Having An Outgoing Soul With An Anxious Mind

It's been a while since I blogged last. In fact it's been too long, how rubbish of me. 

I'd love to be one of these bloggers that can produce regular content but I find that quite difficult as the type of stuff I tend to write about it best written when I'm in a certain mind frame. 

I get the urges to write at the most inconvenient times which usually if why there's sometimes a huge gap between posts. 

Quite a lot has been going on since my last post which was about my wonderful trip to Iceland. For a quick update, I'm soon to be moving out again and to the next town up from my home town and into a house share with a couple of friends, I'm enjoying my job working with homeless and vulnerable people and I'm in a happy and fairly new relationship. 

That's it in brief. 

I've wanted to write a post of this subject for quite a long time now. I've had the title name set in stone for a good few months, just I've never been in an appropriate blogging space with the appropriate mind set to write in. 

Having an outgoing, bubbly personality with an anxious mind is how I describe myself. I've always been outgoing and down to earth and a pretty open person, I'm not afraid to go and make friends and talk to people, I'm always up for packing a bag and exploring another part of the world and always just up for being busy and doing fun crazy things.. I just worry about it. 

When I'm in this state of mind it is literally exhausting. I've touch on this type of subject in a few posts now, about the physical effects and how recently anxiety has shaped some desicions about my current lifestyle and everything, but this is kind of different. 

If some friends and people I know find out that I'm an anxious person and that I have panic attacks they're usually quite shocked. "But you've travelled the world" "but you're so bubbly" "nothing seems to phase you" 

I can assure you now it bloody does.  

It's a new thing for me. Fairly new, it was actually only diagnosed a year ago, but I've always known I "worried too much". It was a weird day being told that there's a reason why I'd freak out at stupid things. I was relieved that there was a reason and also scared there was a reason. I just though I was highly annoying and ridiculous. 

Being anxious and having a usually very motivated and spontaneous mind is so draining. When I feel anxious, like now as I'm currently sat on my bathroom floor in a flood of tears because I'm so frustrated with myself at being on the very edge of a panic attack FOR NO REASON. 

I am constantly talking myself down in my head and telling myself to "calm the f#*k down, youbare absolutely fine". It makes me feel like I'm not me, and it's terrifying. 

Last year for the first time I asked for help. I went through my doctor to set up CBT (cognative behavioural therapy) which is a type of therapy counselling that helps you retrain your brain for coping methods. And I got off the waiting list and then I chickened out because for a few weeks I felt fine, no anxiety at all! And wrongly thought I was magically cured and totally fine. Wrong. So I'm back again because I had another blip and gathered the courage and said to myself that I deserve to get some help because it might not be there all the time but it's still there. 

So I'm back on the waiting list. 

The hardest part for me is feeling like I'm a burden for the people around me. My close friends that I talk to on daily basis'. My boyfriend who is a really great support because he himself has such a positive mindset and even just hearing the words "you're okay, you've got this" is all I need most of the time. My friends also, they always give me the time of day if I open up and when someone asks me how I'm doing, I actually say "well actually I'm really struggling today". 

I have no idea what my triggers are half the time. The stupidest thing will set me off like.. change, something happening that needs to be organised, someone not messaging me back and automatically my brain goes into over drive and thinks something is really wrong like they hate you or are mad at your or has died. How ridiculous! I say it's ridiculous but it's true and I'm sure other people that might read this and also have anxiety can vouch for me on silly triggers. At the time though, not so silly. 

It's exhausting, the last year I feel like I've grown as a person so much, learning to love myself and kind of for the first time understanding what I'm all about and feeling comfortable in my skin and person and I'm now around people that enhanced that which is amazing and I'm so happy. 

But this anxious part of my mind is still a part of me and that's the part I'm finding hard to accept. 

My job is a lot of the time, talking to people who mostly have some sort of mental health diagnosis and I really do listen to myself at work and try my absolute hardest to take my own advise. It's just a lot easier said than done. 

I've got to understand and accept that anxiety doesn't define your personality. It is just a part of you and the way your life has been shaped and pulses since you were a kid can have a huge effect on how you see the world. 

We all have our own window to the world. 

I've been sat here over half an hour writing this and I'm totally meant to be getting ready for work so I should probably wrap it up. 

Have a fabulous day.  

 

A Brief Touch On Iceland

I've just come back from a mini trip in the Icelandic lands and I just wanted to touch on a few things I've taken from the trip.

For starters, the place in beautiful. Barren, earthy and raw.
The colours of the earth and sea is something that I'll always remember. Jet black sands with speckles of brown and grey, the yellow grass and green moss covered rocks, pristine white snow and the sky that goes from deep grey, to baby blue and then pink and orange at the start of the sunset.

