It is such a rewarding feeling when your post goes up onto a blog. I have been a regular reader of the site Tiny Buddha during my anxiety and many posts have made feel a bit more cosy inside and less alone. As my recovery was making good progress, I decided it was time for me to share my story like the millions of you have on Tiny Buddha and see if I would be able to help others too.
Having to wait several months for my story to arrive was exciting but I also couldn't wait. Lori, the creator of the site sent me an email with my link as promised, and within hours I had already received two comments from people who also suffered with chronic anxiety. I got that warm fuzzy feeling but it was ten times warmer than reading someone else's post. It was great knowing how similar their stories were and how encouraging they were. It is such an accepting community.
When you write about experiences of anxiety and depression you still feel inside like you are the only one and even though you have friends and family around, they won't be able to know exactly how you feel completely. My friend told me they had severe depression the other day, and although my depression was mild I knew exactly what it was like to feel embarrassed, helpless and alone. You want to remain strong in front of the eyes of the people who care about you and don't want them to judge you.
My friend wanted to pass on to our other friend about her situation to which they managed to understand a little because their mother had had depression. They said "We never use phrases like: That's so depressing - because feeling upset isn't the same as having depression'. I said that was a really sensible thing to do. It made me think of the times when people would tell me to 'just relax' and I felt they would almost be annoyed at for me just not trying. But the thing is, if you have anxiety or depression, you can't just cheer up or relax, and believe me, they are the two things the we want most in the world when we feel this way and we get frustrated that we can't have it.
Since January my recovery has tapered off and I feel pretty much my normal self. I am learning to relax but rather than telling myself to literally, I am using kindness and self-acceptance which gradually gets absorbed into my mind. What I have learned with anxiety is what we fear the worst. I remember in my worst states that I feel the world would just suddenly fail against me and that my body wouldn't be able to take anymore pressure I was giving it. It's always hard to face fear in the face and feel those horrible sensations. It's like walking through a current going the opposite way. You want to trek to that light of happiness. Even if you feel like you are going nowhere, you have to remember that each step you are getting closer. You just have to remember that you are ok and you and your body will get through this.
There were many times where I would just wish my anxiety to be gone, many times when I thought it had gone, but when it did 'disappear' it disappeared too quickly. It's only having recovered slowly that things have averaged out.
Regarding my Yoga, someone asked in the comment of my Tiny Buddha post…Well I am getting there. It's about carving out time and committing and that will be something that will take its time also.
For now, here is my Tiny Buddha post …. Practice, Persevere, and Trust That You're Making Progress
I hope it brings inspiration to those whose minds are bit fuzzy and dark but also an inspirational read into the world and journey of anxiety and depression.
Zoe
Wednesday, 16 April 2014
Friday, 14 February 2014
Anxiety Advantages
When I was struggling terribly with my anxiety between 2010-2012, I would constantly fight with the tensions I had. I still working at it today but I'm making a gradual slope up. At the time, however I thought 'thinking' my fears away would be good use of my time, but in fact it made it all the worse.
Things began to change slightly in 2012. I wanted to get on top of my feelings so I made a motivational board, giving me a woosh of positivity and purpose. I made my motivation board a physical one which I could look at regularly which I still update it to match my current progress to help stay in-tune. I have also linked my Pinterest board for any inspiration:
I really took 'Inspire a generation' in my own stride with a relaxing hobby rather than a traditional sport - knitting. I had begun a simply ball of white wool which I knitted top to bottom without a particular pattern in mind. It was uneven and lumpy, representing a Father Christmas shaped beard, but I enjoyed it, calming my breathing down to a rate I hadn't felt in what seemed a lifetime.
2013, enough was enough. I referred myself for some therapy, and was given a self-help style programme with tailored-to-fit modules, which gave me structure to turn my life back around.
I came to learn about mindfulness, using the present to calm the mind and live life more to the full. I am learning to slow down and take breaks for myself and knowing that when I'm over-doing it my body is usually telling me that through my anxiety.
I have been able to develop a more easy-going mindset and be a bit more kind to myself which has decreased anxiety levels and allow me to take my time to relax whenever I do feel on edge.
2014, I have started yoga. It has been something I have wanted to do for a longtime and it's another positive thing to add to my journey of personal growth. It has been a great way to relax and unwind as well as strengthening core muscle groups, resulting in the ultimate feel good factor.
