Mental Weather

You may have picked up from previous blogs that I work in the field of environmental sustainability.  I changed jobs back in January and although this new job has its own stresses, I love the area of work I'm involved in and hope I am lucky enough to continue working in this area in the future.  I won't go into exactly what I do but sufficient is it to say that it involves running events and supporting organisations become more sustainable themselves.

Things aren't quite this bad...

A significant part of my job and a big passion of mine is the severe weather side of this, i.e. protecting organisations from being shafted by severe weather.  One of the most fulfilling parts of both of my jobs is/has been working in communities and, more recently, with health professionals in trying to make patients and communities more resilient to the impacts of the weather and to try and alleviate fuel poverty, where possible.  I'm currently, with support, developing a network with health practitioners to try and make severe weather something they think more about on a daily basis.

As such, the research and real-life situations I have seen in developing this is quite striking, in terms of how much of an impact severe weather can have on physical, but also mental health. Physical is more obvious: cold weather and fuel poverty can lead, in the worst, cases to pneumonia for example; heatwaves can cause heatstroke and breathing difficulties; flood water can carry water-borne diseases; you could get struck by lightning or go arse over head on ice.

But the mental health effects are less well understood and, more importantly, less well discussed.  Whether it's less well discussed because of that lack of understanding or because of the stigma that we know still surrounds mental health I'm not sure, but it's certainly the reality.  So how can severe weather affect mental health, exactly?

- One of the direct ways is through Seasonal Affective Disorder.  At a conference I was at yesterday (one of the reasons that spurred me on to write this blog), SAD was mentioned for the first time at any sort of work event I've attended.  But this is a key condition that is affected directly by the weather.  Of course, it's not just about weather; it's also about the darker days.  This must be a horrible condition as it is purely cyclic and you know when it's coming.  I don't have SAD, but if anything I have the opposite!  

- There is also a direct link between physical and mental health.  In snowfall or icy conditions, for example, elderly people in particular are almost homebound.  They can't get out for fear of falling over. A friend of our family fell on some ice whilst walking to a non-gritted bus stop during one of those recent severe winters and were it not for one of our friendly bus drivers coming to the rescue he would have died.  Since then, once he'd fully recovered physically, he has come outside far less for fear of it happening again.  It has restricted his life much more, and when he does venture out he needs someone with him all the time for confidence.  This particular person is very much a positive person too; someone with perhaps even less initial confidence or someone who already had a mental health problem may have really struggled after just this one incident.  Winters now are almost a no-go.

- The knock-on effect of being homebound of course is loneliness.  The gentleman I mention above is still living with his wife, but many people in their 80s are widowers.  Such people rely on going out and about to socialise, and when the weather prevents this with whatever severe conditions it throws up, it can have a debilitating effect on a person's life.  They become lonely and depressed very quickly, which is a sad way to conclude a life.

- Flooding, something we've seen a lot of over the last few years, is something that can have an adverse effect on anyone's mental health.  If someone's home gets flooded it can cause thousands of pounds worth of damage.  It then takes a long time to get back to normal and it also becomes more difficult to sell your home, especially in areas where it floods frequently.  The strain that this can put the residents under can be exceptional and needless to say this can lead to significant mental health problems especially in the longer-term, namely depression and anxiety.  You would always be on edge that it was going to happen again.  This could be especially heightened if you have a family to support.

- Fuel poverty, as mentioned above, isn't directly affected by the weather. Fuel poverty comes about via an accumulation of problems resulting in a lack of money to pay for heating.  But of course, it is exacerbated in cold weather and can cause months of misery - and yes, again, depression and anxiety - for those people worst affected.  In a More Economically Developed Country as were are, no-one should really have to choose between heating and eating, but that is the reality.  And the mental health effects of striving to do this must be telling.

