Finding HopeWorld Suicide Prevention Day 2023
Posted on September 10, 2023
TW: Discussions of suicidal thoughts, suicidal urges, self harm, and irrational thinking. PLEASE think carefully before reading further if these things may trigger you or cause you distress. Please always put yourself and your mental health first.
This, I think, is the first time I’ve written directly about my experience with suicidal thoughts and urges. I’ve mentioned it in relation to the side effects of medication and written around the edges of it but I don’t think I’ve ever talked about it in such detail. I have omitted certain moments and details since it’s been proven that sharing about plans and methods can lead to further suicides but this is as honest as I can manage, even though it terrifies me. But as hard as it is, I’m sharing these experiences because I think it’s so deeply important for people to understand what it’s like to feel this way, to live in so much pain, to feel so desperate. Keeping these stories in the dark only increases the shame and stigma so, even though it’s difficult and uncomfortable and scary, we need to talk about them. It’s the only way the world will get better at supporting people who are struggling.
I’ve experienced suicidal thoughts on and off since I was a teenager but for a long time, they were passive. Walking to school, I’d cross the road and, dreading the day ahead, I’d imagine getting hit by a car. But the thought would leave as quickly as it arrived. I thought it was normal. To quote Ned Vizzini, “Who hasn’t thought about killing themselves, as a kid? How can you grow up in this world and not think about it?” (I may have hated that book but that line really resonated with me.) This was before I was diagnosed as autistic* and I thought everyone felt as overwhelmed by their emotions, by their anxieties, as I did – as I do – but were just better at managing it.
*Autistic individuals, especially autistic women, are at a much higher risk of suicide than the general population; the factors include mental health problems (especially if they go untreated), the impact of a late diagnosis, challenging life events such as bullying and ableism, the burden of masking, isolation, and cognitive inflexibility, which can lead to difficulty in seeing any option but suicide. (x)
(Left: During secondary school // Right: During sixth form college)
I continued to experience passive suicidal thoughts and then, during my second year of sixth form college, I started to struggle with depression and my ever-present anxiety reached all-new heights (although, in comparison to what I experience now, I’d happily go back to it). Almost a decade, multiple diagnoses, and more than twenty medications later, my depression is the worst it’s ever been and I’ve been actively suicidal for almost two years. There have been short periods over the years (always in concert with the times I tried medications other than Phenelzine) where I’ve struggled with suicidal thoughts but, for the last two years, they have been almost constant.
They began in earnest when I started taking Xaggatin for my ADHD (and had to stop taking Phenelzine because my ADHD clinician was insistent that the side effects were unsustainable – I disagreed for multiple reasons but this isn’t the post for that story). I thought the intensity of the thoughts – and their slow, scary manifestation into urges and intentions and plans – was a side effect but it wasn’t long before my depression crept back in, sucking me down. Between that and the other awful side effects, my psychiatrist switched me to another medication, Bupropion, an antidepressant that’s supposed to help with ADHD but it only made things worse: I was so anxious, depressed, and suicidal that I couldn’t function. I tried a few more antidepressants, was traumatised by several more doctors, and had the crisis team called out (although they didn’t do anything, including the things they’d said they’d do). I quit treatment entirely for a while, unable to mentally handle it; I basically retreated to my bed and stayed there. I couldn’t engage with the world: it just hurt too much. But without treatment (I didn’t even have a therapist at this point, another thing that had spun my life out of control), the claws of my depression dug deeper and deeper. I remember one day where I had the sickening realisation that I wasn’t doing anything worthwhile with my life, that I had wasted my time and my education, that I was a complete waste of space. There was another day when I realised that something had broken inside me, something that could never be fixed, and I was no longer the person I had been and would only ever be a defective, inferior version of her. I avoided mirrors for months. On New Year’s Eve of 2021, I stared at the fairy lights in my living room and thought about how I had no desire to survive even the next 365 days. It wasn’t a resolution but I felt it with a quiet certainty. I thought about it everyday but then somehow that dreaded day arrived and I was still here, despite that certainty, despite my plans. I hated myself for it, feeling like a pathetic, weak-willed coward. It was a terrible night, not that I remember much of it given the distress I was in.
