#Modern Technology: Anxiety @epidemic or gradual #reduction? LMAO!

There has been a reasonable amount of debate around the pressure that social networking (SN) has on mental health, and how it can be both good and bad for it.  From an anxiety point of view, social networking and modern technology as a whole is certainly having an impact.  It's transforming everyone's lives in some way or another.

It's full-time and Liverpool lose again.

I use SN sites; I use Facebook, primarily because most other people I know do and it's often the best (and cheapest) way of keeping in touch with people.  I use Twitter for no other reason other than to promote this blog and I use Linkedin for work contacts.  My standpoint of SN is that it's a great concept, but to me it seems to be replacing real-life contact.  It can also be extremely misleading, and people find it much easier to 'vent' via the textual rather than the spoken word - they say things on Facebook that they may not have said to someone face to face, or even phone to phone.  So overall, I think the rise in SN has been too meteoric and worryingly it will only get more so.

SN can also put immense pressure on people with anxiety, especially social anxiety.  The life of your friends, or indeed, 'people you vaguely knew at school and spoke to once,' is plastered all over your computer or phone on a daily, or even hourly basis.  If Caroline gets married, John gets 'falsely' arrested and Dean finally gets his dream job as a chicken farmer, you know about it immediately.  Sonograms, wedding rings, party snaps and bits of half eaten food appear as photos on the site, as a way of documenting people's lives. 

But to someone with anxiety, all of these updates can be difficult to take.  The seemingly normal act of someone's status being 'out at the pub with good mates' can put someone who struggles to go to such events, or someone who doesn't go to enough of such events because they used to struggle at such events, in a very low mood.  But without SN, that person is cut off completely from their friends... so what do you do?  Simply watching stories flick up on your screen of people getting engaged and being in relationships and having such an awesome time can generate your own feelings of failure.  To someone with anxiety, these emotions are difficult to stop.  I imagine it's even worse for people suffering from depression.  But if you sever all ties with SN, then you risk becoming isolated and lonely, as sadly some people seem to replace SN with physically meeting up these days.

Then, of course, there's the issue of popularity, something else that can mount pressure on someone with anxiety.  I have 104 friends on my Facebook page, which apparently is quite low for someone of my age.  Most of my other friends have over 150, with some having over 1,000.  I don't think I've ever seen 1,000 different people, let alone can class them as friends. 

The question to ask is, how many of these 104 people are actually friends?  The way I class friends are (1) people who you talk (actually talk) to regularly, (2) share things with, (3) trust and (4) enjoy the company of on a social basis.  I would say about ten come into at least three of these four categories.  About five come into all four.  Granted, many people my age would have more than this (indeed, this is a legacy of my anxious past), but I guarantee that those people with 1,000 friends will have no more than about 30 who are 'true' friends.  I would wager that it'd be less.  But still, someone with anxiety who has lived a life of social turmoil and difficulty will often look at statistics like this and feel failures or pressured.

Trust me, it happens.

I am in favour of SN becoming available on mobiles though, for one reason only; it means that at least people can take their SN sites with them, so that they aren't wedded to their homes on their laptops.  At least they can get some fresh air.  Fresh air and exercise are very important for people with anxiety to get, so at least now we can get the "best" of both worlds.

But then there's the issue of technology as a whole.  The Government, needless to say, are pressing ahead with the construction of more mobile phone masts to cope with increased demand and the rollout out of 4G (whatever that is).  The World Health Organisation state that "no adverse health effects have been established as being caused by mobile phone use."  But, (a) I am less than convinced by the research that has been done, (b) this is from mobile phone use and not the radiation from masts themselves and (c) this is in reference to physical, and not mental health.  I'm no health expert, but you're telling me that the huge increase in microwaves and wireless beams that penetrate all of our walls is having no impact?  I doubt that.  We'll never find out of course, because such statistics, if they were ever to come to light, would disappear into a fine mist, all in the name of technology. 

Perish the thought that we aren't wedded to our SN sites or mobile phones for more than a minute.

But I feel I should end on a positive note.  SN, and the Internet as a whole, can bring huge benefits to anxiety sufferers.  As I've explained on previous blogs, I found Anxiety UK purely by searching online.  I received therapy via a webcam from a counsellor who was at her home in Glasgow.  Mind and Anxiety UK's Facebook and Twitter feeds, their blogs and their websites are not only fantastic resources for anxiety sufferers (and those with other mental health problems), but they are also able to reach out to a much wider audience.  They can now find the people that need help, rather than the people needing help having to find them.  There's also Mind's own version of Facebook called Elefriends, which brings together a whole community of people who have mental health problems.

The various SN/Internet-based pages are also being markedly successful in attempting to eradicate mental health stigma, something that is much easier now more people are able to share their thoughts about mental health more openly.

There could be a scenario where more people get anxious because of SN and technology, but more people also get treated as a result.  I'll let you decide which is better. 

