giveaway winners

Ah, total fail on this! Better late than never?! So sorry it's taken so long :s. But here they are. a Rafflecopter giveaway Have a lovely day (that's a ridiculous thinb to say at half ten at night katie :p). X

A commitment to blog

Ok yes. I need to blog. I like blogging.  That'd be why I've been avoiding it then.
So in the next few days I will:
-announce competition winners (so overdue, oops!)
-post some random nails
-post some swatches
-write a post I've been wanting to about scars
-write about the mush of my brain of late
-write about something more lighthearted (what?  I dunno lol)

Yep. Commitment. It's all good. X

nails...

Ok. Yes. Must get it together. Here are a couple of things I've done to my nails lately. Both were prompted by the 'simples' series that Debbie is running over at The Crumpet. The series has been really informative so far....and I'm finding I really need prompts/starting points atm.

The first one is supposed to be a plain skittle but I cheated with the flower. It's the dementia friends logo because I planned to post this for dementia awareness week a couple of weeks ago but then everything kinda crashed. I've pretty much forgotten what colors, barry m coconut, then I think most of the others were nails inc ones?


The second is ombre. I actually did it properly and everything. I started with nails inc devonshire row on my middle finger and mixed in nails inc floral street towards pinkie and  new york noir towards thumb. The thumb could have done with being a touch darker...and little better mixed lol. Was fun though.

Having a voice

I feel like I'm losing my voice. Or not. I feel like hiding in a corner being as quiet as I can so I don't disturb the nice people, good people...real people. I feel like I need to rewind and take back everything I've ever said about anything, take it back,  destroy it. I feel like I should never say anything to anyone else again ever.

I feel like I have no right to a voice. No right to be heard.

I mustn't waste people's time, impact on their lives by interacting with them. I have nothing to give, it's all take and I have right to expect anything from anyone ever. I have no right to write this stupid self-pitying rant.

Oh yes, writing, that.

Two huge outlets for expressing myself. I paint my nails and I blog about it. I don't wear make up and my clothes are dull, I discovered nails were a great way to show a bit of 'me' without it being too much. The blog, of course, is me. Give or take.  don't like me. I want to take me away and hide her somewhere where she can't bother people.

So I'm not blogging, and I'm barely painting my nails.

And I want to run and hide and escape. And that can't happen cos I have 'responsibilities'. But I don't know how to do any of it. I feel like I'm fucking everything up. Everything I do is wrong,  everyghing I say is wrong.

I'm just wrong. And I don't know how to make it right.

I need to try and I need to fight and I need to not let everything nfall apart. But I don't have the energy. And I don't deserve too. This is right, this is how it should be and I should stop aiming for better because this is better than I deserve.

I thought I coild be ok, at least a little. But I was wrong.

If you think you're not beibg listened to the expected reaction is annoyance or irritation. The crazy-person reaction is 'well obviously I didn't have anything worth saying in the first place,  why did I even try to speak? Stupid worthless pointless selfish cow, I hope you've learnt your lesson now and will keep your mouth shut from now on'. Because that's proportionate.

I'm worth nothing, so why bother?

I can go through the motions, I can do my job and ring bells and turn up and smile and be a good little girl. Walls up, windows bolted, keep laughing and joking and pretend I haven't gone silent. Who needs a voice when they have nothing worth saying?

I don't want to express myself because I don't want to be myself.

All I've ever wanted is to be a good person. X

Hey

I'm still around, I'm still reading blogs and following folk. I'm just not here. I'm struggling to allow myself to talk. And I need to change that. Things crash fast in my brain and I need to slam on the breaks before things totally disintegrate.....mixing metaphors. I need to find some energy. And I need to find a part of my brain that cares about myself and thinks I deserve positive things. Basically I need to not be ill. Cos I'm not meant to be that (this?) person anymore.
How quickly things can flip from one side of the line to the other.
Oh so much melodramatic,  self-pitying bullshit. I bore myself. And I hate myself. And this needs to stop. Now.

I can write a proper coherent post about this sometime. But not now. Now I'm just writing. And trying to prove that's ok. That I'm allowed to speak. I'll come back tomorrow maybe. When it's not so late and I'm making more sense. X

Anxiety and doing well

'Doing' being the operative word.

I don't want to be all pessimistic and miserable and imply it's all doom and gloom and never gets better. It certainly can get better.... It's just really hard work. Hence the 'doing'.