Somehow I ended up on Phenelzine again, despite my revulsion at the thought; I still don’t really know how it happened and I still find myself so angry about it that it feels like it might consume me. But, for a while, the chronic suicidality was relocated to the side burner: it was all still there but it wasn’t the only thing in my brain anymore. I could ignore it for sometimes days at a time. But after a while, my depression seemed to billow back in, like ink in water. The suicidal thoughts and urges became – and still are – the constant undertow to my thoughts and sometimes it’s all so overwhelming that I can barely breathe. Self harming has long stopped being an effective coping strategy as it just makes me feel pathetic for not doing more damage. I don’t know why I haven’t acted on these thoughts. I don’t know why I’m still here. If asked, I’d probably say, “because I’m a coward,” even though I know that I’d likely get a verbal thrashing from anyone I voiced that feeling too. I can practically hear my therapist (yes, I’m back in therapy) encouraging me to dissect that feeling. I know it’s not a healthy, rational thought but it is a real one. It’s a weird state to live in and the conflict of planning for a future I don’t particularly want to exist in is disorientating and miserable. It’s exhausting. But I know what my fate is, whether it comes sooner or later, and I have for years.
Following a slightly different train of thought, it’s very strange to me that people can’t seem to tell, just because it’s such an overwhelming experience for me. I feel like I have a massive neon sign over my head: “SUICIDAL.” But then I wouldn’t be surprised if people just don’t comment because they don’t know what to say. The last time I self-harmed, I cut my face because I needed to look as broken as I felt (or inasmuch as I could physically manage, which wasn’t enough – more shame and self-hatred) and almost nobody even mentioned it. (Not that that was the point but it did surprise me. Most of the time I avoided the question. I only lied once: I was in a weird headspace already and the question took me off guard and I just didn’t have the emotional energy to explain.) The cut got infected and took weeks to heal. I’m glad it left a scar but I resent it for not being bigger: the disfigurement doesn’t accurately reflect the feelings, not by a long shot.
(Left: The dressing on my face after I self harmed // Right: The scar after it finally healed, having got infected.)
In some ways, I feel like I’m already disappearing: I struggle to make sense of my face in the mirror and, while I don’t know about this year, there are fewer than ten photos of me in 2022; my autistic masking is so ingrained that the real, brutally honest me who is struggling and suffering (who so desperately needs to be seen) gets locked away so tightly that she might as well not exist, while a socially acceptable and palatable projection of me – the only version of me that people could want, says the voice in my head – takes over my body, acting almost without my permission; I feel like no one knows the real me any more, not after months in bed, besieged by suicidal thoughts and impulses. I feel permanently damaged by it but people are still treating me as who I used to be and not who I am now (not that I think it’s their fault – while the damage feels so deeply clear to me, I know that it’s not visible to anyone else). I remember the old me. I remember the person who could be proud of being different and who advocated for acceptance, even though she still felt broken. It was a balancing act but there was balance. Now the broken feeling has broken the scale. I feel unrecognisable. I noted down somewhere – last year at some point, I think – that feeling like this feels like one elongated near death experience. Almost every day for more than eighteen months, I’ve been so close to death that I can feel it’s presence in the air when I breathe in; I can feel it in my lungs. One decision – one split second – away. Maybe it’s just dying in slow motion. Feeling this way… I don’t know how it doesn’t change you.