The message for anxiety sufferers I guess is, try and ignore social networking updates and, instead, utilise it to your advantage.  Why not create a blog about your experiences?

Oh hang on, only someone with very few Facebook friends would have the time to do that...

Best wishes
Al

Challenges

Another positive of anxiety (if you scroll back through these blogs then you might find some others!!) is that it allows you to not take certain things for granted.  When I say 'things,' I mean people, possessions, but also situations.  Many people, for example, would organise a lunch out in the pub with work colleagues, eat the lunch, have a chat and a laugh and not think about it any more.  Because eating out has been such a challenge to me in the past, when a lunch goes well, then I can celebrate it and reflect on it, both during and afterwards.  It allows me to focus on the conversations and laughs that were had, rather than let them get absorbed in the morass of pain and difficulty that eating out would often generate.



Only another 34 years to go

By and large, this positive step happened yesterday.  I organised a lunch at a pub in Stafford for my 26th birthday.  I invited 17 people and 16 actually came, which was to my surprise (I expected a turn out of about 6 or 7, given work pressures these days).  But of course, this put the pressure onto me.  One strand of CBT I learnt was that, at meals, bear in mind that the focus isn't on me.  It's often on someone else, i.e., whoever organised the meal.  But I couldn't use this excuse, or technique, this time.
The first question you may ask is why did I organise it if I knew that it could go horribly wrong?  After all, for my 23rd three years ago, a meal at Nando's in Birmingham resulted in me struggling to eat so badly that I nearly choked myself into oblivion; so bad was the situation that one of my friends had to bring fluids to the toilet where I had to go to attempt to unchoke myself.  Unfortunately he brought me a half-drunk pint of beer rather than water, which didn't really help the problem...

So why did I organise this lunch? 

• Well, mainly, because I'm fed up hiding.  I'm fed up of using an excuse for not doing something, for example 'I'm at work.'  I wanted to be a 26 year old who could do something normal, and not have to worry about the consequences. 
• I wanted to test myself and how far, or not, I've come. 
• I thought that maybe being with work colleagues meant that the expectation on me was lower.  If it's with close friends or parents, say, then the expectation is greater on me to be the focal point.  This adds to the pressure and results in a greater likelihood of difficulties.
• It was only a lunch, not a big 3 course meal, meaning again the pressure was less intense.

To set the context.  The day before, I attended a work meeting in London and got the train there and back (I didn't do a live blog after the """""success""""" of the last one; see 2,3 and 4 blogs ago...).  All was going fine; I was using my tablet to check work emails (Virgin trains' wireless Internet = bloody extortionate by the way), and I was ok until about halfway through the journey.  At this point, physically, I started to feel really poor; whether it was the 'looking down' at the tablet for too long (or maybe the conference's chocolate cake I ate not long before the end?) I don't know.  But unfortunately the health anxiety kicked in, and the rest of the journey was me trying to keep it together.  Putting music on to distract myself, breathing, trying to focus on anything but my feeling like crap.  Luckily it subsided after the journey ended, but even still, this heightened my vulnerability and made me more anxious yesterday morning, with these feelings still in mind.

I said to one of my colleagues, "I feel a bit rubbish today, not sure I'll eat much!"  That's always my 'get the excuses in early lest I screw up' line that I recycle before almost any meal out. 

But overall, the lunch was a success.  I ate 90% of it, and didn't encounter any major problems.  It wasn't easy I wouldn't say, because it was playing on the mind all morning (ruminating), and I kept over-analysing how I was feeling, which is the opposite of what one should do in such circumstances, I've learnt.  But the bullet points above and, hopefully, a more 'common sense' thought process compared to the chaotic and irrational one I used to have helped me through it.  It meant that my birthday was more challenging that I would have liked it to be - I can't relax before such an event -  but I was able to appreciate it more because of the relative success of it.  And go all warm and fuzzy at the fact that 16 people turned up!

I suppose a piece of advice that I could give to anyone reading this who has anxiety, is that don't be ashamed if you find certain events difficult that other people find easy.  For a start, there's help out there to make such events easier for you, and moreover you will begin to appreciate them more than your fellow attendees over time when one of them goes well. 

The final thing I've got to do now is stop saying to myself "I'm 26 now, and I still haven't...." or "I still do..." In other words, over analyse the success or otherwise of my life and then blaming anxiety for it. 

I'm the only one who can change that.

Best wishes
Al

Time to Move On?

I have been deliberating in the past couple of weeks as to whether to move back out of my parents house to somewhere else.  I moved back in with them late January and although this was the right move for me at the time, I know that, for my own personal development, I should be looking to move on.


The quality of my pictures are improving

After all, I have now experienced the 'living away from home' thing and from an anxiety perspective it generally went ok.  The experience at times was quite a testing one, but I managed to handle it quite well.  This may seem strange, but the fact that the four housemates that I didn't know before I moved there were either not my cup of tea or made no effort to get to know me, meant that the pressure that may have fallen on me to be sociable never really came about.  I was naively expecting communal dinners and pub visits before moving in, but such activities may have fuelled my social anxiety; I'm not good around socially confident people. 

