Be true to who you are...

Lately I have been thinking about what it means for someone to be your ‘friend’. How do you decide which people in your life are friends and who are well, just other people?

From our first day at primary school we are brought up to believe that those we call friends will be there every day for the rest of your life. When you are at school you are lucky enough to see your friends every single day and feel like they are the only people you will ever spend any time with. The majority of people then go to high school with the same group of friends and then your group of friends make friends with another group of friends and you are now a big group of inseparable people who actually believe you will never find friends better than yours. You turn 13 and boys come into the equation but you still believe that your little clique will be forever and you will even have boyfriends who are best friends and you will all be in that same little group until you are old and wrinkly.

Supposedly, your friends are people you share a lot in common with but looking back and thinking about how I feel and think today, those people who I really thought were my best friends actually are not really like me at all. I am not sure whether I just think in this way from my own experience and it has taken until I am 22 years old to realise. Back in sixth form I soon started to realise I was a bit different, I wanted to show who I was in different ways than the rest of the group, I cut my hair off short, I wore different clothes and had a boyfriend  outside of the friendship group. Sometimes I felt like I had made the wrong decisions and I was a bad person for being who I wanted to be and doing things I wanted to do. And honestly it has taken until very recently for me to realise I am much better off and a happier person for making those decisions. For a long time I have blamed myself and thought I was weird/not normal because I wasn’t the same as the rest of the group.

Going to university was a massive step for me, I thought I wouldn’t be able to make friends because I felt like I didn’t fit into my own friendship group ,who I had spent the past 7 years with, so why would new people like me. But I soon realised that everyone in my class were in the same boat. We were all in the class as individuals each of us feeling exactly the same and it was the first time in ages I didn’t feel like I had to pretend, I could be myself and start fresh because these people didn’t know anything about me before that day. I soon made friends who were all completely different and had their own personalities and identities but actually felt like friends. These people who were strangers only a few months before were all there for me and genuinely cared when something was wrong.

The same year I started working in a hotel as a waitress and that summer after my first year of university was spent doing five weddings a week and twelve hour shifts. Me and the other girls working there soon realised that we needed to become very good friends otherwise we would have had some terribly long days/nights. It didn’t take long for us all to click and we became like each other’s agony aunts and again this is how I recognised what it feels like to have proper friends. I had the best and worst times during those two years working in that hotel; we laughed a lot and cried a lot but I wouldn’t have been able to do any of it without those five other girls. And all the time I didn’t have to be anyone else except myself.

Now, after graduating from university and leaving my job at the hotel over a year ago, I don’t see all those people very often but I still know that they are all a text or a phone call away.  I personally don’t believe in having one or two best friends because like I have, we all go through different stages of our lives and different people will be there to help at different times. I don’t think it is fair to classify one person as being the ‘BEST’ friend because all the people I have met over the past four years have equally been a best friend to me at some point regardless of  how long I have known them or how many times I have seen them.

The length of time you have known really does not make any difference to how good a friend a certain person can be or has been. After going through the worst bout of my anxiety last year, a person who I had known no more than three months was one of the only people I felt like I could talk to. 

Meeting people in different places and seeing everyone as individuals it doesn’t make sense for me to say one person/ or group of people are my best friend, because everyone is good at helping you with all different parts of your life.

What really made me think to write this post was after completing three days of training to become a volunteer for a charity with a very worthy cause. Walking into a room full of strangers is always a bit scary but my nerves soon went away when I was greeted with the most down to earth lovely people and within an hour of being there I felt like I had known them for years. No one was left out and everyone was made to feel part of the group. It made me feel like volunteering for this charity was even more valuable than I had originally thought and my passion for going into this area of work was even stronger. At the end of the training we were all asked to write a nice comment about everyone who was there and fold it over and then pass it on round the table until each person had written about everyone else. I didn’t read mine until I came home and it was hard for me to read because I find it very difficult to accept compliments. But I was actually overwhelmed at how kind these people had been who I had only met for the first time three days before. How could these people think the things I wished my friends thought about me back when I was at school. It really has made me think differently, and realise that being myself is not a bad thing and that there will always be people who don’t like you but why should that stop you from being the person you want to be and feel happy being.

Everyone in my family and my boyfriend has always said ‘just be you and believe in yourself’ so it might have taken a while for me to actually listen…. But that is what I am going to try and do. Don’t waste your time caring what other people think of you and believing you have to act a certain way to be accepted.

‘The people who mind do not matter, and the people who matter do not mind’.

                                                           

I Love ♥ #1

Remember on Bebo when everyone used to list all the things they loved? Well, I can still get onto my Bebo account and I saved the list of things I had put.  I thought I would do an updated version but just focusing on the things I am loving at this moment in time. I will probably write one of these every couple of weeks or so.

