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Saturday, June 29, 2019

5 Things Anxiety Makes Me Do



So a lot of you will know that anxiety is something that has plagued my life for longer than I care to remember, ever since I was a kid I have been haunted my a sick feeling in my stomach, sweaty palms and an inability to speak, leading to panic attacks of me sat breathless, unable to speak or breathe properly in a fright on the floor.

One thing I've learnt in coping with anxiety, is finding out my triggers, what makes me anxious, what triggers a panic attack etc, and alongside this, learning my behaviours when I am feeling anxious, and helping me and other people notice when I might need taking aside and having a minute. Learning these behaviours has been hard, and accepting that this is how I have learnt to cope and trying to unlearn bad methods is also difficult, but has taught me a few things. So today I thought I'd share my learnt behaviours of anxiety and hope some of you might relate.

Ignore How I'm Feeling 

I am queen of the passive aggressive sometimes, and often when I'm feeling anxious, depressed, or just having a bad day I will respond with "yeah, I'm fine" or "no, nothing's up" instead of just accepting that yep actually, I'm not okay and I need some time. I often ignore how I'm feeling and  try to shake it off on my own, when really what I should be doing is accepting how I'm feeling and asking for some help. 

Projecting 

Another bad habit of mine is projecting how I'm feeling onto other people, when I'm feeling anxious I tend to be very defensive of my moods, especially when I'm not in the mood to admit something is wrong. Because of this, I tend to become very snappy and grouchy, I'm not the nicest person when I get like this but I tend to lash out at my loved ones and shout and just storm off on my own  - basically a 21 year old stroppy teenager. 

Paranoia 

I tend to struggle with paranoia quite a lot in general, and is one of my worst BPD traits I have, but is also something that crops up a lot during anxious states of minds. When I'm feeling anxious and overwhelmed I tend to go into overdrive in my thinking and quickly spiral out of control with my paranoid thoughts, thinking that people don't like me, I have no friends or the friends I have are pretending to like me, that I'm bothering people with my anxiety that they don't want to help or be around me, everything like that basically. This is a really painful trait of my mental health that I struggle with a lot and will talk about it in more depth in another post one day. 

Unable To sit Still

My, and probably a lot of other people's, biggest giveaway of anxiety is fidgety behaviour. My personal ticks are fidgeting with my hands, twiddling my thumbs and shaking my legs. It's a very common trait to be fidgety when anxious and is also one of my very annoying ones, at school I was always the person shaking their legs or tapping their pen because of my anxiety, and still do it now. 

Stop Speaking 

Another thing I tend to do when i'm anxious is stop speaking, I suddenly go very quiet and take my mind somewhere else to distract myself. This is usually when someone says "are you okay?" and the cycle of lying to myself about how i'm feeling begins. 

Other notable mentions are stress induced IBS symptoms - like incredibly painful stomach cramps -, panic attacks although luckily are very few and far between these days and stutter/unable to form sentences, I tend to forget how to speak when I'm very anxious and just make a string of non-sensical noises to indicate my state.

Let me know what you thought of this post and if you relate to any of these, or what anxiety causes you to do in the comments below! 

Meg x 

Saturday, June 15, 2019

5 Tips For Coping With Anxiety




Anxiety is something that has wrecked my life for a while (and a while I mean my whole life lol) and is something I've spent a lot of my time and life trying to deal with and find ways of coping with it. I like to think that at 21 I have some rough idea of my triggers, of what to do when I start to feel anxious and how to deal with my anxiety, but really I'm just in the muddle of it as anyone else, but I have learnt some coping methods and want to share them with you guys too. (I'm practicing them as I write this as I've currently just ran out of the gym feeling overwhelmed and anxious, oops)

Finding Your Triggers 

I've mentioned this in my previous post How To Help Someone With Anxiety/Panic Attacks  that finding your triggers is one of the more important tips with anxiety, it's always helpful to know what is causing your anxiety and what is triggering you to feel anxious in situations. For me, I don't like overly crowded places when I'm feeling anxious already, sometimes I'm fine and sometimes I get very overwhelmed, it's also hard for me to cope with new places and new people, I turn quite shy and quiet until I've settled in somewhere and tend to feel very anxious until I've soothed.

Listen To Your Body

Like I did today with the gym, I walked in and didn't feel right, I got onto the treadmill and my breathing started to get faster, my head started to spin and I immediately got off and ran back to my car and let it all out. Sometimes you really have to listen to what your body is telling you, if it's saying "turn around, leave" sometimes that is what you need to do. It doesn't mean you are weak or letting your anxiety win, it means you're doing what is best for you and your body and mind. If you're in a situation you don't feel comfortable in and is putting you at and is making you anxious sometimes the best thing to do is get out and find somewhere safe for you, I like to go and get 10 minutes of fresh air to calm myself down and decide whether to stay or go, because that's what I need and what's best for my mind.

