A is for Anxiety

To quote Maria Von Trapp 'let's start at the very beginning, a very good place to start'.

I said in my last blog post that I wanted to examine the things I want to improve in my life or simply, things I want to be more aware of to protect myself when things don't go quite to plan. I wanted to do this alphabetically, with each letter having a theme and my examining that theme and its impact on my life. Whilst in the car today I realised that the themes I'd already pinpointed were likely to get VERY negative VERY quickly. As I have always believed that positive change can ONLY come from a positive mental attitude, posting particularly negative blog posts doesn't seem like a great idea. Which is why I have decided to do each letter in couples; the first post being about the thing I struggle with or want to change and the second post being about something I LOVE so that, at the end of each couple, I'm left with the positive rather than the negative.

So, without much further ado...

A is for Anxiety

Brought to you by the letter...A

For several years I have described myself (at least in my head) as someone who has high functioning anxiety. I have worn this as a badge of honour. My type A perfectionist personality (I literally thought this was the epitome of personality types when we did the test in an early Psychology A-Level lesson). My drive for organisation, structure and routine. My high functioning anxiety has driven many of the positive aspects of my life. It has got me through exams, assessments, party planning, acting as part of committees and has had a knock on effect in just about every aspect of my life.

All well and good, until the anxiety part of the equation does what it is good at and brings you to your knees. For me, it signals a complete lack of control in the areas of my life where I most need control. My ordinarily tidy space is rendered a confused mass of stuff: boxes, laundry (both clean and dirty), shoes I didn't know I owned, the world's lost socks all appear en masse and turn my control into chaos. I always think of my mess as a metaphor for the inside of my head. When my head is a mess, so too is everything else. I don't sleep well. I don't eat well. I hide IN my mess (which only makes the feeling AND the mess worse). I get migraine after migraine and turn into my most pathetic snivelling self.

You would think, considering I KNOW which factors in my day to day life are attached to anxiety, that I'd see it coming. But often I am not aware of my crippling anxiety until I reach my breaking point. I have had two such anxiety attacks in the last three months and one had me quite literally rocking back and forth huddled against the Paperchase store in London Euston station balling my eyes out. {Thinking about this now, the irony of attaching myself to a stationers (my literal happy place) is not lost on me}. I had very nearly missed the last train home and in that moment I heard every criticism I throw at myself, every worry my parents would have if I had to call them and explain, the separation anxiety I'd be causing my cat, the fact that I didn't have my migraine medication and therefore was DESTINED for a migraine by morning, the commotion I would cause if I had to throw myself on the mercy of either my best friend or my brother and sister-in-law (not that either party would have made me feel unwanted; but that's the insidious nature of anxiety. It's your OWN worst fears, not necessarily the realisation of it). My train was called, I brushed myself up enough to get to a seat, turned my face into the window and cried my eyes out the entire time it took to get home.

I am not much of a crier, crying in general (and ESPECIALLY in front of other people) makes me feel uncomfortable - physically. I was abused so terribly by an ex-boyfriend for my depression and crying in particular, that I now get a head splitting headache every time I cry somewhere where I might be seen or heard by other people. Crying, to me, is the epitome of lost control and I have built myself up in such a way that control is what I do to keep my guard up. I NEED it to maintain my sanity. Unfortunately, my obsessive need for control is also the one thing that most often pushes me to the verge of insanity. I just started working with a new therapist and within five minutes of our first consultation she had picked out that need for control- I told her, after arriving two minutes late (thirty seconds late is enough to cause palpitations) that I had begun to rehearse my apology when I realised I was going to be late, some 15 minutes earlier. So it is very much a work in progress. For now it's just a daily effort not to abuse myself for all of the things I do which I think will let people down and realise that for most of the people in my life, the added trappings of my perfectionism is unimportant. Being well and appreciating the things that DO go right is what matters.

Strictly alphabetical

So. You may have noticed that I haven't been here in...a year? The truth is, I haven't really 'been' for a year. My life had become a constant stream of stress, depression, migraines, injuries, medication and anxiety. So, I want to take this blog in a slightly different direction. This is STILL about my weight, sort of. I realised that I'd been looking at my weight in a vacuum. My weight was a solitary being that had things happen to it rather than it being actively related to my life in general. I feel like, every time I've talked about the psychology of losing weight, of overeating or of under-eating I have been lying to you. All of that stuff is true. But the gods' honest truth about the matter is that I don't think I have ever yet applied them to my life. It's one of those things where you KNOW all the answers - so if someone asks you for your advice you're there with ALL the knowledge, ALL the goods. But when you have to implement that in your OWN life...nope.

So here's the truth. I am unwell. I am at odds with my brain, with my hormones, with everything. I always referred to myself as someone who had 'recovered' from depression. I have become SO GOOD at hiding my anxiety, my stress that the only way I KNOW I'm stressed is when I start exhibiting certain behaviours. I buy too much, specifically - cosmetics. I eat too much, specifically - pick n mix. I sleep too much. I do too little. But I am never AWARE that I'm stressed until finally I reach absolute breaking point. And there I am, having a panic attack on a crowded train home or hiding in my bathroom with the shower running because no one can hear me cry. I hide my stress until my body is at absolute breaking point and my health (both physical and mental) hit a dangerous low.

And I've had this idea in the last few weeks, of reigniting this blog. Not just about weight. In fact, the weight is inferior to the countless other lifestyle changes I need to bring about. When I think about the weight I have put on in the last two years, it is never because I wore X or I looked Y. It is 'I could do ANYTHING', 'I was so fit and well', 'I'd never HAD a migraine', 'I was unstoppable' and most upsetting of all 'I wasn't desperately unhappy'. The weight is secondary to all of that and many other things. So, this is now about more than weight. It's about my health (mental and physical), it's about my happiness, it's about my ability to take on any challenge and succeed.

What I propose to do, is think about things alphabetically. Each letter to have a theme and to REALLY think and be REALLY HONEST about how those themes relate to me. I have hidden and ignored things for so long and I've gotten so low in my spirits and in my overall health as a result. Truthfully, I just cannot afford to do that any more.
So, let's just see how that goes shall we?

Florence
(19/3/2018)