So this time, I'd like to meet a housemate(s) who does enjoy socialising, with the aim to meet new people but also to test me.  I still get uncomfortable when I'm thrust into a social event with people who I don't know, who I class as over-confident ('normal' to most people) or who ask me lots of questions about me early on.  If this is accompanied by a more formal occasion, e.g. a sit-down meal, then I really struggle.

So it's a bit of a balancing act.  I want to meet a sociable person, but by sociable I mean sitting and watching the football together as well as going out.  Someone who enjoys company of any kind, and not someone who isn't satisfied with a night's socialising unless they have at least 14 pints. 

This time it's more daunting.  I was in the company of a long-term friend last time, which made the transition somewhat easier than it may have otherwise been.  This time I'm going it alone. 

But I've said for ages that I need to meet new people.  I don't socialise anywhere near enough now, and over the next few months or so, more people are going to be moving on, and by that I mean out of Stafford.  The one person who I really get along well with (and who's my age) at work will also be leaving later this year.  My social savannah is going to become a social desert by the end of 2013 if I don't act quickly and decisively.  So I need to be pro-active and push myself to meet new people.

How?  Well, Uni is the best option, but as regular followers of this blog will know, that didn't exactly go well when I looked into that over two years ago.  Plus, I cannot afford to give up this job; if I gain a postgraduate degree, great, but if there are physically no jobs out there, then the potential pleasure of Uni could be taken over by dark days of no work afterwards.  And to put it bluntly, the only reason I want to go back to Uni is for the socialising.

I could do some other courses, e.g. a music course.  I tried this in late 2010, and for my music hobby it went well, but I didn't really meet anyone.  Unfortunately, most of the courses are online or in London, which again is either not going to fulfil my purpose or isn't practical.

So moving in with new people is the only option left. I recognise it isn't the best one for meeting new people; for a start, there probably won't be many people who are looking for someone to rent with who are also looking for a social partner.  Most people my age have relationships/big circle of friends, or if they don't, they are happy to be hermits.

Don't get me wrong, if moving doesn't achieve my aim and my social fulfilment does decline, then at some point in a year or so, I may have to do the Uni thing anyway, lest I end up a lonely late 20 year old with so much socialising to give but no-one to give it to. I'd rather have no job than that.

But how did it come to this?  Not socialising enough when I was meant to, i.e. in sixth form and particularly at University.  It'd be easy to blame anxiety for this, but as I've said before, whilst anxiety may have caused me great pain in certain social events, I also spent too much time running away from people.  Even from things that would have almost certainly not generated much anxiety, like a drink in the Uni bar after a lecture.  But the reality remains that if I had not had social (or other) anxiety, I imagine I would be in a position of social enrichment now. 

Not least because I'd probably be in a relationship.

The concern now, of course, is twofold.  (1) If I move and the situation is not good, then I'm on my own.  I may get more lonely, because although living with my parents is lonely enough sometimes, at least they are here.  They watch football.  They talk.  Crap, maybe, but it's interaction all the same. 

And (2), if (1) happens or if I fail to act before people move on, and my social life decreases even more, that my anxiety rises again due to even more time for rumination, procrastination, worry, distress, panic. 

Whatever my next move is, it'll be a risky one.  The likelihood of walking into a place which gives me everything I want is exceptionally low.  There is a higher likelihood of utmost failure than total success; chances are it'll be somewhere in between.  But either way, this decision could be the biggest of my life in terms of determining whether my future will be lonely and anxious or sociable and confident.

I'll let you know how it goes...

Best wishes
Al

LIVE BROADCAST: On the Move 2

So I am now on the return leg of the journey. I felt nervous again at the start of it, especially when getting on at Chippenham... the 'hell' back in 2011 set in within minutes of setting off so that first bit was always going to be most difficult. I tried to compose myself, again by reading the newspaper and listenihg to music, even tough I did'nt particularly feel like it!

I even tried utilising mindfulness... i.e when my mind began to wander into dangerous territory, I focused on the words on the newspaper page... even if it was about fairly depressing topics. It's all about making the most of what's around you, and not takingbthem for granted, no matter how mundane they may seem.

Having this tablet really helps to... I've been able to email my friends and that really helps to take my mind off things. You could argue that blogging about anxiety in a situation like this is silly, but being open about it, even to the few people who may read this post, seems to help a bit.

There's still a longbway to go. The train is due in at 8, and it's currently half 6 so it's too early to be complacent. But it would be nice to get home and say that the techniques I have learnt have actually had a positive effect. Don't get me wrong, thisvhas stilvbeen a biger challenge than I would have liked, and the aura of anxiety has not helped in my quest to actually enjoy my visit. But overall I have, and hopefully I can try and enjoy more train challenges in future.

And yes, dreadful spelling. But I fear a repear of what happened last time if I try and rectify it!

Best wishes
Al