Starting Again (Because I Need To)

I haven’t written a blog for a while.

A couple of months ago I actually wrote one, but when I went to post it, it hadn’t saved properly. That was enough for me at the time, it was the excuse I needed to stop posting and step away for a bit.

But if I’m honest, that wasn’t the real reason.

I haven’t written because it’s hard to be vulnerable. It’s hard to expose yourself. I’m really a private person, and sharing my hardest struggles openly like this is uncomfortable.

Most of the support I’ve had has been amazing. Genuinely, 99% of it has been positive. But there’s always that 1% that isn’t. And for some reason, that’s the part that sticks. That’s what got into my head and made me not want to post.

So I pulled back. I retreated to protect myself.

I've not wanted to start writing again because I've not wanted to expose myself again.

But then something happened that made me think I should start writing again.

I Don't want Anxiety

I don’t want it to be my identity or the thing I fear people judge me by. But the reality is, I do have it. And I have to live with it every day.

It’s changed my life. It’s changed who I am. It’s changed how I think, how I live, how I see things. And I’m still trying to come to terms with that. It's affected my relationships and how I live life on a scale I couldn't imagine.

Dealing with anxiety is hard enough on its own. So adding exposure on top of that makes it even harder. But I have had to remind myself why I started this in the first place.

At first it was for me as a way to try and overcome my own Anxiety, but it wasn’t just for me.

It was to help other people going through something similar. The ones who feel stuck. The ones who don’t talk about it or can't talk about it. The ones who think they’re the only ones.

So I’ve had to dig deep and find the strength to start writing again.

The Last Few Months

The last few months have been tough.

Not just with anxiety, but with things in my personal life that have affected me deeply and brought everything back to the surface. Some of it has intensified the Anxiety but also helped me to learn to manage it and overcome it better.

I’m not going to go into all the details of that here as it's personal.

But it’s felt like one blow after another. Like every time I pick myself up, something else knocks me back down.

And when you add anxiety into that, it becomes exhausting.

Some days I don’t want to get out of bed.

I don’t want to face another day where something might go wrong. I don’t want more bad news. That can trigger another wave of dizziness. I don’t want to feel like I’m going to fall over for no reason.

I don’t want to be sitting on the sofa and suddenly feel out of breath, like I can’t swallow.

I don’t want my chest to feel like it’s being stabbed.

But I do want to live, I do want to get my life back and I want to move forward.

The Moment That Brought Me Back

Last night I went to a comedy show. Which was a big step in my recovery. I've never had a problem with crowds, I remember being at Wembley as a 9 year old kid in a cup semi final and the crowd was calling for the refs head, the atmosphere was electric, it's a buzz you can't get anywhere else. I've been at White Hart Lane in the home end as an Arsenal fan in the early 90's which was terrifying and scary on a different level but not one that hijacks your body. So my fear isn't of crowds itself, it comes from how my body is going to react when I'm there. I never know if I'm going to be ok or if my body is going to start to go into a state of panic and that is what's hard to manage and is what I fear. Sometimes that thought alone can start to trigger the Anxiety in anticipation of Anxiety itself. The fear of the fear! What a mess!

Last night there was a crowd of around 15–20 thousand people there, which can be daunting when your body is screaming to get out, which is how I've felt other times when I've tried to go out. Yesterday I was actually coping pretty well. I had a slight buzz of anticipatory Anxiety about the car journey but nothing I couldn't manage, but when we got to the venue I was in the nosebleed section and had to go down to the bathroom. On the way back up, I got out of breath, not because I'm unfit but because my body was on edge, I could feel myself start to hyper ventilate and was struggling to bring my breathing under control. I had people sat next to me and I could feel myself starting to struggle and get twitchy. I knew I could calm myself down now as I've been here before, I wasn't gripped by the fear but I knew surrounded by so many people, I didn't want to be nervously twitching beside them and ruining it for them. I needed to give mysef some space to calm down so I stood at the back of the adutitorium. Up there I chatted to the security, so they wouldn't ask me to go and sit back down and I got to stay stood at the back which allowed me to calm myself down.

During the second act, the show took a bit of a twist I wasn't expecting but it felt like time suddenly stood stiil, the comedian stopped joking for a moment and started talking about anxiety. it felt out of the blue, after cracking jokes about tranny's and sex shows in Amsterdam.

It suddenly felt life the show got serious. He mentioned how doctors had given him anxiety medication to help him sleep, (I looked him up online after the show andread that he has struggled with Anxiety from being thrust into the spolight) and then he asked the audience a question:

Do you know what anxiety really is? I had a little chuckle to myself as I was still in that anxious state and I thought to myself this could be intersting. I wonder how he's going to joke about this.