I was reading various articles as I both researched and procrastinated this post and, in one of them, the author had written this: “Because depression, as we all know, is almost always treatable.” The statistics vary, depending on where you look, but a high percentage of people (this page claims between 80% and 90%) do eventually respond well to treatment. After ten years, over twenty medications, and more hours in multiple therapies than I can count, I’ve only ever managed periods of being mentally well. The longest period was, I think, two and a half years at the most. Only one medication actually helps and I’ve run out of new ones to try. The other options, according to a consultant in another very distressing appointment, would be the Ketamine trials or Electroconvulsive Therapy, neither of which doctors fully understand (the same could be said for antidepressants). Given how abnormally I respond to multiple medications, I’m terrified of how these treatments might affect me. I’m terrified of how Phenelzine is affecting me. With all of that in mind, I can’t help but wonder – and have wondered for a long time – if I’m included in that small percentage that doesn’t respond to treatment. And if that’s the case, it means that this is forever and that is an unbearable thought.
I’ve spent a lot of time talking with my therapist about this – and no doubt this post will spark multiple new discussions – and we did talk briefly about what I could write for this post, what would feel actually helpful to someone reading (I never figured that out, by the way, so I have no idea if this is helpful or not). She said that the most important thing is to talk about it and that it’s much more dangerous not to talk about it. I agree with the latter part but I’m not convinced that talking about it is helping me; I often feel like I’m just going around in circles and exhausting myself. She asked me what I would say to someone I loved if they expressed all of this to me and the truth is that I honestly don’t know. I don’t know because I’ve never heard anything that’s helped me. I think we all have the knee-jerk reaction to say, “Please stay. I love you and I’d miss you.” It’s true and it’s heartfelt but is it fair to ask someone to live in agony, in unbearable misery, because you’d miss them? We want to say, “Things will get better.” But we don’t know that. We can’t promise that. We want to say, “How can I help?” But it’s unlikely that there’s any one thing a person can do to help, although that one is more specific to the individual person. If someone asked me that, I couldn’t give them an answer because there is nothing they can do to help. It’s so much bigger than one person, than them or than me. Maybe these help some people. For me, none of these things change the reasons I’m suicidal and they’ve only added unhelpful pressure and stress. I’d hate to do that to someone else. I’m not saying the right words aren’t out there. I’ve just never heard them. Or discovered them.
Obviously I haven’t shared everything. As I said, I didn’t want to share things that have been proven to push people passed their limits (although I hope everyone read the warning and acted accordingly and prioritised their mental health) but there are also certain things that are too hard to share, too raw, too loaded. But I wanted to share my experience today, not just because it’s an overwhelming aspect of my life, but because sharing our experiences and our feelings is, as I said in my introduction, one of the few ways (and possibly the most powerful way) that the world gets better at helping people. People can only do that if they understand the battles being fought and the support that’s needed. I hope that sharing my story can help with that, even if it’s just a drop in the ocean.
RESOURCES:
The Resurgence of My Body-Focussed Repetitive Behaviours
Posted on July 15, 2023
TW: Mentions of Trichotillomania, Dermatillomania, and self harm.
Over the last twenty months – the period dominated by my latest depressive episode – my hair pulling has been much less of a problem, something that tends to happen when I’m really depressed; it’s like I’m too depressed to pull. I guess that’s something to be grateful for while incredibly depressed (scraping the barrel but it’s something, or at least not nothing). But, over the last few months, my hair pulling (and other BFRBs) have returned with pretty frightening force.
As I said, it’s been a long time since I’ve been seriously pulling at my hair. But in the last couple of months, the urge has come roaring back with relentless intensity. Whether this is connected to starting the Phenelzine again, to beginning the escape from The Great Depression, or something else altogether, I have no idea but it’s a frustrating and exhausting to be back here again, back to pulling so much and so often that I have constant pain in my shoulder and arm. It hit me a while back that it will, in a couple of months, be ten years since I started pulling, which has been a pretty overwhelming realisation – I never thought it would become such a permanent part of my life.
I also started picking at my skin, which isn’t something I’ve ever really done and certainly not to the degree that I pull my hair. Frustrated by the imperfections of my fingertips, I ended up compulsively chewing on the callouses that had recently developed on my left hand (coming out of the depression, I’d started playing the guitar again and the callouses on my left hand – my string hand – had begun to reform); it got so bad and I’d gone through so many layers of skin that I couldn’t touch anything without pain. How they healed, I have no idea. I was also picking at my nails and the skin around them. My fingers were a mess, raw and painful and I ended up going through multiple packs of plasters in my attempts to stop. But, of course, I’d start picking at them as soon as I took the plasters off so they really did take ages to recover, and it was even longer before I could play guitar again.
And as if both of those behaviours weren’t enough, I was compulsively scratching at a half healed self harm cut on my face. It had started to heal but then suddenly I couldn’t leave the scab alone, reopening the cut and eventually making it bigger and bigger. I wasn’t trying to stop it from healing exactly but in my mind, the uneven, ‘imperfect’ edges needed to be fixed and so I kept trying to smooth them out, make them neater, make them symmetrical, or… something. It’s completely illogical because I was just making it bigger – just making the wound worse (and at this point, it really was a wound) – and more likely to get infected but I couldn’t help it.
I just could not stop myself. I tried so hard – trying every strategy I’ve ever used, every one I could find on the internet – but I still felt like I was losing my mind – and I mean that literally – if I didn’t do it, a feeling that got worse the longer I tried to stop myself. In the end, I always broke and my fingers found their way back to whichever of the three was their favourite at that moment in time. And it was always worse if I was extra tired or extra stressed. The only way to in way curb it – the behaviour if not the compulsion – was to cover the skin I was attacking, plasters over my fingers and a dressing across my face (that one was harder and less comfortable to explain). That didn’t stop me trying, constantly fiddling with the edges of them, and my hair bore the brunt of that coping mechanism. I ended up buying a hat that I could tuck all of my hair under but even with all of that in place, the urge to pull or pick got so bad sometimes that I simply gave in to it. Sometimes it was just too hard.
(On the left: before we found the correct dressing // On the right: in the early days when I’d only chewed on two callouses)
Jump to a few months later. My callouses finally healed and, after a period of using the wrong type of dressing before switching to a better one, my face recovered for the most part too although there’s still a scar. With those ‘imperfections’ ‘perfect’ again, hair pulling has become the main problem again. The urges are less than they were but still pretty relentless – perhaps a side effect of restarting the Phenelzine after all? – and I’m so fucking tired of the whole thing. I don’t know what to do, how to stop; I’ve seen so many people say that it’s not actually possible. But I don’t want to live like this. As I said, I don’t know what I’m going to do but I think I might try hypnotherapy; I’ve heard that some people have had positive results. So I guess we’ll see. Ten years is long enough.
#ToHelpMyAnxiety
Posted on June 3, 2023
TW: Mentions of self harm and Trichotillomania.
So the theme set by the Mental Health Foundation for Mental Health Awareness Week this year was anxiety. They pushed the hashtag #ToHelpMyAnxiety to raise awareness but I didn’t see it once on social media so I decided to write a whole blog post on the topic, on what helps my anxiety as well as what I’ve heard from others about what helps them. I ranted recently about how people engage with Mental Health Awareness Week, and awareness days in general, but I do think that sharing coping mechanisms for anxiety is a useful thing to do and a good use of those days.
I live with very severe anxiety, so bad that nothing I do actually banishes it, but I have found certain things that help to manage or reduce it. And I’ve spent a lot of time talking with friends and acquaintances about anxiety, discussing how we all try to cope with it. So I have a lot of tried and tested methods that have all worked for at least one person and therefore will hopefully be useful to at least one of you. If any of these ideas help just one person, then it’s worth the work to compile them. (Some of these have been pulled from my experience as an autistic person but many of them are useful for anxiety so I figured it was worth including them.)
I do think it’s worth mentioning that not all of my coping mechanisms are good, healthy ones. I’m focussing on the healthy ones because those are the ones we should all be aspiring to practice but I felt it would be remiss to not even mention them.