At the moment I'm stable for the most part. Which I'm totally and constantly grateful for. But on the other hand I didn't wake up one morning thinking 'oh yay, I'm well!'....I wake up every morning and work hard to do the things I need to for wellness. Those things don't cure the anxiety or make it go away but they do help me manage it well enough to live my life in a meaningful way. Often I get frustrated because 'enjoyment' and 'fun' tend to occur in a somewhat detached way, you can't really try to be happy. But I'd rather have detached happiness than no happiness at all...and I know how easy it is to slide away and into the chaos of I give thoughts like 'is it worth it?' Any sort of brain-space.

Ah yes, that's the other thing. Yes you fight to get out of bed and out of the house and on with your life. You can fight to force yourself outside your box and out into life. Fight to see people, do things, counter negative thoughts, urges, compulsions. There are a tonne of things that can, and will be fought along the way. But before you do any of that you have to fight to convince yourself it's worth fighting.

When you're feeling dispirited because 'well' isn't as well as you were hoping for. Or when you're feeling crap about yourself and spiral off into the place where you're such a pathetic excuse for a human being that you don't deserve to be well. Or when you're just plain tied and can't be bothered. All of which can become can become frustratingly cyclical of course, if you haven't got the energy to fight how can you gave the energy to fight to fight (now there's a silly sentence!).

This, I'll admit, is where I fall down more often than not. I'm quite good at convincing myself to get out of bed or get to ringing or try new things and push through the anxiety. What I'm not very good at is convincing myself it's worth it. Or, to be more honest, convincing myself I'm worth it. I have a terribly tendency towards silly, self-pitying thoughts of the 'What's the point? I'm a horrible person, I'll always be a horrible person, I'll never be able to cope with life, I deserve to feel like shit so why bother?!'. Not productive.

That's the bit I haven't quite got the hang of yet. I'm better at using all those therapy type techniques to ignore and counter negative thoughts on a routine basis. But they don't go away and the slightest stupid little event, like missing an appointment or saying the wrong thing, can instantly and those thoughts spiralling. From that point things can slip incredibly quickly if you're not careful.

I feel like I've gone off on a tangent and not really said what I meant to with this post, sorry. I need some sleep lol. And to pay attention to everything I just wrote and be reasonable with myself.

Final thing. As I said at the start, I'm not in any way suggesting that everything is hopeless. I'm also not suggesting that recovering from anxiety is just about getting a grip and trying harder. Obviously. Or that people who are ill just aren't working hard enough. Just that improving is hard work. X

Managing anxiety

So you've heard a lot about what anxiety is like....but what can you do about it?

As always these are my personal ways of coping...Some I've picked up through treatment, others are just random so please, please assume they'll all work for you or take this list as some sort of preachy manual. It's just what works for me.

I've split it down into sections to try to make my natural tendency towards rambling nonsense more palatable.

Dealing with sudden acute panic
- Yell STOP inside my head (or outside but the embarrassment of doing so in public is a little counter productive lol) and take a couple of deep breaths. Sometimes if I notice the spiral early on this is enough to shock my brain out of it long enough to get more of a handle on my thoughts.

- 4/6 breathing that I've talked about before.

- pretty sure this isn't technically recommended but taking a deep breath and holding it as long as I can. In a weird way it reminds me in in control of my breathing and stops it rising towards hyperventilation. At the same time it focuses my brain away from racing thoughts. But I have been known to use this as quasi sh type behaviour in the past so I'm cautious.

- blast music. Shockingly loud. Usually in the car but also through headphones. Loud enough that my brain can't get a word in edgeways. Again there's a but, I know if I'm not carefully this can push me towards dissociation and drifting away from the world so I try to be careful.

- recite lines. The ringing sort not the acting sort lol. It's safe and familiar and repetitive and takes up a lot of attention.

- repetitive mantras. I have a few. They'd not mean much to anyone else tbh lol but you get the idea. Most of mine aren't 'fluffy' they're silly or funny or about something I care about. A variation on reciting lines when my brain isn't in gear enough to cope with them.

Controlling general underlying anxiety
This is the anxiety that never escalates to the point of total panic but just sits there nagging, looking away at you.

- listen to music. More sensibly than above though lol.

- paint my nails....obviously. Particularly nail art of I have time, though only if my hands aren't shaking too badly cos if they are the frustration makes things worse.

- make tea. Ok, yea, I know how terribly british haha. But, rather like reciting lines, it's familiar and down to earth and soothing. Plus you get tea at the end of it :p.

- talk. Obviously. Our not obviously, I dunno. Usually via text/WhatsApp/fb more because I find that less anxiety provoking in itself

- games. Any games. Silly games, easy games mainly. I love mini games.... intense concentration but only in short bursts lol.

- write. Blog, journal, rant, whatever.

- or read. Though this can be difficult when anxiety and skipping thoughts make it hard to concentrate.

- drive. I dunno if this is sensible or not really. But moving helps. And being out of the house but in a way that's still safe and contained and separate from nasty reality.... plus I just love driving tbh.

And how I decrease the anxiety before it even happens
Because prevention is better than cure, right? And whilst it's hard to get into and keep up good habits it does help. And can in fact make you feel better, more positive, kinder towards yourself. Maybe.

- sleep. Get enough of it. Regularly. I'm bad at this one... She says at nearly midnight when the alarm will be going off at half six. I managed 2.5 hours last night, epic fail. Must try harder.

- for me personally, avoiding coffee and full sugar fizzy drinks. I appear not to handle them well.

- regular mindfulness/meditation practice.

- keeping my car and living space tidy and keeping my diary organised. Mess and chaos and unpredictability tend not to be good for the anxious brain.... and double booking yourself definitely isn't!

- talking to friends about the anxiety and how you might act sometimes and why you might act that way. This can help reduce some of the 'anxious about being anxious' feelings.

- Eat right. Take meds. Shower regularly. Cleanse and moisturise. Generally treat myself with a little respect.

And lots of other things those are just a). The more reasonable ones and b). The ones that happened to pop into my head lol.

Right, what was that about getting enough sleep?! X

Guest post- Georgie's experience

The second of my guest posts comes from the wondrrful Georgie who has a brand new blog here
with some wonderfully well written and insightful mh posts (and I'm not just saying that cos she's my friend and I love her loads honest :p). Anyway, always I mean to write a brief intro and always I end up rambling on, so here's Georgie:

As Mental Health Awareness Week draws to a close, I’ve finally managed to find a spare moment to write a blog post for one of my best friends, Katie. My name’s Georgie, I’m 21 and I’ve very very very nearly finished my Psychology degree (literally 1 exam left now). My blog is called ‘We’re All Mad Here…’ I haven’t written that much yet but my posts do have a strong mental health tone to them. I am quite passionate about raising awareness and trying to help beat the stigma around mental health. Anyway, enough about that, let me talk to you about my experience with anxiety, particularly the struggles I have had to face whilst at uni. I first noticed my anxiety when I was about 15, around the time that my depression started (in fact, I’m pretty sure they came hand-in-hand). I distinctly remember one time when my anxiety was really bad. I was meant to be meeting my friend in town but I felt like I couldn’t leave my house. I rang her up and started having a panic attack. I had no idea what was going on, no idea why I felt like I couldn’t leave my house. It had never bothered me in the past – sure, I’d have moments when I was on my own when I would be anxious, but it had never stopped me from doing anything. As the years went by, I got better at controlling my anxiety and better at ‘ignoring’ it. I tried as hard as I could not to let the anxiety win and stop me from going to school or out with my friends. Of course, this was helped by the fact that I had to go to school, even if I didn’t want to, because otherwise the school would ring my parents and they’d know I hadn’t gone. When I came to uni though, I had my own freedom, I suddenly didn’t have to explain why I wasn’t in or let anyone know that I wouldn’t be at the lectures. I used to spend a lot of time sat in my room, watching TV and ignoring the outside world. I made one good friend on my course and was too nervous to really speak to anyone else unless I had to. Second year was better, I was more comfortable in myself. Now that I’m in my third year, I’m much more confident in myself. I have a beautiful and wonderful group of friends who are there to support me when I am having a bad day. But anxiety doesn’t just leave you. It’s not like a cold where you have it for a week and then it goes away. It is constantly there, always lurking at the back of your mind, ready to make yourself doubt your own thoughts and feelings. I can walk through a street and think everyone is staring at me and thinking how ugly I am. Or I’ll say something and constantly be worrying about the way in which I’ve said it, whether I’ve said it in a way to offend others, or if I’ve made a fool of myself. If I’m meeting a friend for a coffee and I get there early, I’ll worry that they won’t show up, even when I know that they will. Anxiety is irrational and you are aware that it is irrational but you can’t tell that voice to be quiet. Sometimes you can ignore it but even if you ignore something for a long time, it doesn’t just magically go away. All we can really do is try and push ourselves outside of our comfort zones, to do things that may be anxiety-inducing but in the end will be rewarding. Still, it can be very hard and don’t even get me started on how tiring it is! But we have to push on because maybe somewhere in the not-too-distant-future, things will look a bit brighter and be a bit easier…!

Ps. Sorry about the picture Georgie dear!! :p. X