21 Nov

Posted at 12:45h in Mental health
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Last month my friend Sri and I had a four day break in Lisbon. We are old friends (we met in sixth form) and have not holidayed together since we were 19 (a fabulous two week adventure in Italy, as you asked). This break had been a long time coming. On the first night we were there I had a panic attack. A fairly impressive one. Normally when I have a panic attack I hide, or flee the scene sharpish. And, until last month the only person who has sat with me during a panic attack is my husband. I am not unusual. I...

26 Jun

Posted at 15:47h in Mental health
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Being too busy is, for me, often the first step on the path to deteriorating mental health. I have made many changes to build a life where I am mentally healthy. One of the most important disciplines I have started to build is the practice of less. Less I always associated the idea of less with things being worse: less money, less time, less opportunity. This is not surprising, the world continually tells us we need more. We are shown and told in every media outlet how to get more: 8 ways to get more out of your day, 5 days to maximise productivity,...

03 May

Posted at 19:45h in Mental health
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I had my first panic attack at 22. Except I didn't know that was what it was called, or that it was symptomatic of the fact I was suffering with a mental illness. Mental health was not on my radar. At all. I didn't think of my brain as being healthy or unhealthy. I didn't think about it having moving or corruptible parts. It just was. It existed and enabled me to get on with life. When I did allow myself to think about these panic attacks (mostly I liked to pretend I had imagined the whole thing) I believed these aberrations were caused by...

13 Apr

Posted at 19:55h in Mental health
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Two weeks ago I opened my notebook and wrote this to you: --- "I'll level with you. I'm feeling anxious. Right now as I write this. I was fine and then all of a sudden I was aware of the tell-tale signs: the increase in temperature, the noise of my heart beating, my stomach bubbling. My anxiety manifests itself as illness. Or maybe I should say, it provokes the same symptoms as illness. I feel 'not quite right', 'not myself'. I feel I am slowly moving away from my body, like a camera panning out. I am dangerously aware of the ticks and whirrs of...

31 Mar

Posted at 14:57h in Mental health
11 Likes

Anxiety is a beast and it has no manners. It never waited for me to get dressed or have my breakfast before it pounced. It sat on the end of my bed waiting for me to open my eyes, dictating to me how the day would start. As I lay in bed, adrenalin surged and I was instantly catapulted from peaceful sleep straight to panic-central. I awoke, heart-racing in terror. Before I had even begun, the day had slid out of control. This was my reality for a number of years. This fight defined most mornings. I was slowly changing my life from the inside out. I was putting in...

07 Feb

Posted at 09:53h in Mental health
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I wrote this a few weeks ago on a Saturday morning. It is pretty raw and I wasn't sure if I would share it. But I have decided to because honesty is more important that appearance. "Last night was bad and for the first time in a long time I remembered, no - I experienced - what it was like to not be able to rely on my brain to act as it should. Again. I had gone to bed calm and well, but woke two hours later sweating, my stomach tied in a painful knot. I lay awake in agony, my hand on...

10 Jan

Posted at 10:28h in Family, Mental health
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Last week I took the kids to the park with a friend. Two adults, six children and a dog. Pretty ordinary. I arrived a little early. The kids raced ahead of me to the swings and I walked through the damp leaves following them up the path. Rewind thirteen months and I remember making this same journey. It was just before Christmas and we were desperate to find something to do on a grey day, some way to get the kids out of the house, even if just for an hour. We were tired at the end of the long term and...

20 Sep

Posted at 11:34h in Mental health
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"Depression for me, wasn't a dulling, but a sharpening, an intensifying, as though I had been living my life in a shell and now the shell wasn't there. It was total exposure… What I didn't realise at the time, what would have seemed incomprehensible to me, was that this state of mind would end up having positive effects as well as negative effects"* When I was first diagnosed with post-natal depression towards the end of 2009 I had no idea of what was to come. But a door had been pushed ajar. A portal to another place, or perhaps, a portal...