What's black, white and red all over? This blog

Hi all,

The i newspaper published an article a week or so ago by a University of Cambridge academic. It was entitled 'Want to stop anxiety attacks? Try changing your mindset' and it was an interesting read. I should mention initially that I am very pleased with the way the i newspaper generally reports on mental health; it covers the importance of mental health on a regular basis and this article is another example of that. The i recognises it is a serious issue and doesn't slag off people they are reporting about who have mental health problems, unlike many other newspapers that use careless or deliberate use of language that offends.

Don't let this exciting image distract you from the blog

I managed to find a copy of the article online and I have pasted it below and annotated accordingly. Essentially the article, as the title suggests, is providing advice on how to help yourself if you have anxiety by changing the way you take on situations and the way you think and perceive things. I have read numerous articles of this nature in the past so I should emphasise that I'm not singling out this particular article or this author (hence why I have anonymised them in this blog) for any specific reason - my point is that when you're reading articles about anxiety, it is okay - and in fact, important - to critique them and not take their advice or guidance as gospel.  This article is perfectly sound, and again I appreciate the i newspaper's efforts in including articles on subjects of this nature, but I thought I'd have a go at providing a response to it from the perspective of someone who has gone through anxiety for many years.

The original article is in black font, my response is provided in red. See what you think.

-Article begins-

Most people experience anxiety at some point in their lives. Yes, but do we mean stress or anxiety? Big difference. Anxiety is generally longer-lasting so I'd be reluctant to say 'most.' It can present itself as fear, restlessness, an inability to focus at work, difficulty sleeping or irritability and more... so much more...

In social situations, it can make it hard to talk to others; you might feel like you’re constantly being judged, or have symptoms such as stuttering, sweating, blushing or an upset stomach too true. It can take the form of a panic attack, or it can be present all the time this is made to sound like panic attacks are isolated incidents - oh it's only a panic attack, not as bad as being there all the time... sadly not, panic attacks can occur frequently, be unrelenting and even themselves last hours. In fact, if you have 'being there all the time' anxiety, chances are you're having panic attacks every now and then anyway... If anxiety starts interfering with your life, including sleep (what's that again?) or ability to form relationships (relation... what?), you might have an anxiety disorder, which affect around three million people in the UK I don't like stats like this... I was never officially diagnosed with anxiety by a GP. So do I not count in the statistics? Twenty years of anxiety? Who knows how these stats are calculated. And anyway it doesn't matter to the person with anxiety how many other people have it at the time (trust me)...

Unfortunately, the medication prescribed to treat anxiety doesn’t often work in the long term I'm very pleased to hear the article not say that medication is the only answer. Even people who firmly believe in meds will largely agree that it is only a short term solution. And anti-depressants are definitely not the answer, by the way. But science can still help with coping skills that have emerged from research – partly from a study I helped run which will be presented at the 30th European Congress of Neuropsychopharmacology (wow...) in Paris.

1) Do it badly

Do you feel like your life is out of control? Do you find it hard to make decisions – or get things started? One way to overcome indecision is to “do it badly”. This may sound strange actually, this will but the fear of God into most people with anxiety, given that is exactly what they are trying to avoid, but as the writer and poet GK Chesterton said: “Anything worth doing is worth doing badly.” Taking on this mindset speeds up your decision-making process. People often want to do something “perfectly” or wait for the “perfect time” before starting sometimes you can't help it if you have an anxiety condition. But this can lead to delays or even prevent us from doing it at all. And that causes more stress and anxiety (which aren't the same thing). Not worrying about how something is going to turn out will not only make it much easier to begin, but you’ll also find that you’re completing tasks more quickly but how does one do this when they have anxiety? If you have social anxiety, this suggests you can switch it off like a tap and do it anyway. That's impossible - otherwise no-one would have social anxiety. More often than not, you’ll also discover that you’re not doing it that badly at all but if you have social anxiety you'll only be able to think you've done badly, regardless - without the appropriate training.

