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| In case your maths isn't great |
As such, in this blog I thought I'd look back at the last two years and try to celebrate progress that I have made since then. The past few weeks have at times been tough and as a result thoughts have been coming and going about just how much anxiety has affected my life. So the changes I emphasise below may not seem much, but given the dominance anxiety has had over the years, I think I can genuinely look upon the following points as milestones. Here follows an appraisal:
1) Moving out, moving back and moving out again
Just moving out of my parents’ home was a huge achievement in itself at the time, because a year before I could barely go outside, let alone move away. But this first experience of living away came with many issues, not least of all the people I ended up living with. Aside from a good friend of mine, the others were very difficult to live with when you're someone who has obsessions with cleanliness and who is uncomfortable in situations with 'new' people. I was hoping to get more social situations from moving out, but this didn't materialise and I ended up wanting to get away from the people I was living with rather than be with them. Housemates came and went, but none of them were to my taste and apparently cleanliness was something that in their eyes should be reserved to a bygone era.
So on 27 January 2013, I moved back to my parents. Some would argue that this was a step backwards, but I think me recognising the problems I was facing AND recognising the fact that moving back home WAS a step backwards and doing it anyway a) takes balls and b) shows how down the shared house was making me feel.
But the great positive about living at this place though was the fact that I got through the ten months relatively unscathed. Finishing successful therapy not long after I moved there helped as tools that I'd learnt were still fresh in my memory and I could handle situations better. Yes it was hard and made me feel low, but I got through it, and my anxiety hadn't really increased despite this. But by the end I was staying at home every weekend anyway so moving out was inevitable.
The biggest test was moving on again. I stayed at home for another seven months or so, and I spent the last three (at least) months of that looking for a better alternative shared house. I wasn't getting very far and was losing all hope, until eventually I found somewhere that I felt good about. I was scared, because I identified this place as a potential to meet new people and improve my social life - scared because of my anxieties around this. But I was excited and knew I had to go for it. Fortunately, me and my friend who I lived with before got the rooms and it has been everything I could have hoped for. I kept saying to myself that if I search for long enough I would find somewhere that would give me what I wanted and I'm pleased to say that persistence paid off. It may never be as 'homely' or 'comfortable' as living at home, but it's something I need to be doing and I think I have grown as a person since I moved in here, not least because I've made some more good friends out of it.
The first couple of weeks were very hard - ironically, even harder than the first place, perhaps because of that bad experience and not wanting to experience it again. Or maybe it was because I put too much pressure on myself to enjoy this place and to be sociable. But after that difficult first few weeks I stuck at it and I'm so glad I have. As I said, I feel that I have grown as a person which has only helped my anxiety and confidence.
2) The New Job
If you'd have said two years ago that'd I now have a new job, I wouldn't have believed you. I was comfortable in my previous job and although local government has its own frustrations, I worked through this and reflected on the fact I was doing a job I generally enjoyed and that was related to my degree. So, for the sake of my anxiety, why on earth change?
This new job is, of course, a relatively recently development - January this year, which, to put into perspective, was 4.5 months into living at this new house.
The hardest thing about leaving the previous job was leaving some really great people behind. Something that I am always reluctant to do when I know that I need people around me. As I've said before, keeping people close by is fundamental when you have anxiety, whether you feel like having people around you or not. I'm lucky in that people I work with in this new job seem great too, but there are only four people in the whole organisation so social opportunities are less as a result. So, early on I was quite concerned that I'd thrown away a good social opportunity; many would argue that this isn't a good reason not to change jobs, but as I've already said, having people you trust around you when you have anxiety is fundamental to recovery and maintaining a status quo.
The other negative is that this job is very busy. So was the old one, but if anything this one is busier, and deadlines are more prevalent. And, of course, the wonderful world of commuting is also upon me, which is the one thing I wanted to avoid given what happened in 2011. Plus it's two hours of each weekday I don't get back and this buggers up my over-obsession with wanting to do things quickly and efficiently - thus providing the potential for more anxiety. In fact, the combination of all of these factors is quite anxiety producing, and I've had to be careful in the last month or so to not tip myself over the edge. Let’s just say that I've had to practice my CBT techniques a bit more in the past few weeks than I have in the many months prior.
So this all sounds quite negative, but not necessarily. For a start, given that two of the biggest influencers from my previous job have also recently left, and given general circumstances around working for local government at the moment, it is definitely a good move. It's also a good move for my personal development in terms of improving my knowledge and experience and I am beginning to enjoy the company of my new colleagues more and more. It's still stressful and challenging, but I know now I have to do my best to monitor this and try and accentuate the positives.
