panic

I is for insecurities


Who do you see when you look in the mirror?
Do you see someone skinny or much bigger?
Are you looking at your true beautiful self?
or do you see your inner demons fighting themselves?
 
what do you hear when they whisper?
do you think they laugh and snigger?
Or are they talking about themselves
sharing their own insecurities with their friends?
 
Insecurities are not our friends!
they alienate us and make us not love ourselves
when you look in the mirror tonight
see who you really are, beautiful inside and out
and when you fear what people say,
Ignore them and tell yourself today is going to be okay
 

Today I am going to talk about Insecurities. The inner demons we have inside ourselves telling us we’re not good enough, and how it affects mental health. I want to talk about what insecurities I have and how it has affected my relationships, my social life and my day to day life and what I think of myself.

insecurity/noun

  1. 1. uncertainty or anxiety about oneself; lack of confidence.”she had a deep sense of insecurity”synonyms:lack of confidence, lack of self-confidence, self-doubt, diffidence, unassertiveness, humility, humbleness, meekness, timidity, timidness, timorousness, uncertainty, nervousness, hesitancy, inhibition, self-consciousness; More
  2. 2. the state of being open to danger or threat; lack of protection.”growing job insecurity”synonyms:unstable, unsecured, loose, rickety, rocky, wobbly, shaky, unsteady, precarious;

(obtained from google.com)

Wordcloud

Insecurity has multiple meaning, as per the above google dictionary description, it can be literal, meaning something is unstable or unsecured, but it can also mean something more figuratively, such as a feeling, or low self-confidence. The thing I find interesting is that the literal definition has some connotations that can cross over into the figurative. For example, I find that unstable, unsecure and shaky are all good words to describe the mental health implications of Insecure, at least they do personally for me, I find that when I am having a panic attack, I feel very unstable, which in turn makes me feel insecure.

So, the question is what does insecure mean for you? Personally, I feel every word in the dictionary can have different interpretations, depending on multiple factors such as; how it is said, the pitch and tone, or how it is used in a sentence, whether it is used positivity, negatively or without emotion, and this applies more than ever to insecure. The things I feel insecure about and the things you feel insure about could be opposites, or they could be similar, but never the same. The reason I believe this, is because as people we are all different from the way we look, the way we talk, our personalities and the way we act, no two people are the same. So, it makes sense that all our insecurities are different, but they make us who we are and we can either embrace them and fight our inner demons or we can succumb to them and let them win.

My Insecurities and how I learned to cope

I have a lot of insecurities, some which I have held onto since I was young, some that developed because of relationships and others because of my anxiety and panic disorder. when I started this blog, I said I would share my experiences so I am going to talk about my biggest insecurities in more detail, and I am going to talk about how I cope and embrace them, but I am also going to talk about how some of them have control over me and I’m still trying to find ways to fight them. 

WEIGHT

My biggest insecurity recently has been weight, I used to look in the mirror and hate what I saw, family members would make underhand comments about how big I was getting, or that I look so different to how I used to look when I was a size 10, and it made me hate myself. I hated going clothes shopping and trying stuff on because I never knew what size I was going to be. I felt this way for a long time and it is only recently I decided enough was enough, I didn’t want to hate myself anymore, I wanted to look in the mirror and love myself, I didn’t want to panic about my health either. So, on the 1st January I joined WW (weight watchers) and I have lost 1stone and 3 pounds in five weeks, and I am incredibly proud of myself, it’s given me a new lease on life and I am finally able to fight those weight demons and feel good about myself.

LOOKS

My next big insecurity is the way I look (regardless of weight, as I thought this back at size 10), for a long time I didn’t consider myself to be a ‘pretty girl’ all throughout my education, I felt like I didn’t fit in and the boys at school never ‘fancied’ me, and I always thought that was because of the way I looked. I never wore a lot of makeup, and I never straightened my hair and styled it, other than a pony tail. As I got older, I realised that I’m not ‘Ugly’ and that I am beautiful in my own way, and I now have an amazing husband who tells me I’m beautiful every day. The way I embraced this insecurity is by having confidence in who I am, and knowing that I can’t change that, and I know that not everyone is going to like me, but if I like me I will be okay.

