Nadiya, Anxiety & Me – A Great Insight to Anxiety.

I really admire the courage it took for Nadiya Hussain to make the documentary about her struggles with anxiety, and I applaud the way it was presented because it showed very clearly that anxiety is complex and not always logical.

Understanding the complexities of anxiety is hard enough as it is, especially for those who have never experienced severe levels of panic, and I think this was handled beautifully, especially when Nadiya met up with her sisters.  These are the people who have been closest to her, and they had no idea how bad her anxiety was; they saw her behaviour, such as counting off the names of her family members on her fingers each night so that none of them would die, but they had no idea why she was doing it.  Their reactions were of genuine surprise; what does a voice in your head sound like?Continue reading “Nadiya, Anxiety & Me – A Great Insight to Anxiety.”

Marathon Man – My Running Journey, Part 2.

Towards the end of last year a friend mentioned that he was running the Milton Keynes Marathon, and this got me thinking.

I needed a reason to do the races, it wasn’t enough to just do them, get the medal and wait for the next one, there had to be a bigger purpose, and that’s when I thought about raising money for Mind and that was when ‘Adventures of an Anxious Mind’ was born.  I also thought that I could use the experiences to help and inspire other people, and to raise awareness of mental health issues; it is this part that drives me the most.

I decided to sign up for a number of runs this year, which included the Milton Keynes Marathon.Continue reading “Marathon Man – My Running Journey, Part 2.”

Marathon Man – My Running Journey, Part 1.

Monday 6th May 2019 will forever be marked as one of the greatest days of my life; the day I completed the Milton Keynes Marathon!

All the books and articles about mental health that I have read say that exercise is great therapy; walking the dog worked, but I wanted more, I wanted to lose the Homer Simpson gut that too much alcohol had given me; I also wanted to achieve something, anything.

I started running short distances because that’s all I could manage, the problem was that I had no idea how far I was going, so I decided to get a running app on my phone called ‘Map My Run’.  The first recorded distance I achieved was 4.75k, which was a pretty good effort.

Motivation was a big problem for me, especially when the depression got bad; it’s easy to talk yourself out of things at the best of times, but when I hit rock bottom I just couldn’t scrape myself off the sofa.  I needed a goal, something that would get me out and running.Continue reading “Marathon Man – My Running Journey, Part 1.”

To ‘Let Go’ Takes Love

To ‘let go’ does not mean to stop caring, it means I can’t do it for someone else.

To ‘let go’ is not to cut myself off, it is the realisation I can’t control another.

To ‘let go’ is not to enable, but to allow learning from natural consequences.

To ‘let go’ is to admit powerlessness, which means the outcome is not in my hands.Continue reading “To ‘Let Go’ Takes Love”

Anxiety and the Brain, Part 9: Useful Examples of Amygdala-based Anxiety.

The book I have been referencing for the Anxiety and the Brain series (Rewire Your Anxious Brain) has some examples of how anxiety can affect someone, and why amygdala-based anxiety does not always make logical sense.

The Anxious Teddy Bear:

A lady was presenting a teddy bear to her grandson, who was running happily toward her.  Then he suddenly fell and split his lip open on the driveway.

Now he experiences amygdala-based anxiety whenever he sees a teddy bear.  Because the perfectly harmless teddy bear was associated with the pain of the injury, the teddy bear became a trigger, leading to a fear of teddy bears.Continue reading “Anxiety and the Brain, Part 9: Useful Examples of Amygdala-based Anxiety.”