Except he didn't make a joke. He started by stating what most people think Anxiety is, nerves before a meeting, butterflies before doing something new. He made a remark about how everyone these days' say's they have Anxiety when really they don't, they use it like it's some new age buzz word people throw about.

You could feel the whole audience relate to that and sort of nod in agreement. Everyone does feel that kind of Anxiety, it's a normal human emotion and you can harness that emotion. You often here about sports people feeling nauseous before a big game and how those butterflies can fuel them.

But then he paused and said… that’s not really anxiety...... The audience fell silent

He started talking about the nervous system being stuck in fight or flight. About how it takes over your body. How it grips you.

And you could feel the shift in the room. He definetely got my attention. I thought to myself this might actually be somoene who get's it.... and I waited to hear what he had to say next

A Room Full of People… and Silence

I was still in a wave of Anxiety when he asked the audience to clap if they had experienced the kind of debilitating anxiety he was describing.

Out of thousands of people… there were only a few small claps around the arena. .Maybe 20 or 30 people in total. It was a surreal moment that felt like a muted murmer.

The rest of the arena was silent. It was one of the most profound moments I’ve had in a long time. As I clapped in agreement it felt like a spotlight was on me and time stood still.

The last 2 years came flooding back through me and it hit me just how few people actually understand what this is like to live with. Before going through it myself, I was like the rest of the audience.....

From the outside, people think anxiety is nerves. Worry. Stress.

They don’t see the full reality. the silent struggles behind closed doors. the inability to do things for yourself, the life that gets stripped away from you, your once strong personalilty become like a mouse.

The Part People Don’t Understand

The camera panned to someone in the audience who said they’d experienced it.

The comedian asked them what triggers it. You could sense the crowd expecting him to say something like being in a social situation or driving or somethig that can make you feel nervous.

But the guy just said… "nothing, nothing triggers it!"

And that right there is the part people don’t understand and the misconception around Anxiety.

You don’t have to be doing something scary or out of your comfort zone. It's not normal nerves you feel.

You can be sitting at home, on your sofa, and suddenly your body reacts like you’re in danger.

Heart racing.
Body shaking.
Struggling to breathe.

No reason. No warning. Just your nervous system firing off.

And that’s what makes it so hard.

You feel broken, you can't understand why you feel like this or why your body react this way. It really is dehabilitating.

Yesterday I was also feeling a little under the weather and it was apparent to me how different the sennsations are when you feel sick or a little low compared to how they feel to Anxiety. It's hard to explain.

Realising How Far I’ve Come

Standing there, watching that moment, I started reflecting.

This time last year, I couldn’t leave my house.I couldn’t walk 50 metres down the road without my body going into fight or flight. If I got in the car we'd have to stop every few miles just for me to calm down.

Every time I stepped outside, it felt like something was wrong.

And yet… here I was.

In a crowd of 20,000 people again, having travelled in the car for a couple of hours.

Facing it. Living life with it.

Still feeling it, I was literally coming out of an anxiety attack while he was talking about anxiety, but I was there. My mind wasn't in a complete Daze struck by total fear. Yes I was still feeling anxious but maybe at a level of 20 rather than a 100.

Why I’m Writing This

That moment made something click for me.

I still have Anxiety, but I have helped heal my nervous system enough to start living again. It's not as dehabilitating as it once was. It's still frustrating and I still have bad days but I have better day's.I have day's where I can feel almost normal again. My life still feels restricted but not as restricted as it once was.

And that reminded me why I need to keep talking about this. Because there are people still at home right now, feeling exactly how I felt. That there life is over, that they are stuck with this forever. They dont know how to carry on.

But I want you to know, If that’s you reading this… I was there.

I’m not fully through it yet. But I’m further than I was.

And that means you can be too.

The Only Way Out Is Through

I'm not going to tell you it's easy or there is a simple way to overcome it, because there isn't. It's hard and it hurts. There is a lot of tears and breakdowns and moments when you question everything.

But if you can find it within yourself to face it head on, to not run from it. To commit to living life again, in spite of how you know it can make you feel, you can start to reclaim your life. You can start to feel normal again and not feel broken all the time.

By facing it head on and going through it, you retrain your nervous system that it is safe.

Yesterday when I started to get the wave of panic, it could of been easy for me to leave, to go home, or not go at all. But by going through it, my body starts to calm down again, it starts to regulate quicker and I come back to myself much faster and you can too.

So embrace it and rememebr the only way out is through.