Well with the weather today I can't not say, the sunshine, it is nearly spring time :),
Meeting the nicest people in the randomest places,
Family dinners (we are having one today and I think Auntie Jane is making her famous coleslaw, I hope so!), Finding new bands and songs to listen to I really like HAIM atm,
Pastel colors,
Fresh flowers I wish I had my own place so I could have my own fresh flowers,
Yoga it is really is amazing mentally & physically,
Starting circuit training again,
Freddie's smile face in the morning when I come downstairs,
Freddie and Peggy's love for each other,
Mini Eggs they taste and smell amazing,
Fresh bedding,
Betty Padget she is so beautiful,
I keep looking at home stuff and there are some really nice things at the mo, another reason why I wish I had my own place,
Realising that I can actually cook, I made Paella last night!
Skyping Tommy when I don't see him for agggeeees!

So, there is a list of a few random things I am loving/liking lately, a short but sweet post for a Sunday. Also these kind of lists help you when you are feeling grumpy or fed up and you can look back and realise not everything is poop! :)

A thought for Thursday #2...

I have had a little 'wobble' myself this week, someone posted this on Facebook and its just what I needed. Happy Thursday everyone :) 

It is time to talk…

After reading numerous blogs, (Zoella, Briar Rose & Being Little) recently surrounding similar kinds of issues and hearing about the amazing work of the charity, Timeto Change and their hope to get everyone talking openly about mental health through their recent campaign Time to Talk, I suddenly found the inspiration to write something about it myself. As well as it being an issue which has affected me personally and others who are very close to me, I wanted to try and start my own conversation about mental health, and I feel if everyone does start talking about it more openly, it is already a step in the right direction.

About a year and a half ago when I started to feel strange, I didn’t even know what was wrong myself, never mind anyone else being able to guess. It was difficult to explain how I actually did feel I just knew it wasn’t right. I then read a blog post and watched a YouTube video about a girl a similar age to me had made who suffered from anxiety and panic attacks and was sharing her own personal experience about it. I  realised that sounded exactly like I felt myself. I have always been a worrier and every single person who knows me could tell you that themselves in some shape or form. So I knew I worried a lot, but sometimes I would even sit and think, why do I feel so anxious about things which aren’t a big deal and seem so small to other people when I say them out loud? 

 Shortly after an incident which took place in my old job in 2012, I started to have extreme bouts of anxiety and felt awful. After watching the video on YouTube I mentioned earlier, and reading up about panic attacks, I decided to pay a visit to the doctors. I described how I felt and he said that it sounded like I was having panic attacks and he gave me some further information and advice about anxiety and panic attacks and ways to try and keep calm  etc. After a couple of months trying to explain how I felt to other people, family and my boyfriend it actually made me feel a tiny bit better to speak to someone who actually knew what I was talking about and didn’t make me feel like I was going stir crazy. It is extremely difficult when the people you are closest to can’t seem to understand how you feel and you slowly start to feel like giving up.

It was shocking how quickly I started to become truly scared of doing normal everyday things like catching trains, going to University, going to Meadowhall, going to the cinema, going out for tea, basically everything, because I was genuinely petrified of having a panic attack. I am very close to my mum and sister and I felt guilty that they had to see someone they care about acting like a completely different person.

On top of this suddenly increased anxiety I was suffering from a phobia of sick which I have had for as long as I can remember. This lead to me not wanting to drink alcohol, being afraid to be around drunk people. I avoided going to night clubs as they were completely not my thing because I would be terrified if I saw someone being sick. So I was stuck in a vicious circle, my bad panic attacks and anxiety made my phobia 100 times worse because anxiety makes you feel sick and sick made me feel anxious. Very few people actually know about this phobia. It is extremely difficult for me even to write this down never mind say it out loud. Due to how I have felt sometimes, I have probably come across as being an unsociable 'weird' person. I had tried my best to forget about it so many times and tell myself it wasn’t so bad but because of the pure fear I felt it started to become easier just to not bother going out at all. Around the time where everyone starts going to town and going to university the one thing on my mind was what will I do, because I don’t drink. In fact it was the first thing I mentioned to one of my flat mates the first time I met them in University halls, ‘Hi I am Katie, I don’t drink’.

After a while, it got to the point of me saying ‘no’ every time I was asked to go out which resulted into me no longer being invited to things. This really upset me, and I began to really, really hate myself, it seemed like I didn’t want to spend time with people and I felt like they wouldn’t want to spend time with me, who would want the burden of me having a panic attack whilst being out anywhere.