Not Everything Is In Your Control

This is one I struggle with, accepting that not everything is in my control. Some things you can't help in life that make you anxious, like blood tests, or dentist appointments, or running into someone you'd rather not see, but what you can control is how you react to these things and others, and how you deal with these feelings. I don't try these myself but a lot of people say meditation and yoga helps soothe their mind into a calmer sense overall which in turn helps being calm about other situations.

Breathing Techniques and Mindfulness 

I've mentioned mindfulness and wise mind a lot in my BPD blog post which you can read here and plan on doing a full blog post based on it, but learning mindfulness and breathing techniques that help you can really help with anxiety, I learnt some skills on my CBT and DBT therapy meetings and try to put them into practice to help my anxiety. One example is to get somewhere quiet and safe, and either get someone to relay a relaxation story to you or do it yourself, one of them I was taught is to imagine yourself slowly wading into water, taking in your environment slowly, thinking about what you can smell, taste, feel, hear and see as you wade further in until you're fully submerged, then when you're ready, slowly walk back out of the water and return as normal. There are plenty of these stories you can find online or on youtube and I totally recommend them! They really help me to calm down when I need it.

Take Some Time

If you're feeling anxious or on edge, take some time to debrief and start again. I like to do as I said above and take myself outside for 5-10 minutes, do some of my breathing techniques and see if I can start again, but other things you can do are grab a cuppa, feel the warm sense of the tea in your hands and the smell and taste, do mindfulness with the tea! Sometimes all you need is a good nap to take some time to yourself and rest. I also like to keep myself busy if resting isn't helping, by doing my bullet journal and being creative. 

Let me know in the comments your tips on coping with anxiety! 

Meg x

Monday, June 10, 2019

The Lifelong Recovery of Anorexia


I recently wrote a post focusing on body image and my childhood eating disorder, (which you can catch up on here) and often I find my mind wandering to those days, but recently I've been reading Everything I Know About Love by Dolly Alderton, which feautres a chapter on her struggles with disordered eating and I found myself sobbing, remembering my own struggles and how often they pop into my head. 


I developed anorexia when I was 11/12 years old, barely into secondary school and found myself at my lowest ebb, starving myself and self-harming to deal with the thoughts I was dealing with. I would count my calories that I'd consumed throughout the day and figure out how much time I'd need to spend on the exercise bike we had at home to work them off and finally be thin enough to be beautiful. But you see that would never happen, because I would never be thin enough, be pretty enough, be worthy enough in my eyes. 

" I started going to mental health services when my mum saw my self-harm scars one morning before school and they diagnosed me with anorexia nervosa,  a serious mental illness and eating disorder where someone who is a healthy weight or underweight  thinks they are much fatter than they are and stops eating or reduces food intake to lose weight. Anorexia can affect anyone of any age or gender, and often have a very distorted view of their appearance, seeing themselves as much bigger than they really are and have a deep fear of gaining weight. You don't necessarily have to be skin and bones and the usual picture of someone with anorexia to be struggling, this can be an internal battle with food in your mind that gets your diagnosis. "

But I did recover, I started eating again and gained weight. My body has been ever changing throughout my teens, with anorexia, which caused my delayed puberty, and then weight gain and natural fluctuations of my weight over the years. But it hasn't been easy. Recovery isn't linear and it isn't easy either, still to this day when I look in the mirror I'm thrown back all those years to the days where I'd hurt myself because of who I saw looking back at me, and the hatred and loathing I felt towards my own growing body. 

Now, I eat regularly, I treat myself to food I enjoy, I go to the gym and work out, but I still don't love the way I look, I still look in the mirror and think about how small I used to be and think "would it be so bad to go bad to that? Was I really that ill?", obviously I realise later how ill I was at 5/6 stone, now I'm 13/14st and am so much healthier, I don't love my body, but I don't hate it either. My body has helped me get to where I am today, my body is covered in the scars of my past, but is also covered in beautiful tattoos, and the skin and bones that keeps me going. 

Recovery from an eating disorder isn't simple or easy, and it stays with you or a long time, sometimes forever, that niggling voice in the back of your mind, reminding yourself of what and who you were, but you can fight it, and you can recover and learn to accept yourself for who you are. 

Let me know your thoughts in the comments.

Meg x