Anxiety

MY RELATIONSHIP WITH ANXIETY

Having experienced anxiety my whole life, I started having panic attacks when I was in year 8. Prior to this I’d felt anxiety when going to new places or hanging out with new people but I never really recognised what it was and it was just passed off as me being ‘shy’, which was ironic as I was actually a really loud and confident person when I wasn’t in these situations that triggered my anxiety. Everyone experiences anxiety to some level throughout their lives whether they like it or not, and sometimes this is normal, for example being nervous for a job interview or before talking in front of lots of people. When your anxiety begins to impact your everyday life, is when it becomes a problem.

 MY FIRST PANIC ATTACKS

The first time this onset of uneven breathing, blurred vision and irrational thinking came over me in the lovely package of a panic attack, I didn’t really know what was happening to me. I remember it clearly despite it being such a blur at the time. I was lying in bed, a perfectly happy young girl, and suddenly a feeling of dread came over me, and that’s when it started, and didn’t really stop. This continued every other day for around a month. Petrified of what was happening to me, I didn’t really tell anybody. Being the lil youth I was, I looked online for help, most notably watching a Zoella video about anxiety and panic attacks. In no way do I wish to praise Zoella, but this video did help me to understand what I was going through. It’s good to know that you’re not alone and that you’re not going insane.

SPEAKING OUT

Whilst this was happening to me, I knew I needed help, and I knew the first step of this would be to tell my mum. The thing is, I didn’t know how. Mental health was never really something that had been spoken about openly whilst I was growing up and so I didn’t really think that my mum would understand, despite the fact that we had a good relationship and I knew could trust her. One night however, I just gave in, feeling helpless and alone. Mid-panic attack, I went into my mum’s room, covered in nervous sweat, consumed by uneven breaths, with the usual feeling of dread and a cloudiness of thoughts. I said something along the lines of “I can’t breathe, I’m having a panic attack, this keeps happening to me”. I don’t remember her exact response – this was five years ago! – but I remember her comfort and acceptance. I remember conversations in days following this, when she’d tell me that everything I was worrying about, I would no longer be worrying about in two weeks, and I just had to let the feeling pass. Although this is no overwhelming advice, I still use it now, knowing that all anxiety will eventually pass. What was now becoming a routine of panic attacks however did not pass, and I needed more serious help.

GETTING BETTER

A key part to my recovery from anxiety was the help I received from my friends. Having previously had low attendance at school due to what developed into a fear of leaving the house, these people made me enjoy going to school as I always had a great time hanging out with them. We’d also hang out over the weekends which really helped develop my confidence and made me readjust to going to new places. I knew they were always proud of me for my growth and always there for me when I struggled, which was something I really needed at the time.

I think one of the reasons that anxiety is so difficult for me, is because I never really did get truly better. Although it comes in waves, it does impact me greatly from time to time. However, I don’t let it impact me so much or hold me back anymore. I saw what it did to my life before and I don’t want to have to go through that again.

TIPS

KEEPING BUSY - Now I know that if my anxiety is about going out, it’s better for me to go out and do the thing that I’m scared of rather than stay at home and wallow in self-pity. If I keep myself busy and occupied with tasks I enjoy, I won’t think so much about what I’m dreading.

CHANGE YOUR PERSPECTIVE - Another way to think about things you’re anxious about, is to know that if you’re anxious about something, that’s because its important and it matters to you, which is a really good thing actually. When you’re nervous, it gives your body a little bit more energy and makes you a little more alert, which can be really helpful for when you’re nervous about things like tests or travelling.

PLAN AND PREPARE – If you know you’ve got something coming up that you’re nervous about, prepare for it! Say it’s a day out, write down everything that you need to bring with you, what you’ll be doing at what time, what you’ll eat, how you’ll travel and what you’ll do if something goes wrong. This’ll make you reassured that the day will go well!