General Tips:
- Maintaining a healthy lifestyle – Getting enough sleep, eating healthily, moving your body, and, in some cases, taking additional supplements (I am not knowledgeable about this, nor qualified, to give advice but I do personally take supplements on the advice of a nutritionist, one who has experience with my health problems) are all important in managing anxiety. Not getting enough sleep or not eating enough can drastically increase anxiety, as you’ll know if you’ve struggled with anxiety in the past (and present).
- Make sure I’m breathing properly – I know people who swear by deep breathing exercises but I don’t usually need to go that far; I often find myself breathing very shallowly and need to reset, take a deep breath and remind myself what normal breathing is. At home, singing is really useful for this, I think because it forces me to control my breathing, plus it’s something I love to do.
- Consciously relax my body – When I’m really anxious, I’ll suddenly find my body so tense that I’m like a coiled spring. I have to focus and physically relax my muscles – drop my shoulders, unclench my fists, uncurl my toes, etc – sometimes multiple times a day. I usually find the tension creeping in again but making the effort to relax over and over does seem to help.
- Avoid loud noises – Loud noises are a serious trigger for my anxiety so I try to avoid them as much as possible, although some environments seem to be exceptions, like concerts for example. Most of the time noise cancelling headphones do the trick so I’m very grateful to have such a great pair.
- Avoid certain fabrics – This is probably more Autism anxiety than general anxiety but I thought it might be useful to someone. The sensory irritation of some fabrics (I particularly struggle with acrylic and polyester) slowly overload my brain until my anxiety makes it impossible to concentrate. So sticking to safe textures, like cotton, is a good strategy, even if it does mean I miss out on cool clothes occasionally.
- Fidget toys or fidget jewellery – We all stim (shortened from self-stimulatory behaviour) to some degree, both neurodivergent and neurotypical people, and one of the most common reasons for stimming is anxiety. Many stimming behaviours aren’t harmful (and many autistic individuals enjoy their stims) but sometimes they are and sometimes they can draw unwanted attention. This is where fidget toys and fidget jewellery can be really helpful because it fulfils the same need as stimming but allows that behaviour to stay under the radar, if that’s what you want. I’m not ashamed of being autistic or of my stimming behaviours but some of them are harmful and need redirecting and some of them are such that I don’t always want them to be people’s first impression of me; I prefer to choose when I reveal that sort of information but still need to stim in the meantime.
- Creating something with your hands – I’m not very artistic, not in the making of physical art anyway, but I do find it soothing to make things with my hands, whether that’s doing origami or making friendship bracelets. This is apparently a very common thing, as it allows our brains to essentially switch off and take a break from the relentless noise pouring in.
- Bullet journalling – Organising and updating my bullet journal (or my version of it that’s accidentally evolved over the years) and to-do list help me to keep track of what’s happening so I don’t have to worry that I’m forgetting something.
- Learning a language – This is something I’ve learned over the last year. I started using Duolingo and found it to be a really good way to distract myself when I was anxious, plus I was learning something new at the same time. I would like to use the language and, in theory, I will but even if I don’t, I did manage to reduce my anxiety, learn a new language, and feel better about myself.
- Socialising (to the best of my ability) – Depending on what’s best for you, a certain level of socialising can be really good for managing anxiety (especially if you have someone to talk to who understands what you’re going through). It’s a bit of a balancing act because it can help up to a point and then become overwhelming, but if you can walk that line, you can find relief from anxiety in both socialising and alone time (as many of us know from experience, too much of either can just make the anxiety worse).
- Therapy – If your anxiety is ongoing or seriously impacting your life, therapy might be something to consider. I talk about my anxiety in therapy a lot: what I’m anxious about, what I can do to mitigate it, short term and long term strategies, what else it might be connected to. I’ve learned a lot about myself and my anxiety and although some anxieties are impossible to avoid, I have learned how to manage some of them.
At Home:
- Blanket – Unless it’s absolutely sweltering, I usually have a blanket draped over my legs and lap. It’s not a weighted blanket because those are just too much for me but a light blanket provides just enough weight to be calming, to be grounding.