2) Wait to worry

Are you critical of yourself and the blunders you make? Imagine if you had a friend who constantly pointed out everything that was wrong with you. You’d probably want to get rid of them right away. But people with anxiety often do this to themselves so frequently that they don’t even realise it this is certainly true. Perhaps it’s time to change and start forgiving ourselves for the mistakes we make how?. If you feel like you’ve embarrassed yourself, don’t criticise yourself – simply realise that you have this impulse to blame yourself, then drop the negative thoughts and redirect your attention back to the task at hand again how? I'd like to see a reference to CBT here (and above) - it took me 50 sessions of CBT to begin to change my thought processes in a similar way to this so I would expect CBT to be emphasised here. Another effective strategy is to “wait to worry”. If something went wrong and you feel compelled to worry about it, postpone it – set aside 10 minutes each day in which to worry about everything. If you do this, you’ll find that you won’t perceive the situation that triggered the initial anxiety to be as worrisome when you come back to it yes again all sound ideas, but someone with chronic, chaotic anxiety wouldn't be able to do this without intensive support. This is, again, training your mind and it is a CBT technique - you need lots of practice. This article infers that it can just be done at the flick of a switch, which is absurd. I'm sure the author doesn't intend this but this is how it comes across and could make someone with anxiety seem even more inferior, thinking it must be 'that simple' when in reality, it isn't!

3) Find purpose in life by helping others

It’s worth considering how much of your day is spent with someone else in mind. If it’s very little or none at all, then you’re at a high risk of poor mental health so do all selfish people have anxiety? I'd like to hope that I consider and think about other people a reasonable amount and yet that didn't stop me getting anxiety (although I was only 11 so who knows, I guess!). Regardless of how much we work or the amount of money we make, we can’t be truly happy until we know that someone else needs us and depends on our productivity or love given that loneliness can be a cause of anxiety I can understand this point, but again this is written as though someone who gets anxiety is a selfish, self-absorbed person. This can't be true in every case!!. This doesn’t mean we need praise, but doing something with someone else in mind takes the spotlight off us (and our anxieties) and places it on to others ah OK that's making more sense... – and how we can make a difference to them. Being connected to people has regularly been shown to be one of the most potent buffers against poor mental health tips on how to foster these connections would have been useful here given that making connections with others is often impossible for anxious people! The neurologist Viktor Frankl wrote: “For people who think there’s nothing to live for, nothing more to expect from life… the question is getting these people to realise that life is still expecting something from them.” Right OK... not sure this is helpful for someone in the midst of a panic attack...

Knowing that someone else needs you makes it easier to endure the toughest times. It could be as simple as taking care of a child or elderly parent, or volunteering again for someone with anxiety this would initially be too big a step - so how do we get there? Even if these people never realise what you’ve done for them, it doesn’t matter, because you will know. And this will make you realise the uniqueness and importance of your life moon on a stick... this won't help someone with anxiety initially.

-END-

I think you get my point. The article has been written with perfectly good intentions, but is not remotely helpful for someone in the grips of crippling anxiety, not least because it doesn't explain how you're supposed to implement these mindsets. Without the explanation, it could actually make someone with anxiety worse, given that they might start to get upset thinking they are inadequate for not being able to do it!

So my message is this - if you have anxiety and are in the grips of panic, social phobia or health anxiety, if you come across an article written by an expert please don't take it as red. Don't think that 'they make it sound easy, so why can I not sort myself out?' All this will do is make you feel more inadequate which is far from helpful. Had this article given advice on how to change your mindset and who can provide this advice, then fair enough. But just talking about it like it's the world's most straightforward thing is no use. If it were that simple, surely no-one would have anxiety?

Before I sign off, I'd like to thank those of you that read and/or commented on my recent 'Five Blogs of Thanks' series, which celebrated the fifth anniversary of this blogging website. I still can't quite believe it's been that long! It meant a lot to hear your comments and thoughts and that what I have been writing has had a positive impact on at least a few people. So thank you! If you haven't seen them, you can catch up here:

• Introduction
• The Professionals
• Twitterites
• Colleagues
• Non-Conventional Friends
• Conventional Friends

Best wishes,
Al

Five Blogs of Thanks - 5th Anniversary of The Anxiety Tracker - Conventional Friends

Hi all,

Today is the fifth anniversary of The Anxiety Tracker.  I set this site up in good faith on 15 June 2012 and I am surprised by my own admission that I have kept it going since, with approximately one blog post every month.  If it has helped or influenced just one person over the years, I will be satisfied. Moreover, if you’d have said to me five years ago that I would be in exactly the place I actually am now, I wouldn’t have believed you (see matrix on first blog of this series). 

I have saved who I would deem the most important ‘group’ of people to thank in this final blog in the Five Blogs of Thanks series: my friends. I mean the ‘conventional’ friends (see last blog!) who are also, anyway, my ‘best’ friends out of everyone that has supported me. 

I could get a little emotional here.