WRITE DOWN YO FEELINGS – At the end of each day, it’s cathartic and therapeutic to write down the good and bad parts of your day. It’ll help you to identify the good and eliminate the bad. It can be tiny stuff as well, like if a smile from a stranger cheered you up, write it down, or if you had your favourite meal, write it down! This’ll help you to appreciate all the good things even if everything feels bad. Writing down the bad stuff is good too, as it’ll help you recognise patterns. For example, I found a trigger for my anxiety was my sister being mean to me (sorry Chaz, but you were a bitch), and this helped me to realise that we needed some time apart to help my brain. Writing shit down can also be a good distraction from things you’re worrying about, and can also allow you to get creative with cute drawings or coloured pens. All my notebooks are filled with pink pen, I love that shit.  

TALK TO PEOPLE – Anxiety can leave you feeling really lonely. Talking to your friends and family is so important. I remember saying to my dad “I don’t expect you to understand, but I expect you to be understanding”, and I think that sums it up. Not everyone is going to get it, because it is one of those things you can only understand if you experience it first hand, but if you’re open and honest it makes it easier for the people that are close to you to give you all the love and support you deserve!

WHATS THE WORST THAT CAN HAPPEN? – One of the things that gets me reaaaaallll anxious nowadays is when I have to speak in public. But I literally just think to myself “what’s the worst that can happen?”. I could say a word wrong? I might have to pause and take a deep breath? But if that happens, who the fuck cares? I’ve got my driving test coming up and I’m really nervous for it but like, the worst that can happen is I fail, and sure that would be annoying, but I’d just do the test again. Everything doesn’t always go smoothly, and that’s okay, but if something doesn’t go quite right that doesn’t mean the universe is going to explode.

GET HELP – Although it took me a painful amount of doctors’  visits to actually get help, it is really important to try. There is support out there and the more you go to the doctors and the more honest you are, the more likely you are to get it. I’m going to do a separate blog post on my experience with the NHS and counselling throughout my anxiety and depression, because it can be a pain in the ass.

All in all, don’t let yourself suffer alone. Anxiety can honestly suck a dick but there are people out there that can help you, and you can help yourself. Different things work for different people but hopefully reading this can help any little anxious beans. Stay wonderful x

Growth

WAYS I'M TRYING TO BETTER MYSELF 

HELPING THE ENVIRONMENT:

For two and a half years now I've been vegan, which is gosh darn good for the planet if I do say so myself. Going without paper for one year saves 8.5 trees but going without beef for one year saves 3432 trees! It's just as well really because I'm pretty sure I'd fail my A Levels if I tried to do them without any paper. As much as my lifestyle saves rain forests,animals and water supplies, there comes a time when you feel like what you're doing isn't enough. This is why I'm kind of grateful for the way that the shittiness of plastic has become such a big deal. As much as I didn't want to be a plastic free hippie, I don't want to be hurting cute, little turtles! That's why I made the simple change of getting a reusable water bottle (a cute one with avocados on) and a reusable metal cup (as I am addicted to iced vanilla soya lattes) so I'm not buying hella plastic water bottles and hella Starbucks cups! Good shit.

                                                             

CUTE FRIENDS:

I don't think you realise how much the people that you are friends with make an impact on you until you are lucky enough to have pals that make you happier than you have ever been. My friends are supportive, encouraging, and they also tell me when I'm being an idiot which is good too. Most importantly, they are so fucking funny. Shoutout to Eleanor for being a cute Shetland pony, Oonagh for being the honorary Communist, Tino for being a Depop Queen, Eva for being the intellectual, Rose for being adorable and all my work friends too for being cuties. My friends really do make me a better person.

                                                   

PUSHING MYSELF OUT OF COMFORT ZONES:

If you told my mentally and physically ill 15 year old self that had just started her new job that now she would have supervised at work for a weekend, she would have been shook. Going from having heart palpitations every time I spoke to a customer to being able to lead a little team is something I'm really proud of. 

Another way I've pushed myself the fuck out of my comfort zone is with my driving. With my test in 3 weeks time, I've been driving myself to work in my mum's car, doing big scary roundabouts, dual carriageways and hill starts. Good shit.

                                                       

ORGANISATION:

mY GOODNESS have I been busy lately. Being at school Mon-Fri and working weekends is fucking tiring and so I've had to force myself to be organised. Luckily, making lists and shit is something I've always enjoyed, so the notes section on my phone is filled with to do lists. My newest love is also google calendars - my calendar is colour coded and everything ;)

                                                    

HYRDATION:

oh my GOD DRINKING WATER IS SO IMPORTANT. Stay hydrated friends, your brain and body will thank you.

