Welcome to week 2 of my blog mini-series

“Isolation made me do it”.

Disclaimer

I would like to start this blog by sending love and prayers to all, in this incredibly scary time that we are currently living through. 

I would like to make it clear that these posts are in no way trying to make light of Covid 19 and the colossal and devastating impact it continues to have on so many lives.

Writing is something that helps me to get through the tough times and documenting the things I have been doing and experiencing through this time has been a huge help to maintaining a healthy state of mind.

The intention is to help others and hopefully create some happiness and positivity in these dark times if only for a moment.

A different time

I have spent the last three years feeling restricted and controlled by Anxiety and Depression, daily tasks feel like they are near on impossible to complete.  I would look forward to day’s where there was no school run, where there was no expectation, no pressure for me to be anywhere or do anything, because they were the day’s where I would feel unrestricted and in control.

I would be able to go about in high spirits knowing it would be free from anxiety.  I loved it because for just a short time I would feel “normal” again and for a moment forget that Anxiety was a part of my life.  For a split second I would feel completely myself.

Just before the world was taken over by this terrible pandemic, I was starting to gain a little more control of my anxiety.

Slowly building the confidence and pushing myself to gradually try things a little more challenging each week, whether it be travelling a little further in the car or visiting a place I hadn’t been before, I was beginning to take these baby steps and starting to slowly build my confidence.  It was getting to the stage that on occasions I would sit in the car the entire journey practically holding my breath in anticipation waiting for the anxiety to appear but then….. nothing. I had begun to feel that although still a long way off I could now see a future with travel being a part of my life again…… which quite honestly 6 months ago I would have said was completely impossible!

All in all, it was fair to say that the progress I had started to make was amazing.

Finding hope

Lock down begins and the first couple of weeks are tough, I feel anxious constantly.

As the weeks pass, I begin to think about the progress I had been making and how isolation would affect that, it started to make me panic a little and the more weeks that went by the more I would worry.

It’s only of recent that as a family we have started to get a little more used to a life of quarantine, still missing our friends and other members of our family terribly but extremely great full we are managing to stay well and keep ourselves and our children safe.

The anxiety starts to lift as we become more and more settled in to our new routine.

I begin to realise that I go to bed every night free from anxiety, wake up every morning free from anxiety and go all day without anxiety!  I have created such a safe little bubble within our house with no pressures to do anything or go anywhere, no feelings of letting your family down, I don’t sit torturing myself watching others living an exciting life full of things I can’t do because they’re not doing them either, everyone is doing the exact same, staying home to stay safe. 

I am in complete control of every day knowing that I haven’t got somewhere to be. I have become completely settled in this bubble of safety that for the first time in years I feel “normal” again. 

It is under the worst possible circumstances I admit and probably isn’t that good for my mental health in the long run, but at the   

 moment in the here and now I feel as though I am building my confidence back, starting to remind myself of some of the things that I used to enjoy doing,  before  Anxiety made it to difficult, for example reading a book and actually  managing to finish it, eating foods that I love but would always avoid because id worry it would give me a bad stomach.  

When you are in it, all these safety behaviours become part of your everyday routine, it’s not until you are out of it that you see the extent of what the Anxiety controlled.

Feeling like me, and feeling free

Some may say that this is not healthy for me and that it will be a crash back to reality when we are through the other side and you might be right, but at the same time I feel like I have regained some self-belief. Starting to forget how bad the bad days really were, giving me the want to fight harder and have faith and confidence that I can get back to a life that I feel in control of and not one that’s controlled by Anxiety. Just for a moment I feel truly me, the me without Anxiety!

Share a smile not a judgement 

&

Lead with kindness

💚❤️