Because I have such a small family that is not local and most of whom I am not particularly close to, and because I am an only child, I have always relied on friends for company, laughter and to share things with.  My friends dragged me through school years quite frankly. I was the nobody, the coward, the quiet one, the wimp.  I was actually going through chronic anxiety which was largely the reason for that, but ultimately I had no confidence whatsoever and having a network of close friends kept me going. It was a small, close-knit network, but for me it worked.

I owe a lot to three of my friends in particular.  One I met in 1991, yes when we were four, and we are still great friends today, 26 years on. I am going to be best man at his wedding soon (which I am told is a good barometer for measuring extent of friendship in people our age these days). He moved away from where I lived in 1999, first year of high school; our maintained friendship proves our strength but also emphasises why I owe a huge amount of gratitude to two other people I met at the very start of high school who, again, I am still close to today.

These gentlemen saw me at my worst.  Largely, until we got older and I knew what was going on, this wasn’t attributed to anxiety; I was just ‘different to everyone else.’ But despite my moods and various other issues, these guys stuck by me and remained people I could trust and laugh with. And that is the balance I have managed to strike with most of my friends; I know I can act utterly stupid with all of them, laugh wildly and play ridiculous card games – but the next minute talk openly about mental health.  It works.

With a couple of exceptions, all of my closest friends I met at school. I don’t know if this is normal, but that is the reality for me. I would say I have seven close friends within my network, which to me feels perfect. Enough to maintain the social interaction one needs when one is single and a lone sibling with a tiny family. But not too much to overwhelm, to potentially throw me into more socially anxious situations. I could not be more comfortable with all of these people; they accept me for who I am.  It is obvious I am socially awkward, it isn’t normal to be single come (nearly) 30, I don’t necessarily like the stereotypical things other guys do. But they don’t care. So many seem to.

It is easy to say, as I do often, “I don’t know where I would have been without X.” Quite honestly, when it comes to my friends, I genuinely do not know where I’d be. They have dragged me through hard, nigh-on impossible times – either knowingly or unknowingly – and continue to do so. They have done this by lighting up the room when I need a pick up, or by talking frankly, openly and honestly to me when it’s needed. They have been there for support when otherwise I would have had none.

I admit that I have become reliant on my friends to pull me through difficult times. I don’t think they quite know how reliant and I just hope that at no point have I come across as being too reliant. But ultimately that’s the reality; without them sticking by me my life would have contained a huge empty hole that, no doubt, would have filled with anxiety.

If you’re one of the people I’m referring to in this post, you know who you are.  Thank you, for just about everything.

And thank you to anyone who has read these Five Blogs of Thanks or, indeed, any of the 128 posts before them. You’re all great.

Here’s to another five years.

😃

Best wishes,
Al

Five Blogs of Thanks - 5th Anniversary of The Anxiety Tracker - Non-Conventional Friends

Hi all,

I am a fan of categorisation and lists, as any regular followers of this blog may have gathered. In thinking of how to categorise these Five Blogs of Thanks, I wanted to dedicate a blog to those people who I class as ‘other than conventional friends’ (by ‘conventional friends’ I mean friends of a similar age who I’ve met through more typical means, such as school, work or university) and also recognise the impact my family has had on me.  I couldn’t separate them, so this blog attempts to thank both ‘categories’ of people; although in a way, I guess you could also count my family as ‘non-conventional friends’ as well!

I think it’s reasonable to say, even in a day and age of political correctness and my above-average awareness of how important it is not to stigmatise mental health problems, that I am not normal. What this has meant is that I have had the fortune of meeting people who I probably wouldn’t have met had I been immersed in what a ‘normal’ person’s life of someone with my background would look like. 

A good example is that over the years I have made many friends with people who either caught or drove local buses (before the government cut all the routes).  I don’t know anyone else who doesn’t class themselves as a bus fanatic or spotter who has developed such relationships.  Most of my conventional friends drive, for a start, and those that have caught buses used them for their intended purpose – to go somewhere.  But the relationship and banter I chalked up over the years through a combination of frequent bus usage, seeing the same people all the time and finding myself more comfortable talking to people aged 80 rather than my own age due to a lack of confidence allowed me to get on really well with some of the bus-related people. 

I mentioned in yesterday’s blog how I have known several people who have helped me with my anxiety condition without them realising it – bus folk are another example. I never talked about things as personal as my mental health condition to them and yet their presence and chats made travelling easier, especially important during periods when travelling was extremely difficult. Another example are people I’ve met through swimming, which by the way I would advocate for anyone who has a mental health problem. They are hilarious and make the experience a lot more pleasurable as a result. And they don’t judge me.