                                                        

To conclude, I'm not a perfect person and I definitely never will be, but here's some small ways I'm trying to make myself better x

                                                  

Eating Disorder Recovery - My Experience

Anorexia has the highest mortality rate of any psychiatric disorder. 20% of anorexia sufferers will die prematurely from their illness. I was lucky.

            When talking about recovery, it is important to remember that I am one person who has had one eating disorder. My experiences with anorexia are individual to me and I cannot speak for everyone that has had this illness and I certainly cannot speak for sufferers of other eating disorders. This being said, here is the story of the long process of recovery I started over a year ago, and am still going through today.

            I plummeted into my recovery after being hit with ‘extreme hunger’, something that I didn’t actually know existed until I experienced it first-hand. Let me paint the picture…I was home from school this day, having been to the doctor’s the previous day due to finding painful rashes on my entire body. At my visit to the doctor’s, I was told that this was due to my rapid weight loss. Seeing my gaunt face and disproportioned body, the Doctor asked to weigh me, and I agreed. My only request was that my mother, who I’d come to the doctor’s with, should leave the room. I remember this so vividly. I knew that my Mum had to leave because for months up until this point I had been obsessively weighing myself, infatuated with the idea of being underweight. This is why, when I stepped on the scales, closing my eyes and holding my breath, I already knew that I was medically underweight. This is why, when the Doctor took an intake of breath and calmly told me that from what I had told her together with my worrying weight, that I was anorexic, I was not at all surprised. I knew I had been for months.

            The following day, I sat down at my desk, ready to do some revision as this was during my year 11 mocks, with my real exams only months away. This day wasn’t much different from how any day had been for me for the past few months. I had already planned what I would eat that day on my calorie counting app, which had been installed on my phone for over a year at this point. The amount of calories that I was consuming per day was terrifyingly low. On this day, I ate my breakfast and got on with some revision. However, less than an hour later, I found my body was screaming at me for more food. This was something I was used to, and having been restricting my food intake for an extended period of time, I had become accustomed to ignoring these desires of my body. On this day in particular, for a reason I do not know, I simply could not supress the hunger any longer. I started by snacking on small items, convincing myself that I could still stay within my calorie limit for the day, I’d just eat less later. Soon enough, it become uncontrollable, and I had blown my calorie limit for the week in under an hour. This was my first binge.

            On this day, I remember eating and eating until I was so full that I could not stand up straight. I remember lying in my bed in the most physical pain I had ever felt. I was full, yet I could not stop eating. Food had become my enemy, yet I was letting it in. As much as this hurt my body and angered the voices that had been telling me not to eat, I made the decision that day that I would rather be ‘fat’ than ever count calories again. I deleted my calorie counting apps and vowed to myself that things would be different from here on out.

            The following day was Pancake Day! There are two moments I remember vividly from this day. The first was at break time, after an English mock; I sat down with my friends and ate a Nakd bar. Due to my low weight and small food intake, my stomach size had massively shrunk and so this was usually enough to fill me up for hours. On this day however, I was still hungry. This was a hunger I could not control. I thought back to the binge of the previous day, and I thought back to the promise I made that I would not restrict my food ever again, and I ate a second Nakd bar. I remember how self-conscious I felt that day. I was scared what my friends would think of me – would they think I was greedy? Would they think I was acting ‘fat’? Needless to say, I’m sure none of them noticed or gave a shit. Following this rather minor incident, my day continued as normal. As I mentioned, this day was Pancake Day, and my sister was coming over that evening to make pancakes. This had been planned days in advance, and when I was in my previous mind-set, I had spent hours searching the internet for low-calorie pancake recipes, that would allow me to stay within the ridiculously low calorie limit I had set myself. However, having told myself that I would no longer restrict, I found a new recipe. When my sister came over that evening, she made herself some pasta and said we would make pancakes afterwards. She offered me some pasta too, and I enthusiastically said yes – “I’m no longer going to restrict”. But, having given it some thought, I realised that I wasn’t actually hungry, and I had just said yes out of excitement at the thought of freedom around food. The night went on, I didn’t eat the pasta, I ate the pancakes, I enjoyed the pancakes, and we watched a Louis Theroux documentary. Now, this all seems pretty boring to most people, and I’d agree, but every time I had been put into a situation that involved food that day, I had to make the decision that I was not going to restrict myself. This is a perfect example of the first point that I would like to make about recovery…

Recovery is not one decision. It is a million tiny decisions made every single day.

