End your struggle with anxiety – World Mental Health Day 2017:
Ahead of World Mental Health Day 2017 (on 10th October 2017), I’m delighted to appear in the Cambridge News giving my advice on how to strengthen your mental well-being.
In the article you can read my 7 tips to help you start ending your struggle with anxiety.
One in Six Adults Battling Anxiety & Depression:
Around one in six adults in England are struggling with anxiety and depression problems according to figures from NHS Digital (and as reported by the BBC recently).
The figures from their survey also show that women are more likely than men to have ‘common mental disorder’ symptoms (which comprises of different types of depression and anxiety) and women are also more likely than men to report severe symptoms.
And in another report, NHS Digital cite that prescription items for anti depressants showed the greatest numeric rise in 2016 (for the fourth year in a row), with 64.7 million anti depressant items dispensed. As they report, “The number of antidepressant items has more than doubled in the last decade. In 2016, there were 64.7 million antidepressant items dispensed – 33.7 million (108.5 per cent) more than in 2006, when there were 31.0 million.” (Prescriptions Dispensed in the Community 2006-2016, NHS Digital).
I love learning of my client successes following our sessions together, whether it’s a musician free of his old anxiety on tour, receiving a postcard from a client who had avoided flying for decades, a client who can now eat pain free because they overcame fear of the dentist, or any other or hundreds of other positive outcomes that have allowed people to get on with what they want to do.
Back in June, my client Beth very kindly did me a video testimonial following our sessions which dealt with her night time anxiety (watch it here).
Now Beth has her own You Tube channel where she talks about many things, including her journey from anxiety to confidence. I think you’ll agree that for someone to go from being unable to order a drink in a cafe or answer the phone at home to confidently putting it out there in the world on video is pretty special indeed.
While all of Beth’s videos are worth watching, I really liked one she did last month all about how you shouldn’t be afraid to ask for help if you need it.
Check it out here:
Quit Smoking and Stop Being a Social Smoker:
With Stoptober upon us once again, thousands of people will be attempting once again to successfully quit smoking. And, knowing the detrimental impact of cigarettes, I applaud each and every person attempting to take back control over their life and end their habit.
As part of all the advertising, there is a huge push towards stop smoking medication, patches and, more recently, e-cigarettes. Yet there is often much less emphasis on the mindset and habit aspects, aside from suggesting replacing one nicotine habit with another or telling everyone about your attempt and asking for their support.
It was a little disappointing that the NHS should have decided to push e-cigatettes as the answer to all smoking ills. After all, whilst they are considered to be a better option that cigarettes, they still leave you at the mercy of nicotine and the habits that go with it (and that’s even if we overlook that no one is quite sure what the long term health impacts of e-cigarettes may be).
Surely it would be far more benefical to teach people how to end their smoking and nicotine habit completely?
Where does the time go? Are you doing life your way?
If you’ve been on Facebook for any period of time then you’ll be familiar with their ‘on this day’ notifications whereby they tell you what you’ve posted on the same day in previous years.
And while I’m not overly interested in what I posted on that day seven years ago, I do love seeing my photos from yesteryear. A lot of these are running related from my marathon and other races but what I love more than anything is seeing pictures I posted of my daughters. These are full of happy memories and key milestones and I love to show them to my girls and talk about their memories of those family days.
It being September, a whole load of these pictures have been school related milestones, like the manadatory ‘first day back for a new school year stand in front of the doo’r variety. If you have children, or any of your social media friends have them, then you’ve probably been scrolling through a bunch of these recently.
Today, some photos appeared from my eldest daughter’s first day of pre-school. Wowsers! I mean, she’s in year 5 now! Where did the time go!
Which is something I hear a lot from people I speak to – where does the time go?
This fear of flying no longer takes off!!
Nothing makes me even more motivated and determined to help people than hearing about my clients who are now getting on with stuff that worried and stressed them before.
Take fear of flying for example. How many people avoid going on holiday and enjoying new experiences simply because their panic, fear and anxiety about getting on that plane is overwhleming?
So I was overjoyed when I got inot the office today to find a postcard waiting for me from one of my clients, Beth, telling me what a great time she was having in Menorca.