My goal for the rest of the year is to do more things I want to do, the things that have been left out while my anxiety has got in the way: new hobbies, new styles, new career, making time for the hobbies I already enjoy...
But today is Valentines Day and I'm happy. And that's not to with any cards or chocolates and romantic gestures because I haven't had any this year but I'm making the most of having the trains cancelled from the flooding, being a little bit ill and having some self-love day, staying in bed and rejuvenating.
Oddly all this positivity has stemmed from a bit of anxiety.
Zoë
(Look out for my Anxiety Story on the blog Tiny Buddha where I talk about Practice, Patience and Perseverance: Trust You're Making Progress. Coming soon in April.)
Wednesday, 5 February 2014
The Deep Introvert
Introverts are very deep and tend to be listeners. We tend to make good writers because we have great insight about the world.
I find that Extraverts can talk about anything and mostly to anyone. I have my own selection of whom I really talk to and I find that all that I say is full of depth and and quite fluffy with plenty of rhetorical questions resembling the process of my mind, a blog posts or a journal posts. It's like I'm not really talking to anyone at all.
I am a listener. I always have been, and there are many great things about listeners. They tend to be more understanding and patient people. I have a set of Extravert friends who I speak to mainly on a one-to-one basis. I feel like they are the more dominate ones because they hold the conversation and often come up the various topics to talk about. "Oh so-and-so will listen to me." I wish I had that confidence. It's degrading of personal value to say that I don't think people will listen to me. All I have is that deep, fluffy stuff I just mentioned and that can be too overwhelming for people, I can sense it. It just makes me feel I should be quiet and just listen to them instead.
I have to start believing that people do want to listen to what I have to say, more than just them just wanting a reply for me and happily getting it. I guess it's what makes me a decent friend to have around.
I guess I just feel a bit lost right now. Searching for external things to fill the gaps doesn't really work, and then you are forced to look into yourself. I never used to find it hard but I seem to now. Maybe talking about the deep fluffy stuff is my way of writing to myself using an audience as my value rather than myself. That should change, and I should see what a special Introvert I am.
I find that Extraverts can talk about anything and mostly to anyone. I have my own selection of whom I really talk to and I find that all that I say is full of depth and and quite fluffy with plenty of rhetorical questions resembling the process of my mind, a blog posts or a journal posts. It's like I'm not really talking to anyone at all.
I am a listener. I always have been, and there are many great things about listeners. They tend to be more understanding and patient people. I have a set of Extravert friends who I speak to mainly on a one-to-one basis. I feel like they are the more dominate ones because they hold the conversation and often come up the various topics to talk about. "Oh so-and-so will listen to me." I wish I had that confidence. It's degrading of personal value to say that I don't think people will listen to me. All I have is that deep, fluffy stuff I just mentioned and that can be too overwhelming for people, I can sense it. It just makes me feel I should be quiet and just listen to them instead.
I have to start believing that people do want to listen to what I have to say, more than just them just wanting a reply for me and happily getting it. I guess it's what makes me a decent friend to have around.
I guess I just feel a bit lost right now. Searching for external things to fill the gaps doesn't really work, and then you are forced to look into yourself. I never used to find it hard but I seem to now. Maybe talking about the deep fluffy stuff is my way of writing to myself using an audience as my value rather than myself. That should change, and I should see what a special Introvert I am.
Monday, 27 January 2014
Personalised Healing
When you want to know a lot about something, it's natural to read up on it, esspeically with the easy access we have on the internet nowadays.
It's amazing how so many blogs are posted everyday about various things. If you want to know something, you will most likely going to find it, but what if there are so many different articles and web pages to look at on the same thing and you don't know which ones are right or nonetheless true.
Since I have been working with my anxiety, I have read many things about it and so of those resources were given to me when I was doing my therapy, so I feel like I can trust them. I also read Tiny Buddha regularly and read about other people's inspiring stories of overcoming anxiety and depression, as well as many other obstacles in life. I have even been inspired to write my own post which should be up on the website some time in February.
Articles like theses are everywhere and it's great we can share them, but sometimes I think I read too much and gather too much information about healing and relaxing. It's filling my head and I don't know which options to choose from, I don't know which options will help me. I keep telling myself to persevere and sometimes I just don't know what to persevere.
