What Would Really Help...

I thought I'd get off the heavier topics for a bit by writing a blog that was a little more light-hearted in nature.  However, much of this is still the truth.

What would I really like to happen to help with my anxiety?  Let's be honest here - other people are the cause of most problems, anxiety being one of them, so with that in mind what would help contribute towards an anxiety free life?

If only all trains were like this...

1) Ban other people

OK, maybe not.  But it's tempting.

2) Ban other people on trains 

But this is definitely more realistic.  The fact is, train travel is absolutely brilliant.  The ability to cruise through the countryside or from one town to another at 100mph is great, watching the world speed past, giving you the time to relax, work, read or whatever it is you can do to pass the time on the commute.

However, this falls into complete impossibility as soon as other people get onto the train.  If one insists that people other than me must take the train to make the railway network economically sustainable - although given the amount I'm charged for a season pass I doubt this is the case - then passengers must undertake the following steps prior to boarding:

- A loudness test.  Why do people shout to the person next to them?  I insist that people are forced to whisper to everyone and they must be tested on this prior to being granted entry.

- A rudeness test.  Anyone who considers taking up two seats with themselves and their bag, anyone who pushes past, who invades your space etc is not allowed.

- All mobile phones are confiscated to spare us the 'listen to me' conversations people insist on having over the phone. This links with the loudness test.

- Don't talk to strangers.  Please don't talk to me if you don't know me, unless you'd like to strike up an interesting and intellectual conversation. Since I've started commuting daily, I've had people recite these following anecdotes to me on a train:

"Gosh you're tall, it must be awkward standing up if you're at the window seat."
Really? I hadn't noticed I'm tall.

"It's often really busy on these trains."
Said when 18 of us were standing up crammed into the vestibule end.

"Where are you travelling too?" Stafford. "The place with the hospital?"

I'm sad to report I didn't answer the last question.  I'm not normally ignorant, but if you don't have anything useful or interesting to say, don't make me feel uncomfortable by talking utter tripe or asking pointless questions.

3) Give people wing mirrors

I walk fast primarily because, as the man on the train pointed out, I am tall.  And I don't dither (my friend and I are forever cursing ditherers. Just get on with it).  So I walk fast and I am able to do so because I have a high spatial awareness.  If I can't overtake someone without risking pushing past, I wait.  If I'm standing in the street I move out the way when people are approaching to let them through.  If I'm sitting next to someone on the train, I give them equal room.  However, it seems most people have no spatial awareness.  They are usually idly browsing their phones or just simply not looking where they are going or not aware of the fact they are taking up 90% of the available room.  If we installed people with mirrors so they can could see all angles, then this would help.  Question is, I can manage to maintain spatial awareness, so why can't you?

The same goes for swimming.  People seem to be unable to see others in the pool and swim in a straight line assuming the other person (me) swims out of the way.

Unless it's just rudeness??

4) Ban over-confidence

Along with a loudness test, one should also be made to take an over-confidence test before going out with friends, starting Uni or moving into a shared house.  Give them the following brief:

"You have five minutes to talk about something. Anything you like."

If they talk a lot about themselves and not a lot about anything else, this suggests over-confidence and thus will not help social anxiety sufferers.  This often comes hand in hand with loudness as well so you could easily combine the two tests.  Job done.

5) Ban TV adverts or documentaries about health

As someone with health anxiety, the last thing I need is a unnecessary medium that triggers off panic at the site of an advert around having a stroke, for example.  If you're in the UK you will have seen it.  The one that looks like there's a burning hole appearing in someones head, with an annoying narrator telling you what you should do if someone is having a stroke.  I'm sure it's all useful information, but I have to run out of the room or cover my eyes and ears if that sort of televisual comes on because otherwise I will sub-consciously begin looking for signs that I am about to have a stroke.

Health anxiety is a lovely thing, eh?

What makes it difficult is if something like this is part of a programme or it happens when you're at the cinema, for example.  What do you do then without drawing attention to yourself?  Banning such adverts or story lines in programmes, or at least providing a warning before they appear, would minimise health anxiety triggers no end.