I also mentioned yesterday the impact that a university lecturer had on my career.  But it wasn’t just him – my university and course specialised in nurturing and caring for their students, as much as research and general lecturing and as such it was easier to gain a strong relationship with them. Then there was my greater comfort of conversing with people older than me again. So despite university being rather difficult at times, the lecturers made it much better than it would have otherwise been – again, without them knowing about my anxiety problems.

And then there is my family.  A group of people that you would think would know all about my anxiety problems. Think again. My parents know what I’ve had to tell them; after the 2011 meltdown that I keep going on about, I had no choice but to explain how bad things were. But even then I sugared things slightly and to this day they have no idea of how much pain I was in, how long for and most critically how much anxiety has hampered my life.  My dad is a typical 1950s born ‘I never talk about emotions’ type person and my mum would simply get too upset if I told her how bad things really were, pressure which would only have made things worse for me and, cyclically, for her.  So I spent large parts of my hellish experience going through it alone, with occasional support from friends when I was at my wits end. It’s how I felt it had to be and I stand by that.

I have never been too close to my wider family either; for a start they are not located just up the road.  My dad’s side I hardly ever see (which I can confirm is for the best…) and of the four people remaining on my mum’s side, two of them are disabled and the other two care for said disabled people, so burdening them with my own problems was never an option in my eyes.

However, despite all of this, my family have helped me get through anxiety. It wasn’t my parents’ fault that I kept a lot from them and when I did tell them things, they were as supportive as they knew how to be.  An example was when, after the 2011 debacle, my dad offered me lifts to the CBT sessions; this wasn’t relevant in the end as I opted for webcam therapy, but the offer was there. I must have worried them and as such I thank them for keeping strong (externally) and, of course, for being good parents in several other ways. 

On my mum’s side of the family, my aunt, who cares for my cousin, hasn’t spoken to my mum for at least ten years for reasons largely unknown. I never see her and on the surface of it she is, as that side of the family would say, a ‘funny bugger.’ (The whole set up in that half of the family is beyond bizarre by the way, but that’s for another time). However, despite this, she has provided me with some inspiration. Regardless of her cold personality, she has no doubt done an incredible job at bringing up a child who was deprived of oxygen at birth and who has severe autism, who cannot speak, who is prone to violent tantrums and who cannot control urinal or bowel movements. I have drawn inspiration from her; ‘if she can deal with that situation day to day, I really ought to get a grip and sort my anxiety out.’ 

I am not privileged to have a large, functional family but I can still admire them for dealing with difficult times and thank them for standing by me and doing their best to bring me up well. I now intend on returning the favour as we embark on new challenges.

• To the ‘other than conventional friends’ for not casting me aside for being different, thank you.
• To my family who have inspired and supported me (when I’ve let them), thank you.
• To my parents who will always support me despite going through their own challenges, thank you.

Best wishes,

Al

Five Blogs of Thanks - 5th Anniversary of The Anxiety Tracker - Colleagues

Hi all,

The previous two blogs in this series have documented people who have helped me who have at least a partial remit of helping other people with mental health problems, either because they are paid to do so, or because they are compassionate individuals wanting to share their thoughts and experiences (or often both). However, for me, there have also been several people in my life who have helped me unknowingly and this particularly applies to people I have worked with over the years.

I am extremely lucky when it comes to how my career has progressed. Okay so I have worked hard to gain this, but I have also been given numerous breaks that have ultimately led me to work for a small not-for-profit organisation focused on a subject I am incredibly passionate about and with a brilliant team of people.  It all started in 2008 just after I graduated; I didn’t know what I was going to do with myself at this stage, this in spite of 2008 being one of the less-terrible years anxiety-wise between 1998 and 2012.  That, again, was fortunate in the sense I could actually consider starting a job – several years either side of 2008 would have made starting a job very hard due to anxiety.  Year 2008 was a mini anxiety hiatus; yes, I still had many problems compared to today but things were not as bad as most of my university years that had just concluded.

I was alerted by a university lecturer to a graduate placement days before it was advertised to the wider public.  The lecturer knew my interests and knew the placement would be of interest – one example of so many that shows why enrolling to a ‘smaller’ university that get slated in the press and by government is often the best way forward.  Lecturers actually know who you are for a start.  Without his intervention, I would never have seen this graduate opportunity, which led me onto another work placement opportunity which turned into a full-time paid job within four months, a job I ended up staying in for nearly five and a half years.  Then in January 2014 I got through an interview to start my current job.  All of these jobs have been associated with the subject I am passionate about, too, so I know how lucky I am.  This is especially true when you consider that I couldn’t undertake part-time jobs during school summer holidays or university because I was so anxious!