Every anxiety period is different from the one before. I feel the same symptoms but finding what will get rid of it is a nightmare. I try things that I have tried before and have worked and then they don't work. For all I know it could be that I am losing patience with myself, because I expect immediate results for everything. I know I should practice patience, but then again I find that I get impatient for not being patient fast enough. Full of so many twists and turns.
It's all about experimenting.
One thing that I have learned recently is that not all the information you read is right for you. Everyone has their own versions of life and they have their own versions of addictions and anxiety and depression, etc. We all learn about relationships differently. Some people need to go through lots of relationships to know what they want and grow up while they do that. This is anxiety is teaching me about growing up in just the same way. So, when people come to suggest mindfulness, particularly in meditation, they say it's about bringing your focus back to your body.
The body always present and I see that, but working that into my practice just got all me all aggrivated because I was simply doing the wrong thing for my body. I am hyper-aware of it as it is and I was thinking, I need to do the opposite. I know it says in books and on the internet that focusing your body is how your do it, but it doesn't work for me, I need to do it a different way, to focus the world externally, without it being distraction (an avoidance technique).
What I do know is that you can't force anything. I can't force myself to relax, no one can force themselves to be happy if they have depression. Though I repeat this to myself often: You just have to sit and feel and be present with negative sensations and let them pass on their own.
In time, it does. It's about putting up with it.
So, experiment, not every piece of advice in the book is suitable for you, but you'll what is right for you some way.
It's amazing how so many blogs are posted everyday about various things. If you want to know something, you will most likely going to find it, but what if there are so many different articles and web pages to look at on the same thing and you don't know which ones are right or nonetheless true.
Since I have been working with my anxiety, I have read many things about it and so of those resources were given to me when I was doing my therapy, so I feel like I can trust them. I also read Tiny Buddha regularly and read about other people's inspiring stories of overcoming anxiety and depression, as well as many other obstacles in life. I have even been inspired to write my own post which should be up on the website some time in February.
Articles like theses are everywhere and it's great we can share them, but sometimes I think I read too much and gather too much information about healing and relaxing. It's filling my head and I don't know which options to choose from, I don't know which options will help me. I keep telling myself to persevere and sometimes I just don't know what to persevere.
Every anxiety period is different from the one before. I feel the same symptoms but finding what will get rid of it is a nightmare. I try things that I have tried before and have worked and then they don't work. For all I know it could be that I am losing patience with myself, because I expect immediate results for everything. I know I should practice patience, but then again I find that I get impatient for not being patient fast enough. Full of so many twists and turns.
It's all about experimenting.
One thing that I have learned recently is that not all the information you read is right for you. Everyone has their own versions of life and they have their own versions of addictions and anxiety and depression, etc. We all learn about relationships differently. Some people need to go through lots of relationships to know what they want and grow up while they do that. This is anxiety is teaching me about growing up in just the same way. So, when people come to suggest mindfulness, particularly in meditation, they say it's about bringing your focus back to your body.
The body always present and I see that, but working that into my practice just got all me all aggrivated because I was simply doing the wrong thing for my body. I am hyper-aware of it as it is and I was thinking, I need to do the opposite. I know it says in books and on the internet that focusing your body is how your do it, but it doesn't work for me, I need to do it a different way, to focus the world externally, without it being distraction (an avoidance technique).
What I do know is that you can't force anything. I can't force myself to relax, no one can force themselves to be happy if they have depression. Though I repeat this to myself often: You just have to sit and feel and be present with negative sensations and let them pass on their own.
In time, it does. It's about putting up with it.
So, experiment, not every piece of advice in the book is suitable for you, but you'll what is right for you some way.
Friday, 2 August 2013
Appreciating life in uncertain times...
Happy Birthday!
It's what we say to the people that we love and the people who loves us say to us. Everyone has a birthday and it is a thing we can all share in common. Some of us look forward to our birthdays, some do not. Every year we face getting older, but even so, it is a celebration of life and achievement, of love and kindness. We feel invincible on our birthdays. 'It's my day, nothing can go wrong.' However it can do and it's even worse when it's someone else is suffering on their birthday and there isn't anything that you can do about it as much as you want to.