- Controlling the temperature – I’m more able to handle my anxiety when I’m comfortable, regulating my temperature included. So that I don’t have to adjust the whole house, I have a little electric blanket that I can sit on if I’m cold (also great for my chronic pain) and an amazing fan (noiseless because the noisy ones can trigger my anxiety) and that way I can adjust the temperature really easily as I need to.
- Burning my favourite candle – When I’m feeling anxious, burning my favourite candle (my personal choice is the pink pepper grapefruit candle from The Candle Bar, but really any pink grapefruit candle will do) helps to relax me; I feel safer and calmer and like I can breathe more easily.
- Stroking my cats – It’s been scientifically proven that spending time with animals lowers our stress levels and I absolutely know it to be true from my personal experience. Being around my cats relaxes me and it’s only when I’m away from them – even for only a few days – that I realise just how much they reduce my anxiety. So being with animals, if possible, is definitely a good tactic and fortunately, these days, there are many ways to do that if it’s not possible to own a pet yourself.
- Favourite movies and TV shows – When I’m having a bad day, returning to my favourite movies and TV shows (even if I have to work on stuff while I watch them) is very calming. The familiarity and nostalgia of those stories and characters makes me feel safe, pushing the outside world and all its stresses away for a while. As psychologist Pamela Rutledge says, “It can become really therapeutic, especially if you are feeling anxious. Watching the same piece multiple times reaffirms that there’s order in the world and that it can create a sense of safety and comfort on a primal level.”
- Diary writing – I feel like, with every day that passes, I’m carrying around more and more memories and the longer I go without writing them down and putting them somewhere safe, the more anxious I get. This is where my OCD chimes in. Complying with that need to write everything down may feed my OCD but it also brings me huge relief, both in that it relieves the weight that I feel like I’m carrying – and the anxiety that I could forget those memories and that they’d therefore be lost forever – but also in that it helps me process what I’ve been going through; the act of writing out my thoughts and feelings helps me untangle and make sense of them. I couldn’t cope without it.
Out and About:
- Have a well packed bag – It often ends up being a little over excessive (and heavy) but by making sure I have everything I know I’ll need (or might need), I can avoid a lot of anxiety and uncertainty; it’s my safety net. The contents depend a little on where I’m going but I usually have my phone (and portable charger so that I’m always able to reach someone if I need to), my noise cancelling headphones, my ID, my wallet (and travelcard), my keys, my sunflower lanyard, a bottle of water, a face mask (and a spare), hand sanitiser, medication (for anxiety and pain), my bullet journal, a fidget toy, and something to distract myself with if necessary, like a book. I think that’s everything. But if I’m prepared for everything, I’m less likely to end up in a situation that triggers my anxiety because I already have a solution.
- Exercise – I think there’s a bit more nuance to this one than is often made clear. Because of my mobility and chronic pain problems, exercise is hard for me and swimming is the only thing I can reasonably do at this point, which isn’t something I can just get up and do. But I do love it and I do find that it makes me feel better. I do agree that moving your body is helpful but I think that you get more out of it when it’s a form of exercise you enjoy, rather than exercise for the sake of exercise. Some of my friends love running and find that really centering and yoga is often recommended as a good choice of exercises, particularly because of the relationship you develop with your breathing, another well known coping mechanism for anxiety.
Other People’s Tips:
- A change of scenery – Sometimes we can just get stuck in the spiral of anxious thoughts and one way to break that spiral is to literally move to a different place. Our brains are super sensitive to changes in our surroundings and new experiences are closely linked to reward and positive feelings.
- Gardening – While gardening is not something that helps me, it’s something that many people find really helpful, whether that’s tending a full garden or looking after plants and window boxes. My Mum loves to garden and when I asked her why she finds it relaxing, she said that part of it is that she’s outside and away from work, but also that it requires all of her attention and that there’s always progress to be made. I can definitely understand that even if plants specifically aren’t my thing.