Later on that evening, after all the efforts I had made to eat what I thought a ‘normal person’ would eat, even though quite frankly I no longer had any idea what a normal relationship with food was, were destroyed. I binged again, the same way I had the night before. I ate till I was full, and then I kept on eating. I wanted to stop but I couldn’t. I could no longer control myself around food, and it terrified me.

            This same cycle happened every single night for the rest of the week. I’d eat normally throughout the day, and then at night I would binge and binge and binge. Honestly, I started to hate myself. Having control over food was the one thing I had to pride myself on and dedicate myself to, and now this had gone. I didn’t know who the hell I was anymore, and I definitely had no idea how to deal with this. Being an alone and afraid teenager, I did what any alone and afraid teenager would do, and I took to the internet. I wanted to understand why I was binging and how I could deal with it. After hours of reading articles and watching YouTube videos, I found my answer. The same thing was coming up in everything I watched and read. It was telling me that no matter what I thought, the reason that I was binging so much at night was because I was not eating enough during the day. I didn’t want to believe it, but I had to. Despite my best efforts, things still had to change.

            It was after this discovery, that I entered a new phase of recovery. One defined by a phrase I mentioned before – ‘extreme hunger’.

“The mental hunger is distressing. It is like fingers on a chalkboard. It won’t leave you alone. It is a clawing, screaming, kicking, poking, thrashing hunger”.

            This is what consumed me for the next few months of my life. I will write about this separately as the experience of extreme hunger is more exhausting, draining and heart-breaking than I could ever describe in just a few sentences. It’s a hunger you can’t ignore, can’t escape and can’t find peace from.

           

            Honestly, I wanted this post to be less about my experience and more about helping people to understand recovery and how to assist yourself or others when going through an experience similar to this, but it seems that to understand how to recover, you have to really learn what recovery is, and to do this you have to learn what an eating disorder really is. We all have our preconceived ideas, and if someone would have told me everything that I would go through as a result of it, I never would have started counting calories or over-exercising or restricting my food intake in any way. Ending this post with the hope that it can clear some things up, I shall work on writing more in terms of advice for similar situations. I also hope to do another post on extreme hunger itself, as it is something that I wish I had known about before, and I definitely wish it was something that my friends and family could understand without my shitty explanations of “I’m just really hungry all the time”. I hope everyone is finding what I have to say interesting, and I am so thankful and feel so strengthened by all the messages I received regarding my last post. Lots of love x

"For every diet, there's an equal and opposite binge."

It's funny, relatable and true. It's also the harsh reality of an eating disorder. When your weakness manifests itself into an illness which is based around the control of your food intake, exercise and calories, the binge part doesn't just last for a cheeky night with a packet of oreos. It lasts for months. Months of binging just to return your body to the state it was in before. No one should ever experience true mental and physical hunger after eating a full meal or a full packet of cereal or...the list goes on.

I guess this is why when my eating disorder recovery led to me gaining five stone in two months, no one really understood. For the first stone or two, people said they were proud of me and that I was doing so well and looking so much better. By the third and fourth stone people stopped talking about my weight and it was as if the eating disorder had never happened. By the fifth stone I was fed up of hating food yet being obsessed with it, eating tens of thousands of calories in one day, thousands in just one sitting.