It may be something that scares you out of your skin and you just want to jump out of your body and run, just run somewhere, run away from the scaring frighting, uncontrollable thing that is hurting someone else. We avoid what we fear, but does that really help anyone? The anxiety and shock of the uncertain. The uncertain mind of the uncertain sufferer. To only we relax when we have identified the problem.
We have to accept our anxious sufferings sometimes until they disappear on their own, no matter how odd and discomforting it can feel as the heart pumps crazily round the body, trying to understand it's host.
Bodies are odd and they try to protect us. They keep us alive and do all they can too, until they really can't.
So the best gift on a birthday is a life. Your life, your families life, your friends life, those people you love, their lives. Each life is a special gift, more so than the presents unwrapped early before breakfast,. It's no more important than life itself. And when you know someone that you love and care about is okay, then you can really appreicate the importance of their life on their birthday and how glad that probably feel they still have it.
It's what we say to the people that we love and the people who loves us say to us. Everyone has a birthday and it is a thing we can all share in common. Some of us look forward to our birthdays, some do not. Every year we face getting older, but even so, it is a celebration of life and achievement, of love and kindness. We feel invincible on our birthdays. 'It's my day, nothing can go wrong.' However it can do and it's even worse when it's someone else is suffering on their birthday and there isn't anything that you can do about it as much as you want to.
It may be something that scares you out of your skin and you just want to jump out of your body and run, just run somewhere, run away from the scaring frighting, uncontrollable thing that is hurting someone else. We avoid what we fear, but does that really help anyone? The anxiety and shock of the uncertain. The uncertain mind of the uncertain sufferer. To only we relax when we have identified the problem.
We have to accept our anxious sufferings sometimes until they disappear on their own, no matter how odd and discomforting it can feel as the heart pumps crazily round the body, trying to understand it's host.
Bodies are odd and they try to protect us. They keep us alive and do all they can too, until they really can't.
So the best gift on a birthday is a life. Your life, your families life, your friends life, those people you love, their lives. Each life is a special gift, more so than the presents unwrapped early before breakfast,. It's no more important than life itself. And when you know someone that you love and care about is okay, then you can really appreicate the importance of their life on their birthday and how glad that probably feel they still have it.
Friday, 3 May 2013
What's your university life?
Sometimes we reach a dead end and need change.
I remember two years ago upon starting university, I would dream about student life in the Halls and perhaps meeting a close friend or boyfriend whom I could have long meaningful discussions with, late at night in the kitchen while everyone was asleep. I could see a vibrant me with a life that combined of university and it's accommodation.
I didn't get the chance to go to Halls for freshman year and I was deeply disappointed by that. Was I truly missing out on the student life? However I got an application in early a year last May and I knew things were going to be opening up for me. I was ready to move out and start an independent life.
September now feels miles away. My mental and emotional health being tossed here and there with feelings I hadn't expected to feel in my bubble cloud. Living with anxiety makes those experiences much harder, and not to mention the cold weight of guilt on my shoulders for being extremely introspective. Was I missing it all?
I shouldn't have to feel guilty though. I have however been extremely productive with my time here just by finding myself..in a small little cell sized room. When the more out-going flatmates ask if I'm up to anything, I think *I'm doing so much, you have no idea* but really say "Mmm not much. Just staying in." Sometimes you just want to have something interesting to say. But what I am doing is interesting to me but it won't be for you, I think. I don't place value on getting drunk every night and trying to catch up on my sleep. I do however enjoy socialising with the wide range of friends that I have met during my stay in Halls and the ones I go to uni with. I like to talk about topics that I have a variety of routes and depth to them with friendships that will at least last the two or three years of education time or maybe beyond that for a few.
There are two different types of uni life and both of them are valid. There are many introspective types, blogging, listening to music, chatting to the selected few flat friends and finding themselves, in every Halls and that is ok. We may feel pressured to peel away from our comfortable skins but I believe that if you are happy with what you are doing, then thats where you should be at this point in time. When the time is right, we will come out of our chrisilis and bloom and find each other. I heard the other day in the laundrette, a large group of high volumed voices were discussing the quiet girl in on of their flats. They were going to invite her to a big party saying that no one should be alone all the time. They then said that apparently the girl was happy to be by herself and I was thinking. *Yeah, I feel like that too. If I want to socialise then I will.
But Halls, it's not for me regardless of all the beneficial life skills have I have learned. I can cook healthy nutritious meals and do laundry but there are so many thoughts and actions that can be done in one little room and I feel like I have come to the end of what it has for me. As for next year, I'll be commuting again. I'll have that freedom to be in the outside world and still be as introspective or as open as I like. Sometimes when we have small place we curl up to, we do like to stay there a bit too long. I would like to get out in the world, but who said it had to be in the noisy student nightlife?
Live a little.
I remember two years ago upon starting university, I would dream about student life in the Halls and perhaps meeting a close friend or boyfriend whom I could have long meaningful discussions with, late at night in the kitchen while everyone was asleep. I could see a vibrant me with a life that combined of university and it's accommodation.
I didn't get the chance to go to Halls for freshman year and I was deeply disappointed by that. Was I truly missing out on the student life? However I got an application in early a year last May and I knew things were going to be opening up for me. I was ready to move out and start an independent life.
September now feels miles away. My mental and emotional health being tossed here and there with feelings I hadn't expected to feel in my bubble cloud. Living with anxiety makes those experiences much harder, and not to mention the cold weight of guilt on my shoulders for being extremely introspective. Was I missing it all?
I shouldn't have to feel guilty though. I have however been extremely productive with my time here just by finding myself..in a small little cell sized room. When the more out-going flatmates ask if I'm up to anything, I think *I'm doing so much, you have no idea* but really say "Mmm not much. Just staying in." Sometimes you just want to have something interesting to say. But what I am doing is interesting to me but it won't be for you, I think. I don't place value on getting drunk every night and trying to catch up on my sleep. I do however enjoy socialising with the wide range of friends that I have met during my stay in Halls and the ones I go to uni with. I like to talk about topics that I have a variety of routes and depth to them with friendships that will at least last the two or three years of education time or maybe beyond that for a few.
There are two different types of uni life and both of them are valid. There are many introspective types, blogging, listening to music, chatting to the selected few flat friends and finding themselves, in every Halls and that is ok. We may feel pressured to peel away from our comfortable skins but I believe that if you are happy with what you are doing, then thats where you should be at this point in time. When the time is right, we will come out of our chrisilis and bloom and find each other. I heard the other day in the laundrette, a large group of high volumed voices were discussing the quiet girl in on of their flats. They were going to invite her to a big party saying that no one should be alone all the time. They then said that apparently the girl was happy to be by herself and I was thinking. *Yeah, I feel like that too. If I want to socialise then I will.
But Halls, it's not for me regardless of all the beneficial life skills have I have learned. I can cook healthy nutritious meals and do laundry but there are so many thoughts and actions that can be done in one little room and I feel like I have come to the end of what it has for me. As for next year, I'll be commuting again. I'll have that freedom to be in the outside world and still be as introspective or as open as I like. Sometimes when we have small place we curl up to, we do like to stay there a bit too long. I would like to get out in the world, but who said it had to be in the noisy student nightlife?
Live a little.
Wednesday, 10 April 2013
There is Enough Space for Respect In This World..
What happened to a world full of correspondence of letter, a world full of individualisation of your handwriting and the magazine drawings of the acceptably unachievable perfect woman?
We seem to live in a world now where technology has taken over us. I look around me and I'm surrounded, just like many of us could agree. An instant buzz of the mobile and the ding of an email, the too familiar black and white text and those in speech bubbles, recreating a real life conversation. We have become so virtual. Yes, the basics have become useful, but not an unhealthy dependency we have all be guilty to admit too.
Children, touching iPads and iPhones, putting together virtual puzzles and forgetting the tangibility of those misshaped cardboard pieces. I realise now that this is what my photography lectures have been talking about with their film cameras and how we have changed that dramatically, shooting acceptably good quality on our phones. I hadn't seen it that way, but there is always two sides to every argument.
Sometimes when you walk away from technology, you really experience a pure version of yourself. I never gaze hour after hour on Facebook at the other girls deeming themselves hot, in competition with their female friends and surrounding males. I don't stare at online magazine sites trying to keep in touch with the fashion of 'right now'. All this and what makes the world perfect, to say the least in a girls eye, is forever changing, the whole world is forever changing. We need to find ourselves and respect ourselves. This is what has gone wrong and we don't seem to know our place in this world. Our politeness and respect as flopped. All this crime, drug usage and lusty sex is a distraction, a quick route to get us to our happy place, but does it really? Of course not. We want so much more than that. We want love and we want respect and how are we supposed to get it? Not by those ways. By respecting and loving yourself. If you can't love yourself first, then you will find it harder to love others around you. Everyone is deserving of someone.