Plus the main fact is - not long ago there is no way I could have even considered going for an interview for a new job, let alone get it and start quite successfully in it. This, I hope, can only show strength of character on my part.
3) The Blog and Twitter
I'm still not sure what I think about social media, whether it be blogs, Twitter, Facebook or any of the others. The likes of Snapchat and Instagram are still alien to me and I don't intend on signing up to them anytime soon. I feel that social media is a screen behind which to express your emotions for some people, and for others it's a platform for boasting about how great your life is - your new house, new relationship, new job, new diet... whatever. It's like an all year round round-robin. So despite what I'm about to say, I'm certainly not totally in favour of social media and sometimes, especially for people with mental health issues, I think it can do more harm than good.
But, here I want to focus on the positives it has given me over the past couple of years. Obviously, this is an easy one to discuss in terms of timescales, as this blog celebrates two years since I set up this website, and I have set the scene above in terms of what I was doing at this time. At first, I blogged in the knowledge that it wasn't reaching out to too many people. I did it because it helped me to express thoughts and opinions, important in light of the fact I didn't have too many people around that I felt I could - or wanted to - express such thoughts to. But despite this, I always had the aim of making this website a tool to help other people. I knew, with my job eating up time and lack of overall confidence and selling ability, that I'd never make this website the UK's first port of call for someone looking to learn from someone else with anxiety. Neither would I want to. But it would be nice to at least obtain a few people who did enjoy reading it, or who found it useful or familiar in terms of experiences shared. But over the two years, it has taken a while for this to materialise. Sure people read it - the stats tell me that - but not too often and with no great feedback. To the point where, especially after even more time was eaten up when I got this new job, I was considering winding up the site.
Then, about five months ago, I decided to give Twitter another go. I had a Twitter account before, which I closed down, as I had about four followers who may have added me thinking I was the comedian. This time, I set up an account in honour of this site, @AnxietyTracker, and have sort of self-learnt over the past five months how Twitter works. I still don't have a huge amount of time to spend on it, and there are some days when thinking about anxiety even with the aim of helping others is, frankly, the last thing I feel like doing. But in five months I have heard from many more like-minded people, people who understand and appreciate my blog and what I'm saying and people to whom I can reciprocate such understanding. By focusing my Twitter account exclusively on people I don't know (and non-celebrities, who don't interest me in the slightest), it can be used purely as a tool that emphasises my desire to improve anxiety awareness, albeit in a much smaller way than those people who put all of their time into this and professionals in the field.
So now, it doesn't just allow me to express feelings and opinions, it allows me to share them with people who understand, who want to read and allows me to learn a heck of a lot from a group of people I don't know. Mutual stability, you could call it. I like to think, therefore, that I have used social media as a benefit, rather than as a hindrance to myself or an annoyance to other people. I'll let my small group of followers be the judge of that...
4) Greater Acceptance
When I say a 'greater acceptance,' I mean a greater acceptance from other people in terms of understanding and appreciating my condition, as well as having a greater self-acceptance of anxiety and how it affects me. In terms of the latter, saying that I have 'accepted' anxiety as a problem may sound unhealthy; what I mean is that I am now more comfortable about it and happy to talk about it than I was a couple of years ago. This, of course, may be symptomatic of both getting older and being in a better place than I was, but I remember even in the 'better' spells of my school and University life, I was as shy and embarrassed as ever of to talk openly about my anxiety. Now, I don't necessarily instigate talking about it, but I am happy and open to if someone asks me about it.
And, as it happens, more people have asked me about it in the past few months, especially since I have shared more things from charities on Facebook (back to social media again) - so friends pick up on things. I have had a few frank and honest conversations in the past few months about my experiences with some friends, and this has been rewarding. I think on all occasions, their reactions have been both inquisitive and empathetic to an extent, and certainly not negative. Even though all of the people in question I've known for at least a while, you can never be sure what people's reaction is going to be, but overall they have been positive.
And this is the point. Stigma does still exist, but I think the biggest thing I have learnt since starting this website two years ago is that there are a heck of a lot of people who are doing their little bit to try and combat it. Collectively, I think this is one of the most positive movements in recent history, a movement that actually makes a positive difference, led at the front by charities whose whole task it is to rid society of mental health stigma. I'm contributing a miniscule amount towards this movement, but everyone's equivalent amount is starting to get heard and make a difference, and I for one aim to continue doing my little bit until real change has been felt across all walks of life. Let's see where we are on our journey in another two years.
Best wishes
Al
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