An episode about that moment when you seem to be getting better and then suddenly have a bad day, or bad week. Following my story of recovery from anxiety and in this case discussing my relapse a few years later and how I came to terms with it. ...
In this episode I look at the many varying ways I learnt to calm my anxiety. Some of these are small physical and practical changes, some were skills I learnt, others still were difficult relational choices I had to make. I hope this might help you if you have recognised you are struggling with anxiety and don't know what could help. Here are some other places/ resources which you can go to for help: MIND, The Mental Health Foundation, CALM (the Campaign Against Living Miserably - specifically aimed at young men.) Maternal Mental Health Alliance (specifically for Mums in pregnancy or...
In this episode I look at the unhelpful mindsets I was stuck in during my 20s (and if I am not careful mindsets I can still slip into today). These deeply held, but never properly acknowledged beliefs created an environment for anxiety to flourish. It is only by re-examining and unpicking these ideas I have been able to recover and live well. Here are some other places/ resources which you can go to for help: MIND, The Mental Health Foundation, CALM (the Campaign Against Living Miserably - specifically aimed at young men.) Maternal Mental Health Alliance (specifically for Mums in pregnancy...
In this episode I discuss my mental health diagnosis (initially with Post-Natal Depression and then with Generalised Anxiety Disorder.) Being diagnosed with a strange experience, it changes nothing and everything. Here I discuss my initial reactions to the diagnosis and what I then went and did about it with my usual level of skin-off honesty. If you are struggling with your mental health, or maybe you haven't quite got to the point of describing it like this, but you know you are not in a good way, please reach out and talk to someone, a close friend, a GP, someone who...
Learning How To Live is back for a second series. Sound the fanfare! Release the confetti canons! In this limited series (a fancy way of saying it isn't going to be very long, I am getting better at managing my resources and not overcommitting!) I am going to be taking a deep dive into my book How Not To Be Good (released 2019). Why now? You may well be asking. Let me explain...
I can be my own worst and most harsh critic. My inner critic is loud and persistent, telling me all the ways I am not enough: not good enough, don't work hard enough, not consistent enough. I have done a lot of work to quieten and even silence my inner critic, but I still have days when by the time it gets to the evening I realise - 'oh, I have been listening to that pesky voice again'. In this episode I describe how my inner critic talks to me, what the persistent nonsense she spouts consists of and how it makes me...
In this episode I take a long hard look at the World of Measurement. Not sure what that is? It is the world most of us live in nearly all the time. A world where we compare and quantify, chart academic progress and weight loss, reward promotion and achievement, where the most important thing is winning and if that means somebody else loses, well so be it. In the World of Measurement we measure everything from our income to our cars, from how tastefully decorated or tidy our homes are to the behaviour of our children, from the size of our waist...
This might just be my favourite podcast episode so far. A couple of weeks back I travelled to Bath to attend the launch of the Positive Wellness Journal, the new book from the Positive Planners. For those of you who don’t know, the Positive Planners are Ali and Finn and together, fuelled by their personal mental health stories, they designed and launched a successful range of gratitude mindful journals. I was introduced to Ali and Finn about six months ago via the medium of Instagram. Having exchanged many messages over the past half year it was great to be able to finally...
This episode explores why it is vital to know the limits of your capacity. I didn't know how much I was able to do. I tried to do it all. I pushed hard and kept going when I should have stopped. It didn't end well. I ended up at the age of 30 riddled with anxiety, experiencing panic attacks and burn out. One of the most important elements of my recovery has been to think about how much I can do. This is easier said than done when you live a life full of responsibility and activity. In this episode I look at...
Episode four is an interview with Phil Watson. A conversation about finding the words to talk about how we are feeling and the limits of language when it comes to discussing mental health. I have known Phil for over 20 years. He is a husband and Dad to his two birth children and adopted son. He is a secondary school German teacher and foster carer recruiter, and eight years ago found himself in the midst of a period of extreme anxiety. In this episode Phil talks candidly about his experiences of anxiety and what he did about it. A warm hearted chat between...