6) Enforce law around dog leads

Bear with me on this one.

As you may have gathered, I love the countryside, I love walking and I'm lucky enough to have plenty of great scenery and space near to where I live.  I type this particular section of this blog just an hour after returning home from an 8-and-a-half mile Sunday morning walk.  What I don't like about such walks is the fact that you have to play 'dodge the dog' every time you're out.

People seem arrogant about not putting their dogs on leads around where I live, even though most of them cannot control them.  They run at you round here, from in front or behind.  Please, put your dogs on leads if you can't control them so that other people can enjoy their walks and not have to worry about having to bandage up their ankles.  And whilst you're at it, take a loudness test.  Don't disturb the rural peace.

I love animals, including dogs... just not the owners who can't control them.

7) Ban relationship procrastination

Whether this is the same for most people with anxiety I don't know, but for me trying to read other people that you like is a very difficult task.  Over-analysis often comes hand in hand with anxiety and as such you need clear signs if someone likes you and if they are willing to meet up.  Unfortunately, everyone I've ever fallen for is about is easy to a read as a work of Shakespeare in sanskrit.

I would make it so that people have to say what they think when it came to relationships and feelings, as it would make life a darn sight easier.  Even if it wasn't what you wanted to hear, it would prevent months of emotional dithering and eventual heartbreak, which could have just happened in five minutes if we didn't procrastinate.  

8) Enforce personal health laws

Everyone should:

- Wash their hands after sneezing or doing anything with their hands that could have made them dirty (answers on a postcard please).

- Where a mask if they insist on coughing or sneezing frequently.

- Shower daily.

...and just generally clean themselves and clean up after themselves as a routine.  Punishment for failure to do these things is ten years in prison.

I feel, therefore, that if these seven principles were enforced - and the list probably isn't exhaustive - then people with anxiety would all live in a much less anxiety-fraught world.  We would be comfortable around other people and live happily ever after in a clean house and where everyone was blunt, had wing mirrors, spatial awareness, a dog with a lead, no TV adverts relating to health problems and people who were quiet and shy. 

If we also wipe out all wasps, spiders and caffeine, we're almost there.

Best wishes
Al

The Impact of Chronic Anxiety on a Young Person

Many of my more recent blogs have focused on confidence and how having years of anxiety has decimated my confidence in certain situations, particularly socially and in developing relationships.  This blog kind of continues on a similar theme, but my over-thinking of this issue lately has led me to draw more firm conclusions about why my confidence is decimated and the role anxiety has played in this.

Insert stereotypical image here

Ever since I was in primary school, I knew I was not 'normal,' as my child-framed perception of having a mental health problem was.  I know the statistics say that 1 in 4 people will, at some point, experience a mental health problem, but my assumption is that this is over the course of a lifetime; I don't know the stats for children.  Either way, it didn't seem that I was able to do things to quite the same extent as others my age, all the way from about the age of ten to my University years, and since.  In the very early days, I didn't even appreciate that what I had was a manageable problem and considered it something I had to put up with, until it dawned on me in late high school that this wasn't the case.  My symptoms to those closest to me were more than obvious, I'm sure, which I think goes to prove again how little support I got in dealing with my anxiety growing up, not because people didn't want or try to help, but because they didn't know what to do.  It wasn't until I was nearly 25 years old that I realised what I had to do, and even then I had to work it out for myself, with no guidance from family, friends or professionals.  

So all this anxiety - 

from OCD thoughts back way in 1997 ("please don't let me die" was a mantra I remember I kept repeating in late primary school - I'm not totally sure who the plea was aimed towards but anyway) and general fear about death, to constant panic attacks particularly in 2002-4, to Pure-O and panic in 2005-7, chronic eating problems in 2003-6 and again in 2010-11, health anxiety the entire time to varying extents, to my epic panic attack in 2012...

