self awareness

Hello,

There’s no shortage of people talking about mental health at the moment, especially with the mental strain the pandemic has put on everyone. We’re at a point where Mental Health Awareness isn’t important anymore – everyone’s aware – mental health support is what people need right now.

But one of the scariest things about mental illness, is that even for people who’ve suffered with it for years and years, anxiety, depression and other disorders can always take on new forms, presenting symptoms in different ways.

How my anxiety presented itself when I was a teenager and how it presents itself now are totally different – when I was younger, I had anxiety attacks when I tried to fall asleep, now that’s not so much of a problem.

What I wanted to talk about today are feeling symptoms of anxiety without feeling anxious in your mind – or not recognising your anxious feelings at surface level. But let’s take it back a few steps.

At the beginning of the month, my partner flew to Italy for work, where he will be staying for just short of five weeks. It’s the longest we’ve ever been apart, it’s the first time he’s ever been on a plane and he’s working on a global sporting event so we were both nervous! I spent weeks, if not months, in advance of his flight planning my time to break up how long I was alone; seeing friends, seeing family, staying different places to get out of my house etc, etc.

When I left him at the airport, obviously there were a few tears because it’s a big change, but I hopped back in my car, listened to my ‘At Home With Anna and Lily’ podcast and jumped straight back into work. Since then, I’ve felt okay at the surface level – I’m getting lots of updates from Italy, I’m using the time on my own to focus on myself and spending my time catching up on hobbies and my YouTube Watch Later playlist and work is really busy so I’m actually really well preoccupied.

But everything I eat doesn’t seem to be reacting very well, I’m getting a lot of stomach aches and I’m finding it more difficult to get to sleep.

I’m feeling the physical symptoms of anxiety whilst mentally I actually feel okay. Or at least, I thought I did.

So I’m taking even more of a step back – trying to get in touch with my body to understand the subconscious feelings that are causing physical symptoms that my surface level brain either can’t or won’t recognise.

Am I doing this by meditating? Exercising and going on a diet? Absolutely not. But I’m trying to be more intuitive – listening when I need to take a minute away from my computer at work and stretch my legs, leaving more time between finishing my dinner and reaching for dessert to figure out if I actually want it; making more time for reading even if I go past the time I should go to sleep!

It’s not perfect – I still experience anxiety symptoms, but I don’t struggle to get out of bed as much anymore. I can have a shower without having to spend half an hour psyching myself up. I can look after myself and keep everything clean and tidy. It may sound trivial and easy but these are things I’ve struggled with and even though I’m still figuring out my mental illness and move towards overcoming it, I am making progress and taking those little steps.

Eight months ago, I was so anxious and depressed I couldn’t stand the thought of being home alone while my partner went to work for the weekend – I went to stay with my mum and had some of the most intense panic attacks I’ve ever had in my life. From there, working with my doctor, I altered my medication and started taking steps to get control of my life back, because it may sound melodramatic but I was terrified. I felt like my capability to be independent had been taken away from me and at 24, that’s not something I ever thought I’d be feeling.

But all those months, two lockdowns and finding a therapist later and I’m back on the right track. I’m not at the destination yet – I don’t know if there is a destination to reach – but I’m on the track and I’m putting one foot in front of the other.

That’s all I can do.

Thank you for reading,

Sophie xx

Hello!

I write a lot about my monthly and yearly goals, I try to share tips on what’s worked for me and I’ve had a fair few messages from people saying they’ve starting using advice I’ve given, which is a lovely feeling. But I’ve never written about adapting goals and embracing change.

For me, the thought of adapting or getting rid of a goal feels like cheating, like I’ve done something wrong or failed. What I need to learn is that recognising when a goal doesn’t serve me or my long term goals or aspirations, there’s no point wasting time and energy to achieve it for the sake of not adapting it.

Maybe I’m making this sound more melodramatic than it is, especially considering the context that made me consider this at all. One of my monthly goals was to hit certain milestones in my crafting – I wanted to make four more face masks (which I’ve done!), plan my new cross stitch design and finish learning how to knit a soft toy that I intended to stuff with all my old holey socks (clean, of course).

I sat down to work on this duck and I realised I was getting stressed about all the different types of knitting stitches I needed to figure out and it all felt too complicated and big, when my crafts were meant to be my outlet to relax – to just sit, shove some YouTube on in the background and make something with my hands without thinking too hard.

But when I realised I didn’t want to make the toy, the thought of not achieving my goal bothered me.

So I changed it.

All I want from my knitting is to sit and do the same stitch mindlessly over and over again, so I’m just doing that and maybe one day it’ll be a scarf but it’s therapeutic and it felt so much better than forcing myself to do something that meant I had to concentrate when I wanted to do the opposite and unwind. So I changed my goal to just ‘work on knitting a scarf’ and in the evening if I’ve done everything else I just sit and watch videos or watch my boyfriend play video games and knit without really thinking.

I feel way less stressed and intimidated by the goal and I’m enjoying the process of knitting again because of it.

In the scheme of things, a craft goal is not that important and I definitely placed too much weight on it. But it made me think of my 2019 goals – at the beginning of the year I set a goal about building a freelance career because I had some work lined up, but that fell through before the end of January and I just ignored it for the rest of the year. I missed an opportunity to adapt the goal into something more suitable and perhaps have achieved something else in the span of that year.

Of course there’s going too far with adapting goals – changing them as soon as they get hard is missing the entire point of growing and learning from your goals. But if your goals as they currently stand don’t aid your growth in the direction you want it to – whether you realise it’s not a path for you, you want to try an alternative method or it is negatively impacting you – then continuing putting time into it isn’t worth it.

I don’t know if this was useful in any way, shape or form – there’s every chance I was just making a revelation about knitting into something way bigger than it deserved to be – but it’s helped my mindset on goals not being as rigid as I’d thought and allowing them the flexibility to serve your greater ambitions.

Thank you for reading – I hope you and your loved ones are happy, healthy and staying safe!

Sophie xx

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sophie counts clouds

anxious body, absent mind

adapting you goals (and why it’s okay)