Mental Health and the way people perceive me

The last Insecurity I want to talk about, is difficult for me, because I’ve not yet found a way to embrace this side of me. My biggest insecurity and fear is when people see me having a panic attack or when my anxiety is triggered, I’m worried they will think I am crazy, which is a trigger works for me, it makes me feel uncomfortable even typing it. When I have an attack or I am triggered I tend to fidget a lot, or I will talk to myself and rock back a forth, to calm myself, and in my head, I have an irrational fear that people won’t understand and they will think negatively of me and look down on me, and this come from a place where mental health is still taboo. People are more accepting and understanding of mental health, but for some reason I still can’t shake this fear, but I am trying.

Overall, I feel that insecurities are part of who we are, but they can be detrimental to people who suffer with mental health, as normal insecurities can be heightened and they can be triggering. I believe, personally, the best coping mechanism is to try and tell yourself that you are who you are, and learning to love yourself can be powerful and healing. As I’ve said everyone’s insecurities are different, and we are all individuals and I feel that if we stopped putting other people down and picking at other insecurities, the world would be a more accepting place, a s cheesy as that sounds, and if we put the effort into being confident in who we are, and loving ourselves, any negativity that we do hear will wash off us, like ‘water off a ducks back’ (Jinx Monsoon, Ru Paul’s Drag Race)

Thank you for ready this week, I really appreciate that you are letting me speak about mental health. Next time I will be doing ‘J is for Justification’