We have become so troubled as world, so confused and full of angst and misunderstanding. But what we need to understand is that we are all in this together. We all started off with a fresh innocent face, crying for air on our day of birth. The world was at our oyster and no means superficial in our eyes. We had no idea what insecurity meant, just that we knew that pain could make us cry.
We get lost, we all lose our confidence somehow along the path of life. It's our job to react to it in the right way and gather it all up. We have to look within ourselves and find peace. Find calm, a natural euphoria that we can escape to drug and alcohol free. It's possible and it takes practice.
Just sit. Remove yourself from that buzz of technology. Feel the guilt but do it anyway. You deserve time for yourself. You deserve to heal and each day brings a new opportunity for that.
Smile. Smile to yourself in the mirror, feel the overwhelming embarrassment, stare into those eyes and soften that gaze. Hold your head up high, take in your flaws and smother them with acceptance, wear them with pride.
We should pass others, no matter who they are, with a knowledge that they hold pride within themselves. A knowledge that they may have problems too and realise that things in your life may not be as bad as it seems, even if may feel like it now.
We need to be open to change. Pride ourselves, the country we belong to and the world we share and live in.
The world shouldn't seem such a scary place. The only thing we need to change, is ourselves.
We seem to live in a world now where technology has taken over us. I look around me and I'm surrounded, just like many of us could agree. An instant buzz of the mobile and the ding of an email, the too familiar black and white text and those in speech bubbles, recreating a real life conversation. We have become so virtual. Yes, the basics have become useful, but not an unhealthy dependency we have all be guilty to admit too.
Children, touching iPads and iPhones, putting together virtual puzzles and forgetting the tangibility of those misshaped cardboard pieces. I realise now that this is what my photography lectures have been talking about with their film cameras and how we have changed that dramatically, shooting acceptably good quality on our phones. I hadn't seen it that way, but there is always two sides to every argument.
Sometimes when you walk away from technology, you really experience a pure version of yourself. I never gaze hour after hour on Facebook at the other girls deeming themselves hot, in competition with their female friends and surrounding males. I don't stare at online magazine sites trying to keep in touch with the fashion of 'right now'. All this and what makes the world perfect, to say the least in a girls eye, is forever changing, the whole world is forever changing. We need to find ourselves and respect ourselves. This is what has gone wrong and we don't seem to know our place in this world. Our politeness and respect as flopped. All this crime, drug usage and lusty sex is a distraction, a quick route to get us to our happy place, but does it really? Of course not. We want so much more than that. We want love and we want respect and how are we supposed to get it? Not by those ways. By respecting and loving yourself. If you can't love yourself first, then you will find it harder to love others around you. Everyone is deserving of someone.
We have become so troubled as world, so confused and full of angst and misunderstanding. But what we need to understand is that we are all in this together. We all started off with a fresh innocent face, crying for air on our day of birth. The world was at our oyster and no means superficial in our eyes. We had no idea what insecurity meant, just that we knew that pain could make us cry.
We get lost, we all lose our confidence somehow along the path of life. It's our job to react to it in the right way and gather it all up. We have to look within ourselves and find peace. Find calm, a natural euphoria that we can escape to drug and alcohol free. It's possible and it takes practice.
Just sit. Remove yourself from that buzz of technology. Feel the guilt but do it anyway. You deserve time for yourself. You deserve to heal and each day brings a new opportunity for that.
Smile. Smile to yourself in the mirror, feel the overwhelming embarrassment, stare into those eyes and soften that gaze. Hold your head up high, take in your flaws and smother them with acceptance, wear them with pride.
We should pass others, no matter who they are, with a knowledge that they hold pride within themselves. A knowledge that they may have problems too and realise that things in your life may not be as bad as it seems, even if may feel like it now.
We need to be open to change. Pride ourselves, the country we belong to and the world we share and live in.
The world shouldn't seem such a scary place. The only thing we need to change, is ourselves.
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