- Reduce caffeine – I don’t understand the science, but it has been scientifically proven that reducing caffeine reduces stress. As far as I can tell, caffeine has no effect on me at all – energy-wise, at least – so I have no idea if it affects my stress levels. But if you’re ingesting a lot of caffeine, it might be worth cutting down your intake and seeing how you feel.
- Listening to music – Some people find listening to music deeply relaxing and it’s true that, as an activity, it lowers your heart rate and cortisol levels. Personally, it might physically relax me but since music is my job, it’s not very relaxing for my brain. I think they call it ‘a busman’s holiday.’
- Reading – Reading is also proven to lower your heart rate and ease tension in your muscles so it’s a technique worth trying but, of course, reading isn’t everybody’s cup of tea.
- Puzzles – My friend loves doing puzzles and, as it turns out, puzzles actually help release dopamine in your brain, which is why we feel good when we do puzzles. I prefer doing puzzles with people rather than doing them alone and I’m sure that that has its own benefits too.
- Self care – The idea of doing something that helps you feel good, mentally and physically, seems obvious but it’s so easy for all of us to get caught up in everything we need to do and everything we’re worried about, that we often forget. For some people, this is taking a long bath, for others it’s painting their nails, or catching up with a friend, sleeping in, or keeping a gratitude journal. The list of potential options is probably longer than The Lord of the Rings books so I’m sure there’s something useful there for all of us; it just might take a while to find the right thing.
- Meditation – I don’t know a whole lot about meditation (and all of the different types) but I know that some people swear by it. Not only does it reduce symptoms of anxiety, depression, and PTSD, it can also improve your sleep, blood pressure, and heart rate. Regular meditation can also physically change the structure of your brain, improving your senses, your concentration, and ability to process emotions. Knowing it can do all of that, it definitely seems worth researching.
- The 333 rule – I’ve seen many variations of this technique so you don’t have to stick to these rules, just the ones you set for yourself, the ones that work best for you. In this example, when you’re anxious, you try to redirect your focus to three things you can see, three things you can hear, and three things you can touch. I’ve heard some people say that this is too easy and doesn’t distract them enough, leading to all sorts of imaginative versions of this idea: my favourites, I think, are three things you can fit in your pocket, three things you can balance on top of each other, etc. Whatever works for you, if it works for you.
Other notes:
- I’ve been taking medication for my anxiety for a long time now, Diazepam as and when I need it (although it does have to be monitored, which it is). It has been incredibly helpful although I’m careful about never getting dependent. There are ebbs and flows in my anxiety where I take it more and I’ll take it if I know I’m about to do something stressful, like have a stressful meeting or take a flight, but it’s very much a balance of taking them and using other strategies like the ones I’ve listed.
- As I said, I do think it’s also worth noting that I have some harmful, self-destructive methods of coping with my anxiety. I’ve been self harming on and off since I was twelve because I just needed to give all of the intense feelings an escape route out of my body, like a pressure valve (it’s always been sporadic though – I’ve never been a really serious self-harmer, not in comparison to how much some people struggle with it). My hair pulling is worse though. I’m not sure if it’s Trichotillomania or if I’m stimming but either way, it’s not good: I’ve always been able to avoid it being visible but I have so many patches of hair at different lengths and my scalp gets so sore. I’ve also developed problems in my hand, wrist, elbow, and shoulder from the repetition of pulling. But it’s so hard to stop and trying to resist the urge to pull causes me incredible stress and anxiety so I just end up pulling to escape it. I’m talking about it in therapy though so maybe we’ll make some progress with that.
So I hope this has been helpful. Hopefully there are enough ideas here that there’s something for everyone, to try at least. If you’re reading this and struggle with anxiety, I feel for you and I’m in this with you and I hope that you find something to help you manage it. Severe anxiety is not something that we just have to accept, just have to live with. There are ways to make it easier – maybe there are even ways to shed it – and I hope you find them because you deserve to enjoy your life. You deserve to feel everything, not just anxiety.
Finding Hope 