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...

24 Jan

Posted at 15:31h in Mental health
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It is January in the north of England and my garden looks as you would expect; damp, leaf strewn, drained of colour: a mess. There is not much to be seen, but there is work to do. I plan to cut back some shrubs that have needed a hard prune since we moved in four years ago. They are overgrown and block light from the house. As I begin to work, my neighbour walks past on his way back from his allotment. He calls over, “Take it right to the floor, you will only get leaf this year, but the flowers will be back...

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...

08 Nov

Posted at 19:17h in Living well, Mental health
1 Like

It was seven years from my first panic attack to a diagnosis of anxiety. Seven years without any help. Seven years of thinking I needed to get a grip. Seven years of beating myself up for not being able to stay in control. Before my diagnosis I didn't think I was ill and I didn't think I suffered with anxiety. What even was that? I thought I was a freak. And weak. A weak freak. I didn't know anyone who had struggled with their mental health (or maybe truer to say, I didn't know anyone who had ever talked about it). I had no...

10 Oct

Posted at 10:06h in Mental health
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This is for you if you are in despair. I know how you feel. I have been you; terrified to leave the house, feeling I had no control over my own body. I have felt my brain was alien and unpredictable and I could no longer rely on it to tell me the truth. I know what it is like to wake in the night and be consumed with fear, able to hear my blood pumping around my body, the sound loud in my ears. I have wanted to hide, and felt shame. I have not known who I was or how to go on....

21 Sep

Posted at 16:47h in Faith, Mental health
1 Like

My therapist tells me that she believes it probably won't be long until there is a test, a blood test or something, that will tell what is chemically happening in your brain. To ascertain that something isn't right, some chemical or hormone isn't being released correctly or in the right amount (forgive me - I am no scientist). This would distinguish between mental illnesses that requires chemical intervention and those mental illnesses that can be alleviated by environmental changes and talking therapies, without the need for the pills. And although we shouldn't have to prove it, we shouldn't need that validation, it...

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...

12 Sep

Posted at 19:36h in Faith, Family
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When my girls were little I was always trying harder. Every few months I would come up with a new concept I believed would enable me to be the person I felt I ought to be. Through reading the latest Christian book, or hearing the latest talk on how to live a successful life (spiritual or otherwise) I would arm myself with a list of top 5 ways to improve myself and set to work. If only I could get hold of this idea, if only I could press in for the breakthrough, if only I could be put into practise these...

22 Aug

Posted at 20:36h in Mental health
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I opened my computer the other day to check something and somehow found myself on Facebook (how does that happen?). I followed a link someone had posted to the page of a blogger I have long admired but rarely read (not sure why): Glennon Doyle Melton (of Momastery). I scrolled down, glancing at the small amount of text she had prefixed her latest blog posts with, until one stopped me in my tracks. This is what I read; 'Yes, I’ve got these conditions—anxiety, depression, addiction—and they almost killed me. But they are also my superpowers. I’m the canary in the mine and you need...

05 Aug

Posted at 19:58h in Family, Mental health
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In my battle against the anxiety I have amassed an arsenal of weapons. I moderate my alcohol and caffeine consumption, try to eat and sleep well, practise mindfulness, exercise regularly, use 7/11 breathing techniques and try to schedule in time to rest. But recently I noticed a new habit that is also having a big impact on the pull of anxious thoughts. I am fairly well at the moment. The past six months have been some of the most stable and relaxed I have known in a while. I have managed to do many things that, even a year ago, would have seemed...