I was scared. A lot of having an eating disorder is about fear. I was scared people would think I had become lazy - as in my eating disorder I went to the gym every single day. Worse, people could think I stopped caring about the way I looked or simply decided one day that I wanted to be fat. That obviously was not the case. Even after hours of reading articles, books and watching youtube videos about the dreaded 'eating disorder recovery', the simple fact stayed the same. My body had been so starved of calories, nutrients and love, that it simply would not stop the hunger until I got the message. The message was "turns out you actually need to eat food to survive, and it doesn't count if you throw it up afterwards or make sure you burn more calories at the gym than you have eaten". And so the numbers game ended for me, as I realised it just wasn't worth it.

See, there's more to eating disorders than you think, and there's a hell of a lot more to recovery than you think. Low and behold, its not just deciding not to be skinny anymore one day. Back to eating disorders at their core - I can only speak for myself. Through the ages of 15 and 16, I was dealing with anorexia nervosa. Although this illness manifests itself in different people in different ways, mine focused around an obsession with numbers - calories - to be precise. I overexercised, underate and made myself the most ill I have ever been. 

I do feel like having an eating disorder is something you will never understand until you, you know, have an eating disorder. However, there are a few key things from my experience that I will never forget. The first of which is the coldness. You notice it when your friends complain that they are too warm but you are freezing cold. You notice it when after hours of being inside, you felt the same coldness you did when you were standing in the snow or in a dark night. You notice it when just getting out of the bathtub was something you dreaded, knowing that, although just for a few seconds, you would be stood in the bathroom completely uncovered, allowing your skin to be bitten by the steamed up bathroom air which was an iced wind compared to the boiling, steaming water that was your bath.  This might not sound so bad, but wherever you're sitting right now, wearing whatever you're wearing, imagine sitting outside in the snow. Imagine sitting outside in the snow for hours, days, weeks, months. The only time I can recall being warm from the entirety of my eating disorder was when in the boiling baths I mentioned. Living a life frozen to the bone, my warm baths were the only parts of the day I looked forward to, as they were the only escape from the literal and physical coldness my body had become a victim to.

Aside from the coldness, I became a victim to obsession. Considering how little I ate, it's kind of insane how much I actually thought about food. As in, I thought about food all the time. On my bus journeys to school I'd analyse everything I'd eaten for breakfast - mainly tracking how many calories were in it - and thought about how I'd burn those calories. I'd think about what else I'd eat that day - needless to say, it wasn't much. I'd constantly be asking my friends and family what they had eaten, living vicariously through them. I lived in a state of confusion, wondering how they could eat so much without living in the cycle of guilt and regret I had been consumed by. This meant that my friends became alien to me. I could no longer understand the way they would act around food or talk about food, and inevitably they could not understand me either. Retrospectively, I can see that they couldn't understand why their friend would want to torture herself, starve herself, turn herself into nothing.

So nothing I became. This only grew worse as I became further isolated from the people I cared about and the people who cared about me, as the pain I was going through reflected on them. It's never easy to watch someone you love suffer. And it's never easy to watch someone you love turn into someone they're not. See, when you're hungry, your body turns to survival mode. When you're in survival mode, you don't particularly want to hug your friend or give them compliments or laugh at their jokes. When you're in survival mode, you're snappy and short-tempered and holy crap you're miserable! When you don't eat, you're not only starving your body, but you're starving your brain. Therefore, your brain can no longer allow you to make up jokes or chat to your friends in the same way you used to. Your brain and your body cannot run on an empty tank. To put this as bluntly as I would have during my eating disorder, you lose your friends. They lose a friend too, as the person they once knew and loved simply didn't exist anymore. I was smart, witty and hopeful, but someone smart wouldn't have done to themselves what I did to my body.

There are a million other equally difficult things I experienced during my eating disorder, and there are a million bad ways I dealt with them. Whilst I've always been open about the fact that I have had an eating disorder, I've never been able to discuss it in detail with anybody. It is now a year and a half since I entered recovery and although I am now a healthy weight, have wonderful friends and eat a hell of a lot of food, I'm still far from recovered. This is a journey, which I refuse to do on my own.

Early December 2016. I entered recovery in February 2017.

April 2016 (healthy) - November 2016 (unhealthy)

December 2016

December 2016.

This is the week before I entered recovery, and so when I was at my lowest weight. To me, I look lifeless in this picture. Also where the hell did my boobs go?!

April 2018. Much happier and healthier.