Health Anxiety – is ‘cyberchondria’ making you sick with anxiety?
Many of you may know that these days I like to exercise (a far cry from how I was during my school days!). I’ve been a member of my local running club for over a decade and, more recently, I’ve been converted to the ‘joy’ of bootcamps at their toughest. To my mind one of the greatest buzzes these days comes from a hard bootcamp where I feel like I’ve given all I can that day.
Yet way back in 2007, I can remember the moments of despair of thinking I may never be able to run again (I’ve since run a load of marathons!). A few months earlier I’d run my fastest ever marathon and I’d been setting new personal bests across the board. I was on a high. I was getting faster! Then around that time, my knee started to hurt. I mean it really hurt. If I tried to run a few steps it was excruciating. Sometimes just walking was enough to have me in pain and sometimes even bending my knees to pick up my then baby daughter was enough to bring it on. In summary, it hurt lots and it wasn’t going away.
I did what any runner would do and tried to push myself through it (bad idea!). I tried putting ice on it. I took over the counter painkillers. I tried resting it for a few days and going again. I tried anything else I could think of to get back running.
And then I hit on the great idea of researching my symptoms on Google.
Department of Awesome & That Lump In The Throat Feeling:
I hope that anyone who has ever worked with me knows that I invest a huge amount of time, energy, and resolve into doing all that I can to support them in achieving their goals. Why? Because when someone you help is able to go on and acheive their goals, and often more, it brings massive levels of fulfillment and pleasure to me. And why not, because I work with some wonderful people.
So many of my clients are graduates of the Department of Awesome because they have had the conviction and motivation to take action and seek help to change something in their lives that was causing misery or pain. They took action, committed to engaging in a positive mindset in and out of sessions and, as a result, are now getting on with life.
You may have already read some of their comments and watched their videos on my What People Say page.
And over the last few days I’ve had more reasons to smile, and several times, I’ve had that lump in the thoat kind of feeling.
Diffusing anxiety-fuelled worst case scenarios:
I don’t know about you but I’ve always had a tendancy to imagine scenarios in my head about what might happen in the future if I do this thing or make this decison and so forth. These days, now that I understand more about scenarios and how to control them, these scenarios tend to be more of a neutral contemplation or even about good stuff happening.
But when I used to struggle with severe anxiety, these scenarios would be like major feature film worst case scenario type disasters happening; like not being able to answer a question in a meeting and looking an idiot, or of standing up to present and going blank, or somehow messing up in what I said or did when out socially.
Whenever I work with clients with anxiety, this capability to imagine all sorts of future worst case scenarios and disastrous “what if?” thoughts tend to appear.
Our imagination is a wonderful thing, especially if you pause and consider that everything ever designed, built or made, from your computer to your chair, and every work of fiction you’ve ever read or TV show you’ve watched, started off as something in someone’s imagination. How awesome is that?!
Yet feelings of anxiety will always colour your imaginings with shades of things going wrong or badly in some way, leading to feelings of more anxiety, leading to more of those anxiety fuelled thoughts. So how can you dilute them to such a point that the anxiety has to subside?
How To Have a Happy Day!
Now I don’t know about you but one thing I regularly notice on my daily walk to work to my office in Ely, is just how bloody miserable people seem to look! When someone comes in my direction I might move onto the road so they can continue on their way unimpeded, and as I look at them and smile they glare back as if I’ve stolen their last Rolo! (Remember the old advert about ‘do you love someone enough to give them your last rolo’?) Or they stare at the floor and continue on their way as if I wasn’t there and it didn’t happen.
(Or they may be so engrossed in looking down at their phone that maybe to their brain it didn’t happen!)
But heck, these small interactions aren’t going to colour my day, and I don’t know what’s going on in their world that makes them feel so grey and weary.
Of course not everyone does this; many others acknowledge me with a ‘good morning’ or ‘thank you’ along with a wonderful beaming smile and expression of gratitide. I like these people! I really do!
But if you’re one of those people who wakes up glum, looking forward to nothing but a day of glum, going through the same old thoughts, feelings and experiences like you’re on a hamster wheel, then you might want to do something about it, mightn’t you?
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Enjoy feeling and being more mentally calm and physically relaxed right now:
