Venturing Back To The Gym – Part 1

Posted on November 7, 2020

I really wasn’t convinced when the government reopened the gyms. It seemed to me that they were (and still are) much more concerned about the economy than people’s actual lives and I couldn’t imagine how many gyms would be able to create a safe environment with good ventilation and social distancing. I was particularly worried about this in a swimming pool.

Because of my Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS) and joint problems (which we now know are linked to being hypermobile), swimming is my only good source of exercise really. All weight-bearing exercise causes me extreme, disproportional fatigue and pain in my joints that can last for days. Half an hour can essentially end my day. So I’ve always relied on swimming for exercise, which I was obviously not able to do during the lockdown. And when the pools opened again, I really wasn’t convinced that it was safe. I was desperate to swim again (I can’t believe how much I’d missed exercising – my teenage self would not believe it, although, to be fair, I had always enjoyed swimming) so I was really keen to find a safe way of doing it, if there actually was one.

We spoke to the gym where I’m a member and tried to come up with a plan. Pre-pandemic, I would swim super early in the morning when the pool was all but empty but they wouldn’t be opening that early post lockdown because of a lack of lifeguards. That meant that, even if we arrived as soon as it opened, there were likely to be many more people than we were used to and that made me very nervous. They offered to rope off half the smaller pool that’s used as a family or therapy pool (for me as a disabled person) and suggested coming as early as possible as that was when it likely to be the least busy. I was very anxious but we decided to give it a try.

There was no one in the small pool when we got there and we got into our roped off section. It felt amazing to swim and stretch my muscles. I was almost giddy with joy. But the other side and the main pool started filling up fast, with no real social distancing. I could feel the panic rising: I could almost feeling the air becoming more and more contaminated (I know it was my anxiety and my overactive imagination but that’s how it felt). As much as I loved swimming again, eventually the stress just got too much and we had to go. I don’t think we’d even been in the pool twenty minutes. It was something though and my Mum and I discussed what we wanted to do, whether we wanted to try different times, and so on.

And then literally the next day, the gym emailed to say that they felt confident with their safety measures and so would be opening the pool up to more people which, as desperate as I was to keep swimming, killed my desire to go completely. It hadn’t felt massively safe during our first trip so I couldn’t even imagine coping with more people around. The whole situation just felt incredibly stressful and scary and my anxiety would rise just thinking about putting myself in that environment.

Mum met with the person in charge of the smaller pool and raised our concerns. They said they would get back to us after a wider staff meeting the next week but they never did. Mum went a couple of times at different times of the day and thought going right before they closed was a possible option but I still wasn’t convinced; my anxiety was just so high. Even thinking about being there made it feel difficult to breathe.

In the meantime, we looked for other options, other pools that weren’t necessarily attached to gyms but where you might be able to book a slot in a lane. We went through several possibles with no success but after a while, Mum found a pool that were booking out lanes in the evenings, an hour at a time. She had them talk her through all their safety measures, which were extensive, before going to try it out. She came back with positive reviews so I thought seriously about whether I felt comfortable trying it out too.

It took a few weeks before I felt okay about going and their serious safety measures were comforting: everyone was wearing masks (right up until they were in the water); they took everyone’s temperature as we went in; we changed in little tent-like pods, each numbered, and then put our bags on chairs of the same number, situated by the changing room door (that way they knew which ‘changing pods’ had been used so that they could disinfect them, ready for the next group of people); and then once in the pool, the lanes were wide enough that you could properly social distance. So the whole set up felt significantly safer. And an extra bonus: they turned off the main lights so the room was lit with just the pool lights, creating a very calming atmosphere. It was gorgeous. And, as an autistic person, it made the whole thing a lot easier as a sensory experience. The glaring lights at swimming pools can be a bit of a challenge sometimes. So this was wonderful.

It was utterly glorious. I had such a good time. Being in the water, feeling weightless, swimming lengths, swimming down to the bottom at the deepest point, exercising my muscles… It was awesome. I loved every second. I was completely exhausted by the time I got out but it was the good kind of exhausted. It felt great. And I’d felt as safe as I think I possibly could have in the present circumstances. It was giddy with joy but also gutted that I had to wait a whole week to experience it again. I would’ve loved to do that more than just once a week.

Unfortunately the second trip wasn’t quite as pleasant. Either the rules had changed or my understanding of them had been incorrect because they were putting people from different ‘social bubbles’ or (whatever they’re called) in the same lane, which, as far as I could tell, didn’t allow for social distancing. I ended up having something that was somewhere between a meltdown, a panic attack, and an ‘episode’ of Misophobia/Germophobia (I don’t know if I’d say I have this phobia, but I’ve definitely had ‘attacks’ of it when the fear of germs or feeling contaminated is so overwhelming that I’m almost unable to function). Anyway, I was frozen there, hanging onto the wall of the deep end, unable to do anything. Like I said earlier in the post when talking about the other pool, I could almost feel the air becoming cloudy with the virus, feeling it coating everything, even the water. It was horrifying, like being trapped in a film where the world ends.

The staff were apparently very concerned and desperate to help but I couldn’t do anything but hang on to the wall; I don’t know if I would’ve had the wherewithal to swim if I’d slipped underwater. But eventually my Mum was able to coax me back to swimming, even though I kicked and cried, utterly terrified in a way that I can’t really explain now. It must’ve taken half an hour at least; I was freezing cold and apparently my lips had gone blue. After a while, I did manage to recover to some extent, at least enough to swim a bit, to warm up and not waste the time we had in the pool. The swimming felt good but the experience as a whole had been horrible and exhausting and I really wasn’t sure whether I felt safe there anymore.

The busyness of that night proved to be an anomaly so, although I was anxious – and to a certain degree, reluctant – I kept going and it was better. I loved it: the weightlessness, the stretching of my muscles, the exercise that came with just a proportional amount of pain afterwards, the aching of long unused muscles, rather than agony that felt like the crunching of glass in every joint. It was wonderful.

Several weeks in, I had my hypermobility appointment, which was really interesting in the context of my gravitation towards swimming because swimming and even hydrotherapy are recommended for hypermobile individuals; it allows you to exercise and strengthen your core in particular (the commonly weak part of hypermobile bodies, although it often ‘refers’ pain to other parts of the body) without putting undue pressure on your joints. This made so much sense to me, particularly as I’d been struggling with ache-y muscles in my chest and stomach after swimming when I’d expected to feel that ache in my arms and legs. That appointment resulted in a referral for hydrotherapy but the doctor also recommended some particular exercises to do in the pool in the meantime.

However, before I could even get back to the pool again, the second national lockdown was announced. So, just as I was making progress (and getting some real joy out of exercise), I was running headfirst into a massive brick wall. I agree that, with Covid-19 cases rises in England, we need another lockdown but I can also be gutted that I can no longer swim, at least not for a while. And the sacrifice would actually feel worthwhile if this was a real lockdown but while schools and universities are open – allowing students to mix with any number of other people – it’s not. It’s not going to make a significant difference and it’s just going to sow the seeds of doubt about whether lockdowns work, which THEY DO IF DONE PROPERLY. Anyway, I’ve gone on a tangent. I don’t know when I’ll be able to swim again but I’m grateful to have somewhere that takes the safety measures so seriously to go when it is possible. I’m looking forward to it. I’m really, really looking forward to it.

 Category: anxiety, autism, chronic fatigue, covid-19 pandemic, diagnosis, meltdowns, treatment    Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

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Mental Health Update (September 2020)

Posted on September 21, 2020

Trigger Warning: This post contains mentions of self harm, but it’s simply a statement that it happened and there are no descriptions, graphic or otherwise. If this could upset or trigger you, please don’t read any further. Please always put your mental health and emotional state first.

I feel like it’s been a while since I posted a mental health update. And while most of my recent posts have mentioned mental health, I haven’t really felt able to write anything mental health centred. I’ve tried but it’s been really hard. Since the pandemic hit the UK and we went into lockdown, my mental health has basically been a black hole of anxiety and depression that I can only occasionally distract myself from. So it’s been hard to write about it, to write anything beyond “my depression is overwhelming and my anxiety is off the charts.” And there’s only so many times you can say that before it just makes things worse. So I’ve been focussing on things that might be helpful in lockdown, music things, and the day to day approach that I’ve been taking to things. The blog itself has been a method of managing my mental health. But now I’m going back to my Masters (my first classes – all online – are tomorrow) and I wanted to try and describe where my mental health is before I take on that new challenge. I guess it’s something to measure myself against, to see whether I’m coping or whether I’m struggling even more, because I really don’t know how these next few months are gonna go. So here we are, this is the state of my mental health at the beginning of my third semester of my Masters in September 2020…

My anxiety has been – and still can be – paralysing. Early in lockdown, it was a constant, debilitating state but it has evolved since then. It’s easy to get sucked in but day to day, I seem to be able to manage it with a combination of flexible tasks to distract but not restrict me and large amounts of Diazepam. I’m not sure how I’m going to manage going back to university classes with deadlines and uncertainties but as I’ve previously said, I need to try. I will reevaluate if my anxiety starts to become unmanageable again.

My depression has almost become background noise at this point, just a deep, dragging feeling at the back of my mind. I’ve had days where everything just felt so overwhelming and insurmountable that all I could do was stare at the TV and breathe but most of the time, my anxiety has just taken up too much of my attention to really feel it. This still seems to be the case: my anxiety is just too demanding to allow it much space in my brain.

My OCD, which manifests as a compulsion to write down everything that happens to me, has been easier to manage in lockdown with not much going on. I was majorly behind when lockdown began and, because this period of time is so unknown, I wanted to document it in real time so I started a new notebook with the plan to catch up with the old one as time passed. Unfortunately I still haven’t managed that and with multiple stressful things happening in the last few weeks, I’m behind in my current one so I’m going into a new academic year already trying to juggle that. My attempts to balance my OCD and my anxieties around Masters work was a really challenge last year and it looks like it’s going to be just as bad, if not worse, this year. So that’s really not fun and causing me a lot of anxiety already.

My Trichotillomania really spiked in the first few months of lockdown when I was so anxious that I could barely do anything. I’m currently writing a post about the triggers of hair pulling (not to be confused with the causes) and three big ones were really present here: stress, not having something to occupy my hands, and feeling out of control. So I was pulling a lot – to a painful level – back in March, April, May. But as I’ve slowly been able to distract myself and get things done, I’ve been pulling less – significantly less. It never completely goes away but I’ll take whatever I can get.

I’ve had multiple autistic meltdowns since lockdown began. Living with such a high level of anxiety, it doesn’t take much for something to trigger a meltdown. I’ve had about twenty (which I’m pretty sure is more than the whole of last year but I don’t have last year’s tracker in front of me); most of them have been ‘normal’ for the meltdowns I have but a couple of them have been significantly worse, taking days to recover from. They’re really, really horrible and I feel awful afterwards, mentally, emotionally, and physically.

While there have been periods of time where I’ve self harmed consistently, it’s more often than not a one off occurrence with big gaps of time in between. I’ve always considered it a coping mechanism for very specific emotional scenarios rather than a habit or addiction. Given how much I’ve struggled emotionally during lockdown, I’m kind of shocked that I’ve only done it once but then, with my Mum around all the time, maybe it’s not all that surprising: I know that it upsets her and that only makes me feel worse so I have suppressed it in the past. But there was one occasion where I just couldn’t. So it could’ve been a lot worse.

I’ve missed a lot of therapy sessions over the last few months. If I’m honest, I’m finding it really hard to know how to approach them. Obviously, the biggest thing is the pandemic and my pandemic anxiety but we can only talk about that so many times before running out of things to say and yet, I feel so mentally fragile at the moment that tackling any of my other issues feels like just too much, like the process of digging into something difficult might disrupt my delicate, carefully maintained ability to function. So I’m not really sure what to do. I’ve just started having regular sessions again so I guess we’ll see how it goes.

Am I ready for this next semester? I have absolutely no idea. I really don’t know how I’m going to manage it with my mental health as it is but as I’ve said, I need to try. The only thing worse than trying and failing would be not trying at all. Maybe that’s a naive approach to things, considering my mental health problems, but that’s how I feel. I can only hope that, if there are any warning signs that things are getting worse, I can see them and make the appropriate response.

 Category: anxiety, autism, covid-19 pandemic, depression, emotions, medication, meltdowns, mental health, ocd, self harm, therapy, trichotillomania, university, writing    Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

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Things I Did In Lockdown

Posted on September 20, 2020

Given how stressful I was finding the pandemic and the lockdown, I thought it might be helpful to keep a list of what I’d done (achieved, managed, spent time on – whichever word is most appropriate), whether it took a huge amount of effort or was simply something I’d wanted to do, just to remind myself that I was still doing things, that I was still capable of being productive during such a difficult time. Some of them are silly, some of them important, and some of them are just interesting. And I thought posting it would be a good record of sorts when it comes to looking back at this time.

I don’t consider us to be out of lockdown by posting this. It’s just that now I’m starting a new year at university – the second of my Masters Degree – so my life is going to change. I’m doing all of my classes online, rather than going in for half of the classes as is the current norm at uni; I’d be commuting and the risks still feel too high for just two hours a week. So in terms of leaving the house, not much is changing. But it’s a moment of transition in my life and so it seemed like a natural stopping point for this post. I may continue it as a series, depending on how things play out going forward but for now, this is what I did while in lockdown, from 13th March to 20th September 2020…

  • Watched the entirety of Grey’s Anatomy.
  • Bought a Kalimba.
  • Went down a YouTube rabbit hole of Otomatone covers…

This one and this one are my favourites.

  • Did the Enneagram test.
  • Tried (unsuccessfully) to teach one of my cats to play fetch.
  • Watched all of the Harry Potter films one after the other (more than once…).
  • Continued therapy via Zoom.
  • Released and promoted the ‘Clarity (Academic Remix)‘.
  • Released and promoted the ‘Clarity (Academic Remix)’ Music Video.
  • Wrote a 4000 word, fully researched and referenced essay about authenticity and imagery in ‘All Too Well’ by Taylor Swift for my Masters Degree.
  • Finished the first year of my Masters Degree.
  • Rescued one of my cats (the youngest) when she went missing, stuck up a tree for maybe twenty four hours, with the help of some kind neighbours (all of us masked and socially distanced).
  • Rewatched many of my favourite films and TV shows, including…

Films: Hot Fuzz, The Martian, Miss Congeniality, etc.

TV Shows: Episodes, Lucifer, and Nikita, etc.

  • Wrote and posted fifty three blog posts.
  • Watched Season 15 of Criminal Minds, finishing the show after following it for ten years.
  • Read a lot of Fanfiction…

This is something I did a lot of as a teenager but reverted to during my Masters as a form of stress relief: escaping into another world, a familiar and safe world. My most impressive achievements were reading all of the Ros Myers (Spooks) Fanfiction I could find and reading The Changeling and it’s three sequels (a Harry Potter alternate universe where Ginny is sorted into Slytherin, which totals nearly 600,000 words). Of course, there were more one off stories; these are just my greatest hits.

  • Had multiple movie dates with friends and family.
  • Had multiple Studio Ghibli movie dates with one group of friends.
  • Multiple collaborations via video calling: working on my songs, working with new people, critiquing the songs of friends, and so on.
  • Caught up with Law & Order: SVU.
  • Received a grade I was really happy with for my Musicology essay on Taylor Swift’s song, ‘All Too Well.’
  • Released and promoted ‘Sounds Like Hope.’
  • Rewatched all ten seasons of Friends (multiple times – although mostly as background noise).
  • Played the piano a lot, learning the songs of others and writing my own.
  • Watched all of Little Fires Everywhere in one day.
  • Released and promoted the music video for ‘Sounds Like Hope.’
  • Bought a new cat tree for the cats (they’d practically destroyed the old one), one with beds for all five of them and eventually we caught them all in it at once.

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  • Had multiple panic attacks and meltdowns, some really severe.
  • Watched all of Absentia Season 1 in one day.
  • Watched multiple new films including What Happened To Monday, Isn’t It Romantic, Ocean’s 8, Studio Ghibli’s Castle In The Sky, Fantasy Island, The Half Of It, Official Secrets, The Accountant, and more.
  • Watched multiple new TV shows, including Little Fires Everywhere, Absentia, Broadchurch, Agents of Shield Season 7, The Fix, Lucifer Season 5 (Part 1), Away, and more.
  • Started watching Castle.
  • Made multiple banana breads (and other things, like chocolate chip cookies, but that’s less uncommon).
  • Signed petitions and made donations to various causes in the Black Lives Matter movement and collected a list of resources to educate myself more when I don’t feel so incredibly mentally and emotionally fragile (short pieces, like some of the infographics on Instagram have been really good and digestible but I’ve been struggling to absorb large amounts of new information due to my general mental state, which has included frequent meltdowns and panic attacks, all affecting my concentration and memory).
  • Filled six diaries.
  • Watched many of my favourite movies from childhood, including The Emperor’s New Groove, A Bug’s Life, and all of the Wallace and Gromit shorts and movies.
  • Sorted through my clothes.
  • Sorted through and reorganised my DVDs.
  • Spent A LOT of time with my cats.

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  • Made a significant dent in sorting through all of my possessions.
  • Sorted through my jewellery.
  • Worked on my music theory knowledge during a series of piano lessons.
  • Weaned myself off Pregabalin.
  • Gathered up loads of stuff to donate to charity shops when they reopen/are able to accept donations.
  • Cleared out my box of electronics, technology, cables, etc, only keeping the things I actually use and need.
  • Cleared my eight USB sticks.
  • Celebrated the kittens’ first birthday.
  • Received my new laptop (plus other helpful equipment) from DSA, the process of which has been going on for months, only to find that it wasn’t the right laptop.
  • Watched multiple online/streamed concerts, including ICMP Songwriters’ Circles, Kalie Shorr, Savannah Keyes, Song Suffragettes, Ingrid Andress, and more.

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  • Attended Ingrid Andress’ first livestream show with a meet and greet afterwards, which started at 2am and resulted in me staying up until 5am.
  • Watched all of Absentia Season 2 in one day.
  • Took part in multiple research studies looking at how the pandemic and subsequent lockdown are affecting mental health in general, specific mental health conditions, and Autism. I also participated in studies about experiences with therapy and about living with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.
  • Received and set up the new laptop from DSA.
  • Loaded up my old Photos library onto the new laptop, only to find three (or more, sometimes up to seven) copies of basically every photo so I started going through and deleting the duplicates (getting the wheel of doom approximately every five seconds). Got down from 85,000 to just under 30,000 and then organised them all into albums, which took about three weeks. It was a mammoth job but it was incredibly satisfying to finish.
  • I applied to be part of the Disability Pride 2020 Livestream, got a place, and saw myself on TV!

  • Managed to go out for a haircut.
  • Planned the ‘Back To Life’ music video, having had to scrap the original plan due to travel restrictions and anxiety.
  • Dyed my hair orange.
  • Dyed my hair red when the orange wasn’t the right colour.
  • Filmed the ‘Back To Life’ music video on the beach with Richard.

  • Watched all of Absentia Season 3 in one day.
  • Was interviewed by a Dutch journalism student about being a new artist during a pandemic.
  • Obsessively listened to and analysed Taylor Swift’s beautiful new album, folklore.
  • Bought a Gretsch electric guitar (for my birthday but early so that I can make use of the time I have before uni starts, in whatever way it starts).
  • Tried to go to the gym but didn’t feel it was safe.
  • Finally saw Hamilton via Disney+.
  • Met up with a friend for a dog walk, meeting her gorgeous new puppy for the first time.
  • After experiencing serious and ongoing pain in both shoulders down to fingers, I had a Zoom appointment with my GP who referred me to an occupational rheumatologist (which would apparently take two to three weeks). And since any medication stronger than Ibuprofen and Paracetamol will cause side effects similar to those of my anti-depressants, she’s reluctant to prescribe anything stronger unless absolutely necessary.
  • Finished Liar Series 2.
  • Updated my photo albums, after getting eighteen months behind.
  • Got up to date with Agents of Shield Season 7 so that I could watch and celebrate the finale of the season and the show itself with the show’s cast, crew, and fandom on social media.
  • Watched the Perseid meteor shower and saw a handful of ‘proper’ shooting stars.
  • Suffered severe electric shock like pain in my lower legs, requiring more doctors appointments. The information was added to my rheumatology referral and I started taking stronger painkillers.
  • Watched Hamilton with some of my family who’d seen it live and loved it but not seen the film.
  • Watched the finale of Agents of Shield, not just of Season 7 but of the whole show, and cried my eyes out, although sometimes I was laughing at the same time. I loved it and thought it was a really beautiful end to such a fantastic show. I’ll miss it more than I can say but I’m so grateful to have had it, to have had Daisy Johnson, and I’ll always carry with me what it’s meant to me.

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  • Released and promoted ‘Back To Life.’
  • Did an interview with Vents Magazine.
  • Went on several dog walks with my friend and her puppy.
  • Contributed to #DaisyJohnsonAppreciationWeek2020 and #QuakeWeek on social media, posting edits on Tumblr and Twitter.
  • Did an interview with Middle Tennessee Music.
  • Filmed the Behind The Video for the ‘Back To Life’ music video.
  • Went through my clothes a second time (sorting through my possessions, especially when I have an emotion connection to them gives me decision fatigue and I stop being able to make objective decisions – there was a lot to go through the first time).
  • Did an interview with Zap Bang Magazine.
  • Made the decision to do the next semester of my Masters Degree 100% online.
  • Bought Bon Iver tickets for November 2021 – here’s hoping it’ll be possible to go!
  • Put together the ‘Back To Life’ music video with Richard.
  • Released and promoted the ‘Back To Life’ Music Video…
  • Kept a two week photo diary for the CFS/ME research study.
  • Finally captured the motivation to start learning the Kalimba only to find out there was a problem with the one I’d bought so I have to sort that out before I can really start learning to play it.
  • Went through a traumatic few weeks worried that there was something seriously wrong with one of my cats but after multiple vet visits and lots of tests, she’s been given a clean bill of health.
  • Attended the (online) Induction event for the new year at university.
  • Acted as a guinea pig for one of my tutors as he fine-tuned a couple of things for the upcoming online classes.
  • Was given a signed copy of folklore by Taylor Swift as an early birthday present.
  • Signed up for a home recording course.

I doubt I’ll ever be able to look back on this time positively (from a personal perspective – in the wider sense, it’s clearly been catastrophic) but there have been moments and experiences that I am grateful to have had. As I’ve said, I don’t consider lockdown to be over so this post may become a series but with my Masters to focus on, I will have significantly less time to dedicate to bigger projects like organising my photos or sorting through my possessions. So lockdown continues; I’m just entering the next chapter.

 Category: animals, anxiety, autism, covid-19 pandemic, favourites, medication, meltdowns, mental health, music, therapy, university, video, writing    Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

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About Me

Hi! I’m Lauren Alex Hooper. Welcome to my little blog! I write about living with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), ADHD  (Inattentive Type), and  Hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome (hEDS), as well as several mental health issues.

I’m a singer-songwriter (it’s my biggest special interest and I have both a BA and MA in songwriting) so I’ll probably write a bit about that too.

My first single, ‘Invisible,’ is on all platforms, with all proceeds going to Young Minds.

My debut EP, Honest, is available on all platforms, with a limited physical run at Resident Music in Brighton.

I’m currently working on an album about my experiences as an autistic woman.

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About Me

Hi! I’m Lauren Alex Hooper. Welcome to my little blog! I write about living with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), ADHD  (Inattentive Type), and  Hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome (hEDS), as well as several mental health issues.

I’m a singer-songwriter (it’s my biggest special interest and I have both a BA and MA in songwriting) so I’ll probably write a bit about that too.

My first single, ‘Invisible,’ is on all platforms, with all proceeds going to Young Minds.

My debut EP, Honest, is available on all platforms, with a limited physical run at Resident Music in Brighton.

I’m currently working on an album about my experiences as an autistic woman.