BRAIN DUMP: My Mental Health
Monday, 25 July 2016
You might have noticed that I’ve recently decided that I wanted my blog to go in a bit more of a travel direction. I look forward to my holidays all year long so with travel being something I’m so passionate about and my blog being something I spend so much time on, I came to the conclusion that it would be something that I would enjoy writing about. And I was right, I have really enjoyed working on my blog over the past few weeks, much more than I can ever remember and hopefully, that is coming through in my content.
I somehow managed to get invited on a press trip which was amazing luck, I got to experience something and somewhere completely new, travel with different people and leave with lots of new content for my blog. As excited as I was, however, there was also a little bit of fear that came with my first ever press trip. Would I not be able to keep up, would I be able to get the content I wanted from it and would I get on with the other bloggers? Those were the normal worries, but with the state of my mental health (which my therapist has done very well to reduce might I add), I was still having weird thoughts like would I be able to carry my case around without Andrew (of course I could), what if I forgot to unplug my charger and the hotel caught fire or what if I wasn't exactly on time so the others left and I was stranded abroad with no way home. But everything was fine. I was fine and I had fun.
My OCD did rear its head a little at the start but rather than making me stressed and upset, it made me smile because it reminded me how bad I used to be and how much easier life is now. I knew that I was checking the door a ridiculously amount of times and of course, it was very annoying to be checking a safe that I hadn’t even put anything in but I also knew that with the new skills that the therapist had taught me and a bit of brain power, I would be able to get it under control and by the next morning I was better, only checking that the door had shut behind me and then getting on with my day without worrying that someone was going to walk in, steal my things and it would have been all my fault because I didn’t check the door.
Things came up, only silly things but where in the past I would have spent days re-running it though my head until I crumbled, but I sorted it out and got on with it. For example, I didn’t bring a laptop with me and I got really anxious when I found out that I was the only one who didn’t. I use my phone for the majority of my blogging but I didn’t want to look unprofessional or like I wasn’t taking it seriously because I was. It took a few hours but rather than having a panic attack I manged to convince myself that I was being ridiculous because having a laptop with me wouldn’t have made one bit of difference to my productivity or my output.
This time last year, I was just about to have a mental breakdown and two months later, I did, but after six months of hell, we gave up with the NHS and got some real help. Even after my first CBT session, I saw a difference. I might not have started acting differently right away but I could see that the way I was thinking wasn’t right and that was a good start. Six months later and spent a week at home on my own (the thing that sent me into meltdown last time) and I managed to get through this whole trip only getting stressed right at the very end when I thought I was going to be late for work on the way back. Obviously, I was still 20 minutes early.