Iceland was a place that completely stilled my mind and headspace. The thoughts that ran through my head on the whole trip were only 'in the moment' thoughts, without any hang ups of life outside of our perfect little trip to the mountains.

We saw waterfalls that you could walk underneath the sheer power and volume of its movements, glaciers that covered huge areas and produced such incredible aqua colours and silence, mountains that were built up of layer upon layer of different coloured rock and soil, roads that seemed to have no ending and no destination, beaches covered in beautiful ice boulders that have broken away from the glaciers and ended up washed onto the shores of the black sanded beaches and thermal heated pools of baby blue.

The place was just still, silent and magical. I can't really explain it in any other words.
I felt as if my lungs were filled with the cleanest air, cleaner than anything I've inhaled before.

It was an expensive place, paying around £8 a pint and £25 a meal. Petrol you could only pay for on card and day light only between the hours on 10am-5pm. But this made no difference to the beauty of the place.


Tips if you're planning a trip to Iceland...

1. Take more money than you think you need.
2. Pre book the Blue Lagoon a good 4/5 days before the day you want to visit.
3. Sod booking onto tours to see the natural wonders, rent a car and do it yourself.
4. Go with someone that wants to get the same as you want out of your trip (which goes for any destination or place!)
5. Take some decent boots and a warm coat.
6. Go in winter, Its so beautiful!
7. Drive from Keflavik to the Diamond Beach.
8. Never think that you wont see the northern lights, because we saw them two nights in a row!
9. Prepare for the water to sometimes smell like sulphur when you're showering, no you don't really smell that bad!
10. DONT scoop up a load of silica from the bottom of the Blue Lagoon because you'll probably find human hair like we did!
11. Go with an open mind and come back with a clear one.

My Personal Thoughts On Drugs

Following on from my post I wrote a while ago on my personal views on alcohol, I figured that its only fair that I write one on this subject.

So, drugs huh. Funny subject.. I've been meaning to write about this subject for a while now because its something that I've never really experienced. I mean, I don't drink, I've never even tried a cigarette in my whole twenty four years of life, heck have I tried drugs.
Well alright, that's a lie.. I've tried weed very briefly on a rooftop over looking the NYC skyline. Despite the setting being pretty outstanding, it was shit. I just felt sick, and then was sick the next day. I've also tried a legal high, very briefly in Brighton. God only knows what it was but again, it was shit.
I have pretty strong views on alcohol so it's only expected I share the similar hate for drugs. Well, yes. I don't like drugs very much but then like I said.. I've not really been introduced to them or found myself experimenting with them.

Now, hallucinogenic drugs totally fascinate me in how they are able to unlock these different parts of the brain and make you experience these weird and sometimes wonderful trips. I don't know if I would ever go as far as trying any other drugs because they scare me, but I am interested in what it would be like to trip and hallucinate.

Disclaimer, I don't really know what I'm talking about so if I write something that isn't correct or whatever then just ignore it yeah?

Alright, the low down is that drugs make me feel uncomfortable. I'm talking the hard drugs.. I'm not talking about weed. Weed I don't have a problem with, until it takes over somebody's life and they become dependant on it and it starts to make them paranoid and not themselves. That's when any substance becomes a problem, and I'm not a lover of any substance really. I get really uncomfortable at the idea of being out of control, which is why I don't really like being drunk or seeing people I care about totally off their faces.

I see the effects on drugs a lot in the job that I do and its heart breaking seeing the harsh reality of it. Something that one minute can make you feel on top of the world and as soon as it wears off, lower than low. Left with nothing, literally. Taking these chemicals to erase harsh memories of the past. A sad, scary reality in some cases that I've seen. That's the really sad side of what I see in drugs and people can take them for a number of reasons. Out of boredom, peer pressure, to heighten the dynamic of a night out or social event, to cover up the pain of a memory or on-going issue, to ease physical pain as well as mental.

My view on using drugs for social events is a tricky one, I can see the want to exaggerate emotions and feelings but I personally think that its covering up reality in a way. Good times come about from being around good people and good conversation in a positive atmosphere. It saddens me that some people find it near impossible to enjoy a night out or social gathering without being completely off their face. You shouldn't need a substance to have a top night in my eyes anyway.
Saying all this.. and again I'm not saying I'd try it because its highly unlikely but I am kind of curious as to what it would feel like to be high.

It's mostly pills, cocaine and other "un-natural" substances that freak me out, not so much things like shrooms, weed and truffles etc. that are extracted from the earth. But putting those hard chemicals into your body and blood stream. Our bodies aren't made for that shit surely.

Anyway.. I don't really want to go on and on about this subject only because I feel I don't know enough on it to really comment. 

There it is.