- has not surprisingly prevented me from enjoying the fruits of life in quite the same way as many other people.  Going back to the 1 in 4 statistic; anyone experiencing a mental health problem at any time is a terrible thing, but how many of these 1 in 4 have a chronic condition, a condition that persists for years and years?  And how many of these start in relatively early childhood and persist throughout most of their developmental years?  Less than 1 in 4, I would wager.

Of course, it's between the ages of 10 and 27, the latter of which I am now, that most people who class themselves as not being poor (which my immediate family isn't) are able to flourish and discover the world, particularly nowadays with University, gap years and the greater opportunity there seems to be to travel and delay getting a full time, 'take up all your time' job.  So I'm afraid I haven't been abroad many times (only once, if you don't count Guernsey and Ireland), I haven't joined various clubs, tried this or that sport, been so drunk that I've woken up next to my best friend's girlfriend's hamster in the back of an unknown person's sports car, or been to thirty festivals each year since I was six years old.  I haven't been able to, for large periods of that time, even contemplate doing these things, let alone actually do them.  For most of it, I wouldn't have been in the mental or, consequently, the physical space to be able to.

Since completing fifty sessions with Anxiety UK's fantastic therapy service, which I concluded over two years ago now, I have been in a stronger position to have discovered more of these experiences.  That said, for me, being able to catch the train and live away from my parents' home without major problems are still classed as huge achievements.  But, I'm certainly in more of a position to do a couple of things, no least go on holiday somewhere different or try a few different past-times.  It would be hard, initially, but doable - and doable, although not spectacular when many people take such things for granted, for me is better than I could have hoped two years or more ago.

So what's the problem?  A lack of confidence, caused twofold: 1) My confidence during these anxious years understandably made me very low on confidence generally, about most things.  Social things, doing presentations, driving and at times, just being out of the house.  But also 2) this chronic anxiety has had a long term effect on my confidence.  True, certain confidences, such as doing presentations for work, have improved dramatically through continued practice, but other confidences, especially socially, have not, because I've never had the opportunity to build it up.  Confidence through work came naturally because once I secured the jobs I've had, things like presentations were thrust upon me.  Whereas socially, it's up to me to make the first move, which is of course the most difficult thing.  

And even though my anxiety is in a stable and more manageable position today, social confidence if anything is becoming worse.  The older I get, the harder it is to justify why I haven't done this, that and the other.  Consequently, rightly or wrongly, I feel like I'm dull, feel like I'm uninteresting in other people's eyes.  This is especially true when you factor in my lack of ability to actually speak up in conversations about most topics, even if I have an interest in it or an opinion about it. As I mentioned in the last related blog, it does seem these days that there are more confident people around too - although that's probably naturally people becoming more confident with age.  If anything, in certain ways, it's reversing for me.

I've not shied away on this blog from how this may affect my long-term relationship prospects and this is a genuine concern.  I think I have an extreme perception about how I should come across, i.e. very "interesting," but even still - that feeling is very difficult to shake off.  It's little wonder that this is the case, given how anxiety has prevented my "interesting" experiences.  Even today, I still fear doing something totally out of the ordinary will trigger a nasty incident, so it's not as if I've reached that 'sod it, I'm going to do it and to hell with the consequences' stage yet.  Maybe I will at some point.

Don't get me wrong though. I am a lot happier now than I was even just a couple of years ago, and certainly at other times in my childhood, teenage years and early twenties.  I am grateful for what I now have, and indeed, what I have less of, i.e. constant, severe anxiety.  But perhaps I should be more grateful of this, rather than feeling low about what I perceive to be a lack of opportunities I have in the future due to my battered confidence.  But it's not always easy, especially when other people around you have seemingly more "interesting" lives - or are at least able to convey their lives in a more interesting away.

>> Today is World Suicide Prevention day and in relation to this I will just say one thing - I am genuinely grateful for having never felt I've needed to take my own life.  I hope WSP day and on-going action will help all of those people who have felt and do feel like this, as the frequency of incidents of suicide is becoming truly shocking and heartbreaking.

Best wishes
Al