So I have been in work for almost exactly nine years (I started my graduate scheme job on 16 June 2008, two days before my 21^st birthday!).  And despite going through some absolute nightmare times, in particular the aftermath of the 2011 railway meltdown which came about ironically to discuss the potential for quitting work and doing a masters, work has been one positive constant throughout the past nine years and remains the case today, arguably more so than ever.

Both jobs prior to my most recent one were based in a local authority, so sure, you had a lot of utter nonsense (political, corporate, administrative crap, largely) to deal with.  But I enjoyed the day job and another bonus was only living a short bus ride away from work (and in the latter couple of years within walking distance).  This was important during the aforementioned meltdown as leaving the house was hard enough; had I been required to travel miles it would have been impossible.

But what has been the main success of work? My colleagues.  Not so much during the graduate scheme where no-one really spoke to me, but once I started at the council in September 2008 I was lucky enough to work with a mixed group of people, with ‘mixed’ meaning some not so good colleagues but some ace ones.  I left the council in January 2014 and yet there are still several people I keep in touch with on a semi-regular basis.

These people kept me going in 2011-12 when I was in hell. A combination of their humour, warmness and office banter, along with the distraction that a largely enjoyable job brought, meant that the office was the one place where I could be less anxious than everywhere else.  It is the opposite for a lot of people I appreciate, but that’s the way it was.  More difficult times came in 2012-13 when I moved out of the family home for the first (and second) time; but even then, the short but severe bouts of depression did not occur when I was at work because of the nature of the people there keeping me going.

But none of them really realised what I was going through, that was, until not long after the 2011 incident.  I nearly collapsed in the office so I had no choice but to open up to my boss and boss’s boss about what was going on.  I didn’t particularly like either of them, but to their credit they were understanding and kind which, again, I know is not necessarily normal.  Despite not being ‘my sort of people,’ I will never forget their response to what I told them, which was very positive.

Beyond this, the several other colleagues I became close with never really knew what I experienced, that was until the very last day at the council, 17 January 2014, when I opened up in my leaving speech.  Again, this was very well received and I have since had discussions with a few people about my experiences with anxiety and indeed this very blog site.

After negotiating the interview for my current job, I settled in quickly and it didn’t take me long to realise that I was working with a fabulous team of people and had a boss who was both knowledgeable and very good at what she does, but also an excellent man-manager. In my limited experience, it is rare to find someone with both characteristics (it’s more common to have neither!!).  She has been my manager for the whole three and a half years that I have been here. The other member of the team who started just after me (yes, there are only three of us) was a star too and I was fearful when she left about nine months ago. However, her replacement is another fantastic colleague to work with – so again, I have been lucky.  There is an element of working for a small environmental not-for-profit that attracts such personalities, I guess, but even still there are far from any guarantees! Even the temporary interns we’ve had have been good people (largely). 

I look forward to going to work, yes because I enjoy the work and the influence it has, but more so because of the people I work with.  It is comfortable, enjoyable and the atmosphere is light and positive. I have walked into several (usually, large open-plan) offices since starting with this company and come out feeling like the life has been sucked out of me. So again, I recognise how fortunate I am.

It begs the question why I have never truly opened up about my mental health issues in my current job.  I only did it in my last job when I had no other choice (collapsing on the floor apparently is enough to force your hand…) and I trust my current colleagues more than ever.  They are open-minded, non-judgemental people and would do nothing but provide support if I told them; I very much doubt they would react negatively. So why not? Is there still an underlying stigma there that always sows those seeds of doubt… ‘what if this happens, what if that?’ I think there is always an element of not wanting to burden other people, too, when I’m conscious that work is busy enough as it is and they all have their own stuff going on in their personal lives. I don’t want to add another spanner in the works.  Either way, though, it is further evidence that speaking totally openly about mental health problems still feels a little alien, despite my general openness with friends and through this blog, when really there is no reason why it shouldn’t.

This is what I meant earlier about people that have helped me without them realising it.  My ace colleagues and fortunate work situation means that going to work is an enjoyable experience and has actually helped my recovery from crippling anxiety over the years.  Today, it keeps my mind off other challenges.  My colleagues, though, have no idea what impact they are having on my personal life.  One day I must properly open up and thank them.

The reality is that work, for me, has been the only constant over the past nine years amongst a myriad of noise, change and chaos caused either by anxiety, its legacy or by life itself.  Without it, I do not dare to think what direction I would have taken.

Finally, I refer you to the start of the third paragraph of this blog, the day the lecturer at my university told me about the graduate placement.  That placement led me on to my two jobs subsequently, without which I dread to think how things would have panned out.  Without his intervention, I would never have seen the graduate placement advertised.  He has since retired and I will forever owe him a debt of gratitude and, most importantly of all, one huge thank you.

• To the lecturer who made my career, thank you.
• To the council and current employers for giving me my break, thank you.
• To all of the colleagues who kept me going during very hard times for just being yourselves, thank you.
• To my current wonderful team of colleagues who are just brilliant, thank you.

Best wishes,

Al

Five Blogs of Thanks - 5th Anniversary of The Anxiety Tracker - Twitterites

Hi all,

This follows on nicely from yesterday’s first blog of thanks and also contradicts a fairly recent blog I wrote about my disdain for social media.  I was primarily focusing on Facebook and joyfully wrote about how it can lead to increasing mental health problems largely through addiction, a lack of escape from being able to compare yourself (negatively) to others and trolling and how all of this can lead to anxiety and depression.  I vehemently believe this to be the case and stand by everything I said in that blog; I deleted my Facebook account in the back end of summer last year and I have not regretted a moment; it’s been wonderful not being exposed to endless drivel.

Yes, yes, I know, not unlike this blog.

So it seems somewhat hypocritical to write a blog thanking people I have engaged with on Twitter over the years.  Let me explain the difference.

I set up Twitter in 2014 to engage with other people who have experienced mental health problems and/or who are campaigning for better mental health services.  I wanted a platform to share this blog site with others to help them and gain feedback, primarily, but also to learn from other people’s experiences of living with a mental health problem and how they have dealt with it. I wanted to gain more intelligence around how I could help myself and how people who have experienced chronic anxiety (or equivalent) are facing later life. I also wanted to connect with like-minded people.  I did not set up Twitter to engage with ‘friends;’ the fact that a few of my friends are followers is irrelevant.  Twitter allows you to follow who you like without feeling guilty about not following others back.

Okay, so it’s certainly is not without its faults, but if used properly, it can be of real benefit for people looking for peer-to-peer and professional learning about mental health (people may tell me that Facebook can be too, which is fair enough – I appreciate I am in the minority when it comes to this view)!

Along with useful and interesting tweets from various mental health charities and organisations that support/run mental health services (see yesterday’s blog), I have connected with numerous individuals over the years who have inspired or influenced me in some way.

Leaders in the field

This list of Twitterites range from people who I perceive as leaders in the field, who have taken their compassion for others and passion for raising awareness of mental health and reducing stigma to an incredible level largely off their own backs. And who I probably wouldn’t know existed without being on Twitter. The list below is given in Twitter handle alphabetical order.

@ClaireyLove – who during my time on Twitter has risen to stardom with her fabulous book ‘We’re all MAD here.’ It has been fascinating and awe inspiring to watch this lady who must be of similar age to me express her experiences of social anxiety (and wider anxiety) with the world.  Check out this website if you haven’t yet.

@DoodleChronicle – a brilliant way of depicting how art and, specifically, doodles can be used to communicate what mental illness really feels like.  This Twitter site is more than just doodles, though, and contains incredibly candid accounts of what it is really like to live with a mental illness.

@enhughesiasm – someone who has turned to comedy to express what it feels like to live with anxiety, expressed in no small part by his TEDx talk last year which was brilliant. And made me hungry.

@FionaArt – her Twitter account states that she is an ‘individual trying to change the world’ and frankly who could argue? She has also contributed significantly to live mental health chats on Twitter recently – off her own back – so that people can tweet their live questions and experiences. Check out #mhchat.

@matthaig1 – a very talented man doing his utmost to make changes to our mental health system and influence those who need to be influenced. He has also written several books which draw on his expertise and depicts it in an empathetic, inspiring and vivid manner.

@MelJN17 / @MelNaray2nd – it’s not often you can tell someone is a beautiful person without physically meeting them, but Melanie comes into this category. Check out her two Twitter accounts to see what I mean – and her poems.

@MrJonnyBenjamin – The MBE for his services to mental health and suicide prevention pretty much says it all. His support to improve mental health services and raise awareness of the impact it can have on people’s lives knows no bounds. The powers that be would do well to listen to him more often.

@TheSarahFader‏ – and from across the pond, Sarah Fader is CEO of Stigma Fighters, another charity doing its bit to show that mental illness is nothing to be ashamed of.  The success of the charity is down to Sarah’s palpable enthusiasm for the subject and she has even created her own hashtag: #ThisIsWhatAnxietyFeelsLike.

Thank you all for doing an incredible job at changing people’s perceptions of mental illness to such an extent that it is genuinely influencing national policy and activity – and ultimately, helping those people in greatest need.

Then there are all the brilliant people I have connected with on Twitter in the past three years who are going about their daily lives but in the process trying to make things better for other people by sharing their experiences and helping others through difficult periods. They act as sounding boards, trusted virtual entities that understand and can empathise with what ‘difficult’ really means. They are an army of compassion individuals, all vastly different but with one common goal: to help others. A special mention to those who have particularly affected me:

@Allinthehead19 – check out https://allinthehead2016.wordpress.com/.

@AnxietySunshine

@anxiwarrior – check out https://anxiwarrior.wordpress.com/

@DanAnxietyBlog

@DawnPriestland

@Jinthelife – check out http://www.ajayinthelife.com/

@jonnyward21

@katyfrank18 – check out http://katyfrank21.tumblr.com/

@ktanx1

@lesleylyness

@lisaeva77

@mandy166

@Miss_Horan7

@RoseWiltshire

@SimbaTalks

@shazzaph

@Syrupie

@vikyjane

Thank you all for being brilliant.

Before you ask, yes it did take ages to go through all of my followers to try and ensure I didn’t miss anyone (which I probably have failed to do – in which case apologies).

Then of course, as mentioned previously, there are the Twitter accounts of the various charities, such as Anxiety UK, Anxiety United (in particular, given their lack of resource), Mind (local and national) and the Time to Change initiative, Tasha Foundation, SANE and the Samaritans, along with recent dementia orientated charities which have also been increasingly useful for me over the past few months.  Thank you all for sharing your wisdom and resources on this platform and reaching out.

I think I am using Twitter in the right way; the amount I’ve learnt from this group of people and others is testament to this I think.  And moreover, when compassion seems scarce during the day to day grind of life, one log-in to Twitter can totally change that perception.

• To the Twitterites who are suffering, thank you for sharing and reaching out. I hope it helps.
• To the Twitterites for sharing your wisdom, thank you; I have learnt so much.
• To the charities Twittering, thank you for allowing easy dissemination of your information.

Thank you.

Best wishes,

Al

Five Blogs of Thanks - 5th Anniversary of The Anxiety Tracker - The Professionals

Hi all,

I think it would be short-sighted of me to start anywhere other than the professionals. No, I don’t mean the 70s TV series, I mean the anxiety and mental health professionals that actually helped me turn my life from a chaotic nonsense to something worth living for.

I had spent several years trying to find someone who calls themselves ‘a professional.’  I had gone to the public, private and even university sector to try and get the help I needed and, although maybe not realising it at the time, I didn’t get anything other delays, dolphin noises and relaxation techniques, quite frankly.  I don’t hold a huge amount of blame on the shoulders of the therapists, as I know they must see hundreds of people every week; everyone reading this knows it’s the system is absolute garbage. But none of the therapists I saw helped me which I think was rather unfortunate, given that I have since discovered that my condition isn’t actually that rare, so to not find therapy for about 13 years after I first started showing symptoms of anxiety, despite several attempts, was unacceptable really.

Alas, the biggest irony of my anxiety rollercoaster is that the only successful therapy came after I had my biggest ever meltdown, on that train back from Cornwall in March 2011.  I had no choice but to peruse Dr. Google at that stage and it actually worked; I stumbled across Anxiety UK, a charity that actually understood me!  I read some of their literature and I remember thinking ‘THIS IS ME, THIS IS ME!! AFTER NIGH ON 13 YEARS I HAVE FINALLY FOUND PEOPLE WHO DON’T THINK I’M A ****ING WEIRDO!!’  It was liberating – albeit I was probably having a panic attack at the time.

When I saw their therapy offer…

• CBT
• Flexible number of sessions
• Via webcam if necessary
• Relatively cheap, all things considered

…I was even more excited, to the point of raising my heart rate and having another panic attack.  But I plucked up the courage to call and within two weeks I had my first appointment with a therapist via webcam. She was in Glasgow, I was in Stafford. According to Dr. Google, who apparently is also good at geography, there is 262 miles between the two locations.  I couldn’t leave the house at the time and with an absence of an Anxiety UK therapist in Stafford this was the next best thing.

For the first time, I’d like to name this therapist who, after 50 (yes, fifty) sessions of (actual) CBT got me back on track (I was never on track to begin with): Veronica Macdiarmid, thank you.  How on earth you managed to get that website URL, I will never know.

I have blogged several times about CBT and the various techniques I’ve used and will continue to use. I learnt all of these from Veronica and Anxiety UK and I don’t think I even realise sometimes how much they have helped me over the last five years.

I had just finished this fifty sessions of therapy when I set up this blog; it was this that inspired me to do so.  How can I share this with others as well as share my experience of living with anxiety? Veronica and Anxiety UK had made me want to open up about mental health and shout about it to the world. An added bonus of course, but not superfluous, as this opening of doors has helped me ever since, uncovering a world of people who have had similar experiences and feelings to me over the years. I thought I was alone before all of this.

• To Veronica, thank you for sorting me out.
• To Anxiety UK, thank you for hooking me up with her and for opening so many doors for me.
• To all mental health charities, thank you for your continued striving to help people like me.

Thank you.

Best wishes,

Al

Five Blogs of Thanks - 5th Anniversary of The Anxiety Tracker - Introduction

Hi all,

If you had said to me five years ago that I would set up a blog and still be writing posts in five years’ time, I would not have believed you.  Mainly because things like blogs often don’t have longevity without gaining financial incentive but also because there was a significant chance that I could have had a nervous breakdown at some point during that five years rendering me unable to write blogs or anything else for that matter.

So I feel it is an occasion to mark and I am going to do this in the form of five blogs starting tomorrow and posted each day until the anniversary on 15 June.  They will each thank five different ‘groups’ of people, people without whom I wouldn’t be able to write this today, people to whom I owe a huge amount of debt and gratitude for what they have given me, knowingly or unknowingly over the years.  Each of the five categories has been deliberately and carefully chosen so to encompass as many of the people I can that have contributed to my stability from crippling anxiety. This hadn’t long left me back on 15 June 2012, but now it is buried much deeper, allowing me to live a more fulfilling life, albeit not without its anxiety and non-anxiety related challenges.

The fact is, without the influence of these other people, I dread to think where I would be.

This blog is the introduction to this series and to set the scene.  Where was I five years ago and where am I now?

Date	15 June 2012	15 June 2017
Age	3 days away from my 25th birthday	3 days away from my 30th birthday
Living situation	One month into my first ever house-share situation; only just moved out of my parents’ home	Two years owning a home having shared two different houses for about 2.5 years previously
Job	Four years into my job at a local authority	Three and a half years into my job with a charity
Education	Four years since graduating	Nine years since graduating
Relationship status	Single	Single
Therapy	Days after finishing fifty sessions of CBT	None since the aforementioned CBT concluding five years prior
Friends	Several still living in Stafford	As aforementioned, with friendships even stronger if anything
Family	Not close with any except parents	As aforementioned; mum has recently been diagnosed with dementia
No. blog posts	0	134 (assuming I post these six as planned!)
Anxiety level (/10)	6, ranging from 5 to 9	3, ranging from 2 to 6
Overall happiness (/10)	3, ranging from 1 to 5	6, ranging from 5 to 8

I appreciate that I am writing this five days in advance of the comparison, but unless I suddenly find the girl of my dreams, get sacked and as a consequence my home becomes repossessed this side of Thursday, I can be fairly confident that what I have put here will still be the case.  What this shows is some definite improvements which, okay, may come naturally with age. But aside perhaps from the relationship status, everything else that has changed has come as a surprise in the past, as indeed has not requiring any more therapy. I never thought after finishing those CBT sessions that ‘that would be it’ – of course, it may yet not be.

You can read through my blogs for more context but at that I will leave it for now.  All it remains for me to write by way of an introduction is twofold:

What are my top five most read blogs in the past five years?

1.       Moving on… again (22 May 2015)

2.       The New Job (19 January 2014)

3.       Zzzzzz… (5 July 2015)

4.       Anxiety@ The Shared House (8 March 2015)

5.       The Confidence Issue (27 July 2014)

I wish to also draw your attention to some of my favourite blogs and series:

The Seven Steps to Stability series (May 2014)

Guest blog about arachnophobia (July 2014)

The Anxiety@ series (starting with this one) (November 2014 – March 2015)

My (constructive) rant about social media (November 2016)

My plea to government about mental health in schools (January 2017)

And finally, as I’ve said, the next five blogs, one to be posted each day up to and including Thursday, the fifth anniversary of this blog, will thank those people that made me jump from a 3 to a 6 out of 10 for happiness and fall from a 6 to a 3 in terms of anxiety in those five years. 

Thank you ALL!

Best wishes,

Al