F is for Food

F IS FOR FOOD

Now you may have read the title or seen the thumbnail and thought, what has food got to do with mental health? Well in some cases, especially mine, food has a lot to do with my mental health and this is the topic I want to talk about today. I’m going to discuss my experience with eating disorders, my experimentation with ‘’fad’ diets and the reason why my relationship with food is so bad.
I figure the best place to start is to talk about how my relationship with food is, how it is today. Up until my 17th birthday I had always been slim, i had a good figure and i’d feel confident and I was always one of those people where I could eat anything and I wouldn’t put on a lot of weight (back then anyway).
My weight slowly started to increase whilst working at McDonalds, it was just to tempting to keep eating the free meals on my breaks and using my discount when I wasn’t working, meaning I was consuming a lot more calories than I previously did. This is also around the time my relationship with my abusive ex started, we rarely went out so our staple meal times were filled with take aways and fatty foods, with little exercise, we would over eat and indulge and I used to be able to finish large pizza’s on my own with ease, it was like my brain forgot to tell me I was full. During this time I did put on a couple of stone, but considering i’m tall I could still pull it off and feel confident, I went from. size 10-12 to a 14 which to me is a normal size, and a health size for my height.
When the abuse started, my whole thought about food changed, it was no longer something to keep me from being hungry, it became something to make me feel better, whenever I was scared or anxious I would eat. Not only would I binge, I would eat all the things that were bad for me, I would order take aways and fast food, I would order more than what one person should be eating, for example I would order two meals from McDonalds and a dessert.  Now i knew this wasn’t healthy but I couldn’t stop myself, it made me feel better, at a time when I thought there was no light left in my life.
Once my relationship had ended I went though stages where people would start to call my fat, people I used to work with would make snide under breath comments about how big I am. Even my family would keep saying how big I had gotten. I don’t think these people knew what I was going through, and i don’t blame them for that, but I do resent the way people spoke about me, and made comments behind my back. I understand that people were ‘trying to help’ but telling me i’m fat and just need to eat less doesn’t help, it hinders, because all that makes me want to do is eat more, because those people were hurting me, so i wanted to make myself feel better. All of those comments didn’t make me stop eating, I instead got into the habit of hiding what I ate, I would sneak things into my room and binge eat, I would eat cake and chocolate,I even snuck a take away pizza into the house, and then when my mum would call me down for tea, I would still eat it, because I felt bad about what I had just done. These behaviours became normality for me, even living away from home with my husband I still sometimes feel the need to hide what i’ve eaten, even though i know he would never say anything to me regarding my weight.
The past ten years have been hard, i’ve gained over 10 stones, more or less a stone a year, and my confidence is gone. I always wear baggy clothes and I’ve gone from a size 12 to a size 22 which is heart breaking. I’ve tried many diets over the yers, I tried slimming world, weight watchers and I even tried hypnotherapy techniques such as Paul Mcenna, but none of these worked, i just could tell my myself to stop eating, it was like my brain wasn’t send my stomach the signal that I was full. All of these types of diet just weren’t working because I wouldn’t fully commit, I wanted to but I couldn’t.
So I spoke to my doctor and they said it sounded like I have BED (binge eating disorder) which is when you eat regularly, and also eat large portions and pus yourself past the point of being full, and after you’ve done this you feel guilt (much lie when I would eat two meals because of the guilt) Below are the symptoms of BED, as per http://www.nhs.uk, and as you can probably tell i’ve discussed most, if not all of these,I do eat fast, I eat until I am uncomfortable, I eat when i am not hungry, out of boredom or loneliness and I always feel bad afterwards.
Below is another extract from http://www.nhs.uk this, this looks at causes of BED, now as it mentions they don’t now the exact causes but looking at these i have experienced more than one.
Thats why I made the hard choice to go back and speak with my GP and he was supportive and I am now being referred to choose to change, which is a NHS service to help with weight, I am still waiting on my appointment as it can take 3 weeks but i am feeling positive as my GP said I am still at the right age to change before all the health risks become more serious, and this time I am determined. I want to change, I want to be healthier so that I can start a family, and have my old confidence back, my energy back.
I do believe that we can be happy no matter what size we are, whether that be a size 8 or 24, and no one should ever be body shamed. I don’t want to lose weight to be skinny like the models in the magazines, i don’t want live up to their expectations of beautiful, because I am beautiful in my own way, but i do want to be healthier.
So today I start the fight to be healthier, regardless of my size, I want the old me back! I want my confidence back! So let the battle between me and food commence.

E is for Everyone (the statistics around mental health)

Hello and welcome back to the A-Z of mental Health, todays blog is E is for everyone, and today I want to talk about the statistics around mental health and I want to discuss, as always, my experience and opinions around them. 

 

So for this blog I have done some research into the statistics surrounding mental health, and I have found that http://www.mind.org.uk is the most reliable source, as their site is focused on mental health, and they provided stats in a way that is understandable and easy to read. MIND is also a great charity when it comes to mental health and their site gives a lot of helpful information and shares stories from other other people who experience mental health issues, so please if you have the time, go and view their site, where you can also make a donation to the charity.

I want to start off with the most obvious question…

How many people have mental health?

 

As per Mind.org.uk, 1 in 4 people will experience mental health issues in the UK each year, and considering there are over 66 million people in UK alone (according to google), that is a lot of people who suffer everyday with mental illness. However, it looks like only 1 in 6 of those people will report it, or go to their GP with it every week. Is there a reason behind this, do people feel they won’t get support or that their doctors won’t believe them? Which some people may think is ridiculous, but I know I felt that way at first, I didn’t want to talk about it, I felt that if I told anyone they wouldn’t believe me or that they would say ‘get over it’ , which some people have, I thought that people would call me crazy or think i’m weak and vulnerable, so I can maybe understand why the other 5 in 6 don’t report it

These Statistics do make me sad. It saddens me to think that this amount of people go through what I go through on a daily basis and a large number of these people will have it worse than me, the other reason it makes me sad is that only 1 in 6 actually report it,and as I said a moment ago, I understand why they might not want to but it still makes me wonder what the other 5 in 6 do to get help, or are they suffering in silence, is this the reason Suicide and self harm are rising. Which leads me onto the next question….

