Please Allow Me to Introduce Myself

Good evening everyone, my name is Alan Carr. 

There, that's enough to cause anxiety in anyone.  I share the name with a comedian who you may or may not be a fan of.  It can get quite annoying in certain situations, for example, introducing yourself to people.  Many people seem to think that they are the first person to realise that I have the same name as the comedian by saying something like 'as in the comedian.'  They then have a sudden realisation and quickly say 'you must get that all the time.'  Yes, ALL the time. 

If I have to deliver a presentation, I say "Hi everyone, now, apologies if you looked at the list of speakers on your agenda and thought 'great, we get a performance from our favourite comedian to come later,' because clearly, I am not the comedian."  That usually generates a few laughs which is somewhat ironic, considering I've just declared myself to not be a comedian.

Anyway,

My name IS Alan Carr and I'm nearly 25 years old.  I live and work in Stafford, a small and fairly ageing town in the Midlands somewhere between Birmingham and Manchester and often confused with Stoke by people who don't live in the area.  The main point of this introduction is to disclose the fact that I have chronic anxiety and have done so for the vast majority of my life so far.  I suppose it wasn't chronic when it first started as whether something becomes chronic, I assume, is at least in part determined by the longevity of it. 

This blog will ramble like this for the most part, but with the main aim to simply share my experiences about living with anxiety in a world that pretends not to be anxious in the slightest.  It is not meant to act as a form of therapy of course, but what I have found is that talking to people or listening to people who have had anxiety is one of the best things you can do.  It's all very well professionals saying 'there are thousands of people who feel the same as you.'  Yes fine, small crumb of comfort maybe, but you don't necessarily know any of these thousands of people. 

But there is no excuse now; the age of social networking is upon us and another aim of this blog is for it to become a piece of information that can be shared and edited by numerous sources, with a hope to prompt others to share their experiences too.  I will start by giving an overview of my anxiety conditions so as to set the scene, and will probably disclose more about myself as I go along.  A flurry of blogs in the early days will probably follow, so brace yourselves. 

My email address is on my profile so please feel free to drop me one (so to speak) or leave a comment.

Best wishes
Al