapy sessions ... to be honest, they didn't seem to work for me but this was more related to the fact that I didn't necessarily want to have the sessions - my GP advised that I go through with them as the anxiety/depression diagnosis was initially picked up by an ever increasing heart rate.
My anxiety initially started when I was very young; the upbringing my siblings and I had wasn't the easiest and we were put into a lot of high pressure situations which resulted in me being absolutely terrified of confrontation - to the point where I was terrified to do the smallest things like, for example, have a different opinion to others, scared that the disagreement would result in an argument. This resulted in me being a very quiet kid in school, therefore being bullied because I didn't join in (along with also being a redhead, having glasses and being a little chubbier back in school ... kids are not the nicest at times!). This lasted all of primary school and then secondary school too. Once I got to secondary school, I was approached by my head of year and mum and was asked to see a councillor every week - this was I believe my 2nd week into being in year 7 and because the teachers were concerned as they could see I was not talking to anyone. My counselling lasted the full 4 years I was at secondary school.
Throughout my times in school, college and university, I was constantly reminded that I don't have enough confidence and if I improved this, I could go far - however, I don't think people realised that by constantly reminding me about my lack of confidence, it was making this deteriorate ever the more.
So, fast forward to basically present day, or the last 5 years, my confidence and anxiety are still issues that haven't just gone away ... however, they have got a lot better. For me, the way I've made myself better is by throwing myself into situations that terrify me. If there's a particular event that is scaring me, or is causing me to have panic attacks, I will now try my best to make myself do those things telling myself something a long the lines of "this time tomorrow, it'll all be done". That line has got me through quite a lot to be fair and now I try to use it to help my friends when they're worried about something.
As kind of explained at the beginning of this post, I absolutely still do have really bad head space moments. However, this was helped massively by my previous weekend in Brighton with Tommy (https://steemit.com/@hopefulvagabond). Here's a picture I took of him in Brighton ...
I was and have been in a better headspace since last weekend - if you can, surround yourself with people that make you smile and people that take away those worries. I did not worry at all what anyone else was thinking of me; what people's opinions of me were, if they thought I was weird ... and that was all because of that guy above.
If there is anyone reading this that has or does suffer with anxiety, always try and remember you are never ever alone. There are people out there who want to help and want to listen and don't want you to feel alone. If anyone out there does want to talk, please feel free to talk to me, I'm more than happy to try and help :) .
P.S Apologies if any of the above didn't make much sense ... I'm hoping my writing gets better soon!