Are the NHS and the Government doing enough?

Now this may be a controversial question, and some may think i’m going after the NHS, but I am NOT. I believe in the NHS, they have helped me so many times with my physical and mental health and my doctor has always been understanding and pointed me in the right direction whether that be counselling or medication, but I know not every has had this experience, which is why I wanted to talk about it.

I am no politician, and I don’t know much about politics but it is clear from the news and the articles I read that the NHS are not given enough funding to cope with mental illness, and I do believe that people are suffering because of it. You hear stories everyday about the waiting times for referrals for mental health, but if there isn’t enough money to hire more professionals, then these are only going to get worse., and for some people, they cannot wait months to see someone. I know that if I hadn’t of seen someone when I did my panic would have spiralled out of control.

This morning I read an article, which I won’t go into to much detail due to the sensitive nature of it, but it talked about a woman who called her doctors surgery to tell them she felt suicidal, she asked for an appointment and was told the next available date free was in 12 days time. I can’t help but feel an overwhelming feeling of sadness and grief, for a woman I did not know, because the next day she took her own life. 12 days is a long time to wait, when you feel like you have no time left, I don’t blame the person who took the call, I can imagine they were following ‘protocol’, or they just didn’t know how to respond, because even as someone who has felt like that, I wouldn’t know what to say in that specific moment, but there has to have been another way to deal with this, another way to get this woman the help she needed before it was too late. So I guess the answer to my question, my own personal opinion is….No, and that is not the NHS’s fault.

Statistics around specific metal health problems

As per MIND (www.midd.org.uk), a survey is done every two years looking into stats around how many people suffer with specific people. The below data is from 2016, so a new report is due soon.
Generalised Anxiety: 5.9%
Depression: 3.3%
OCD: 1.3%
PTSD: 4.4%
Panic Disorder: 0.6%
Mixed Anxiety/ Depression: 7.8%
People with Suicidal thoughts: 20.6%
Suicidal Attempts: 6.7%
Self harm: 7.3%

These statistics are based on people who have reported their struggles, the 1 in 6. It again makes me wonder how many people in the UK alone have not reported their illness. Personally I have suffered with anxiety, depression, panic disorder and suicidal thoughts. I’m one of the 5.9%, the 3.3%, the 0.6% and the 20.6%. Until I saw these stats I always thought that my panic disorder was common, but only 0.6 of people have reported having it, I repeat only 0.6 report having it, how many people actually do.
Another thing I notice looking at these figures, is a lot of them overlap, as I just mentioned I have a few of these conditions, I would even add another and say I have mild OCD with certain things, so when you add them all together and take out the people who fall into multiple disorders, how many people actually do report and go to the doctor? Because I am part of all the figures I mentioned, I am part of the 5.9 and the 3.3, are these percentage based on people with just that condition alone, or do they include everyone ho has them. Food for thought!

What I’ve learned

 This blog has been more about looking at facts and figures, but i wanted to end it more personally. I’ve learned a lot looking through all the data on Mind’s website, and i’ve learned that not enough people are reporting their mental illnesses, and not enough people are getting the help they need, and that as the initial reason behind me starting this blog, I want to help people who don’t feel like they can talk to their GP…Yet. I want to let people know that i’ve gone though hat you’re going through and to relay the message that it is okay to not be okay, it is okay to talk about you mental health, to feel vulnerable. I don’t want people to go though it, but I do want to see those percentages rise, because I want people to get the help they deserve.

I can’t wait to go through the rest of the alphabet with you, see you next time for F is for…….

B is for Beginning

Hello, and welcome back. I wanted to stat this blog, where you start most things …the beginning.2D8EB54B-B8F0-4D3E-8A83-E095D7BDAE7E.png

I always had anxiety, but I guess I didn’t realise it, I always associated it with being nervous, which I thought was normal. It wasn’t until after a failed relationship that I started to get more and more symptoms and this is also when I started to have panic attacks.