This list isn't exhaustive, and needless to say any physical effects as a result of severe weather impacts can impact negatively on mental health, particularly if it affects you or a carer severely or frequently.  My argument is that, I'm no expert on health at all, and yet even I have identified through my work that there are numerous effects that severe weather can have on mental health, so more should be being done.  Some organisations, such as the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, are doing more on this but the problem is only likely to get worse.  With an ageing population and climate change increasing the amount of severe weather events we get, more research needs to go into the effect that weather events have on mental health, and more importantly more efforts needs to go into helping people in these situations.  It will only become worse otherwise.

Tackling this specific issue is only a small percentage of my role; maybe there needs to be more roles that focus on this fulltime?

Best wishes
Al

Me and My Blog: Two Years On

It is two years to the day since I set up this website.  At the time, I had either just finished or was about to finish my last round CBT therapy for helping with my anxiety.  If I hadn't finished, I must have had no more than a couple of sessions left, which out of 50 isn't many.  I was living in my first shared house and about two and a half months into the experience.  It was an uncertain time and although I was much better than the same time the year before, I was still in a darker place in 2012 than I am now in 2014.  

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

Life Defining Anxiety

My experience was never like this...

I've always been told by professionals that blaming my anxiety for certain aspects of my life is not helpful.  If anything, one could argue that it would fuel anxious feelings by almost giving anxiety as an excuse and as such attributing it to everything that is wrong with your life.  I know that anxiety hasn't been the cause of all of my regrets in life, nor are there many cases where anxiety is the sole cause of any.  But the condition that I have put up with for nigh on 17 years has more than just been an inconvenience to my life and my achievements, or lack of them.

Before I start reeling off the examples where anxiety has hindered me, I appreciate that I am still a very lucky person, when put into the perspective of not just a global population but even a UK one.  I don't live in poverty, I have great friends and a supportive family and my physical health is as good as one could hope.  I can't pretend to imagine what it must be like for a person who cannot say that they have one or more of these factors; living with anxiety in these cases must be incredibly hard and I'm sure, in many cases, insurmountable.  With the recession in particular, more and more people in this country have had to suffer with the consequences of job cuts and difficulty keeping their heads above water, itself a cause of anxiety.  People with long term health problems need incredible strength to keep themselves together, but again anxiety - and other mental health problems - can occur if you're stuck with a particular condition for so long. And I will not patronise any further by pretending what this must be like, and honestly, hope I never have to find out.
 
I have grown up in a world where most people I know have also been lucky, in the same respect I have.  Materialism is quite high on most people's agenda, something I personally hate, possibly because I've had the experience to enable me to cherish the less material things in life.  But this isn't to say it would have been nice to do certain things that other people I know and have grown up around have (mostly all) done.  Or if they haven't done it, it's because they have chosen not to.  A few example follow:

- Learning to drive.  I did actually have many driving lessons back in 2004-5.  I must admit it felt like I was frogmarched by my father to the post office to collect my provisional licence; it was literally on my 17th birthday.  My mum doesn't drive, so I think my dad was keen for me to as he has seen the minor hindrances that not being able to drive has given to my mum.  However, I didn't feel ready but back then I had little confidence or power to argue.  Goodness knows how many lessons I had, but each one was a living hell.  The last year of sixth form was the best year of my entire school career, but this driving lark spoilt it.  The lessons were all that was in my mind.  As one lesson ended, my mind starting thinking of the next one.  I would basically have a panic attack before, during and after each lesson, everytime without fail.  My mum even bought me some weird tablet things (can't remember what they were - not beta blockers!) that were supposed to calm me down at the peak of distress - they had no effect.  My instructor was horrific as well; very blunt and not very patient or encouraging.  Why on earth I persisted with this for so long - and indeed why my parents let me persist with it - is still beyond me, but I got so far as to take a test.  Now, I knew I wasn't competent enough to pass a test, but even if I was, the anxiety and panic I was experiencing rendered driving adequately impossible anyway.  The world's best driver wouldn't have been able to pass a test in the state I was in.  It was after this test, in June 2005, that I knew I had to stop and perhaps unsurprisingly I have never stepped foot inside the drivers seat of a car again.  Even to this day, ten years later, the very thought isn't one I wish to contemplate.  So far, not being able to drive has been an inconvenience at worst, and I actually enjoy catching buses.  I'd catch the train to work even if I could drive, and because my line of work is environmental sustainability, I kind of have a handy ready-made excuse for why I don't drive.  But this isn't to say it won't be more of an issue in future and even now I'm not sure I could face it again.

- Holidays. I've been on many holidays with my parents in the past, but because of an incident back in 1996, this kind of lay the foundations for holidays to generally be difficult in years to come.  From 1999, one of my best mates came on holiday with me and my parents to try and alleviate the problems I'd previously faced, which largely worked.  I could relax more and my mate offered the appropriate amount of distraction.  However, discounting Guernsey and Ireland, my only venture abroad has been to Barcelona, and this was for my final year undergrad Geography fieldtrip in 2008.  I'm not sure how, but I managed to survive the majority of this trip panic-free, possibly due to the amount of work and sheer number of people we were with.  My main issues with holidays are 1) like driving, bad experiences linger.  2) the fear of being in isolation and away from safety; if something went wrong e.g. a panic attack, having no-one 'safe' there to help me feels like a very daunting prospect.  3) Food - sounds daft, but my various issues with food in the past, which has been exacerbated by trips away before, is something I need to take seriously.  Only in the past year has eating out with friends become more comfortable again, and I still feel that a holiday could reverse this trend, as it has in the past.  Unusual food and pressure to eat, I suppose.  These days, I usually go away for a few days with another good friend of mine; we usually rent a caravan or cheap self-catering property.  This is fine; it's with a good friend, within this country and we control what we eat and when.  I can look forward to these trips, by and large.  But the thought of 'going travelling' or going on holiday abroad, as all my other friends have done, doesn't fill me with anything other than nervousness.  I'd love to travel to certain places and I do think that going somewhere for a week in the next few years is more likely than me getting in the driver's seat of a car.  Holidaying may be easier if...

- Relationships.  I don't want to dwell on this for too long and it would be wrong of me to say that anxiety is the only reason that relationships for me have been - to say the least - hard to come by.  But my confidence in certain situations has been slaughtered by having had anxiety for so long.  I have social anxiety although this has improved in the last couple of years, the aforementioned ability to eat out being one reason for this.  But I still struggle in certain social situation (e.g. with people I don't know or who are quite confident) and struggle even more to break the ice with someone I like.  In fact, change 'struggle even more' to 'almost impossible.'  There is a mental block in me that refuses to budge, despite being more anxiety free now than I was a couple of years ago.  There have been many periods in my life where I couldn't have even considered a relationship because I was in no fit state to look after myself, let alone be with somebody else.  But now I am, making that step has become no easier, and I do, at least in part, put this down to a crippled confidence as a result of anxiety.  Unfortunately, it also feels to me like we're also living in an ever increasing confident society.  As it happens, some of my friends haven't had too many successful relationships either, but some have, and in the days of social media, every other day it seems like people I know are getting married or engaged, which does nothing to improve my hope or self-esteem around this issue.

So there are three of the biggest examples (there are others too) I can give to you where I feel that anxiety has been a real problem.  Going through the pain of panic and intrusions is enough in itself, but the longer-term hindrances that it has also, at best, contributed to is another thing entirely.  This is the shape of my whole life we're talking about, things that people who went to the same school as me and grew up in similar backgrounds take for granted. I appreciate I generalise - I won't be the only one - but being surrounded in general by a society who are happy with their relationships, go on holiday and who's only driving concern is how much their insurance is, does not make these things any easier - quite the opposite, in fact. 

I can't predict where I'll be in five years.  If you'd have said to me this time last year that I'd be back living in shared accommodation which was actually going very well, and that I'd have a different job, I wouldn't have believed you. So who knows what is round the next corner.  But the reality is, years of anxiety has rendered many life-defining things extremely difficult that many other people I know don't even have to work at.

Best wishes
Al