The main reason and trigger behind my disorder is the failed relationship and that is what I’m going to talk about, which is hard for me as it was a horrible time in my life and it brings up a lot of negative feelings., but its not all bad as I am a firm believer that everything happens for a reason.

So down to the details… this relationship started when I was 17, so I was young, not that I am old now, but I was still studying and I had only had 1 boyfriend before then. This particular relationship starte off well, he was romantic and he treated me well for the first year of our relationship. We fought like any other couple does, we had out rows and we were both in the wrong, and it seemed normal. Until one day, one argument turns violent, I can’t remember what we were arguing about, but I remember him pushing me into the door so hard that a cut my upper arm and bruised it all, at the time we made up, he told me it was an accident and it woul only happen once, and I believed him, I was wrong. As the months passed, he moved out of his parents and I stayed at his house a lot, I cooked, cleaned and washed his clothes, and we’d have long periods of being fine, so every time another ‘accident’ happened I’d let it go, and I believe he was going to change. This is where my anxiety started, I would flinch whenever people touched me or came too close, I would hate being in busy places on my own, and I would hate  confrontation, but around him I put on the brave face and I smiled through it.

There as one occasion, on my 18th birthday, where we ha gone to a Taylor Swift concert and I asked if he could get me a drink, as it was busy and it made me feel nervous, we then had a massive row, to the point where at the end of the concert, we left straight away, argued all the way home and when he dropped me off he said he would leave me, despite me doing nothing wrong, and for some reason in my head, I thought I was better with him than without, so I begged him, I stood in front of the car begging, so desperately, and he just drove off.

He took  back a day later, but things only got worse, the violence got worse, what started out as pushing, turning into punches and then one day he had me on the floor banging me head off it, somehow I stayed for another year, until it got to the point where I had no emotion left, other than panic, and I left, I packed everything I could find and I told him it was over and I drove home. He followed me and sat outside my house, this time begging me to stay, but that was the moment I decided to take a stand and although it hurt I never looked back.

People ask why I didn’t leave sooner, but anxiety was part of it, it was the anxious feeling of not wanting to be alone, because he took my youth, and my self confidence, he made me believe that I would be alone forever. Ever since I left my panic has got worse, I struggled for a long time trying to find myself again, I still to this day 6 years later strtuggling in busy places, and panicking if someone touches me, and that is something that I ill always struggling with.

I will leave this story here, because frankly he does not deserve anymore of my thought, or anymore of my words, he knows what he did wrong and he lost me because of it, and he will have to live with that for the rest of his life. What I will say is, as I said earlier, I believe everything happens for a reason, although I live with a panic and anxiety disorder because of him, I also realise that if I han’t of gone through that, I wouldn’t have met the love of my life, who I am now married to, but that is a story for another day.

PLease come back next week when I discuss the letter C

 

 

The A- Z of Mental Health

Hello,

I wanted to start this blog to talk about my mental health issues, because I feel now, more than ever, it is so important to share out experience and coping mechanisms.

I suffer with Anxiety, and although a lot of people suffer with a ‘normal’ level of anxiety in their daily lives, mine was triggered by a series of events. So what was once normal developed into a severe panic disorder, which lead to many more issues and mental health problems, which affect my day to day life.

In these blogs I will talk about my journey, and my journey is far from done. I suffer everyday with my illness, but I cope, and that is because of the people I choose to surround myself with but also because of what I have learned through therapy and through reading.

I will also talk about my triggers and talk about specific things which lead me here, and events that I struggle with.

I won’t go into all the details on this first post, this is just my introduction to you all, but please come along for the journey, share your experience and talk about mental health, because it may be considered an ‘invisible’ illness, but to me it’s not, I can see it, I can feel it….and I know it is there, and you are not alone.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thanks for joining me!

Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton

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