People don’t seem to realise that every single time someone has a panic attack it makes another dent in their self-esteem. Unless you have experienced anxiety or panic attacks yourself it is very difficult not to judge people and not think those people are weird who do (I am even guilty of doing this myself).

One thing which I personally found difficult is that people really don’t understand and because sometimes you can come across as just being ‘normal’ (whatever normal is) a lot of the time, that when you do have a panic attack, or feel anxious, you are making it up. Some of my family and boyfriend especially would say ‘how can you be fine one minute and not the next ’, but think about how confusing and frustrating it is for the person suffering from them, one minute they do feel fine and the next they are completely terrified of the tiniest little thing.

Anyway, after suffering on and off for about a year, I started to think it was something I just had to live with and this is how I would feel for the rest of my life. I was taking every method of calming tablet from boots I had every ‘calming’ essential oil to sprinkle on my pillow at night.

Then I had my worst spell of anxiety in October 2013 when I felt like I was no longer in control of myself, my thoughts were just all over the place, I honestly thought I was actually going insane. After hearing and reading about mental illness being something you have to live with and it being a part of you forever, I just felt hopeless. I thought there is no way I can ever stop feeling this bad. I went back to the doctors and told him again and he said he thought I would benefit from seeing a therapist. Straight away I was thinking negatively, ‘I am insane, I need therapy, only crazy people have therapy, omg I don’t want to tell anyone, I am officially a freak of nature’

 I felt very cynical about the whole ‘therapy’ thing, I felt that bad ,I didn’t see how anyone could possibly fix the problem, it wasn’t anything physical which people could see so how could she get inside my brain and stop me feeling the way I did. Going to the first session I was extremely nervous, I had to tell a stranger things about myself which barely anyone in my family or anyone else knew about. It soon became clear that she knew exactly how I felt and straight away she made me feel very comfortable. I wanted to be reassured more than anything that I wasn’t crazy and kept asking her if I was ‘normal’ and I just remember her saying ‘what even is normal anyway, who decides what the definition of normal actually is’. I immediately felt better than I did two weeks before and I had actually had faith that this lady who I didn’t even know, could help me. 

Apart from all the different techniques she gave me to use to help deal with my anxiety and panic attacks, one thing I have taken away from it was her empathetic attitude to the whole thing. She said that there are a lot more people with mental illnesses than everyone thinks and people you know personally could be suffering every single day.

It made me think that if this is the case than why aren’t people aloud to speak about it openly, why people are thought to be strange and weird if they suffer from a mental illness. If someone has a broken leg, everyone can see that it is broken because they have a pot on it to help it get better, and people help the person with the broken leg by offering to do things which they can’t do whilst their leg is broken. So what is so wrong with someone’s brain being a little broken from time to time and it needing fixing?

Why should I and any other person who has suffered or are suffering, from any sort of mental illness not be able to talk about it openly?  I feel more needs to be done to raise the awareness of mental illness and more people should be encouraged to understand about it for a time when they or others may need help.

I am by no means completely cured; it is something which I will have to deal with for the rest of my life. Admittedly, the hardest thing to do was to try and explain myself to my family and friends. My auntie was the first person who gave me the encouragement to start telling people and reassured me I wasn’t the only one who felt this way.  Talking openly about it has now allowed me to get the help I need, and knowing that there will always be someone there is helpful in itself.

So, anyone who does suffer, you need to remember you are not alone, 1 in 4 people have from some kind of mental illness each year, it does honestly get better I promise, and if nothing helps but this, there is no such thing as normal.

Please feel free to email me about anything I have mentioned in this blog post or if you ever need someone to talk to - kvbrooksbank.18@gmail.com

25 Random Facts...

Since I never introduced myself on my previous post, I thought it was only polite to write a slightly less formal post and give you 25 random facts about myself.  

1) My middle name is Victoria

2) I am 5 ft 3

3) I hate mushrooms

4) I am obsessed with the weather, if you want to know the forecast just ask me!

5) The weather can instantly affect my mood 

6) I don't like strawberries, never have, never will, I have tried many a time. 

7) I don't really drink alcohol, I can drink pop and still dance like an idiot, so I don't see the point sometimes. 

8) I am like an 80 year old in a 22 year old body, I drink too much tea & I watch strictly.

9) I can easily chat to and make friends with old people, hence the above. 

10) I always seem to get strangers talking to me on public transport .

11) I have quite a rude and immature sense of humour ( Blame my mum, if you know her, you will 

understand). 

12) I am terrible at maths, I can't even add up anything without using a calculator.

 13) Fluff makes me cringe, if it touches me then omg... blergh. 

14) I am rubbish at accepting compliments.

15) I am awful at taking selfies. 

16) I was born six weeks early.

 17) I am genuinely scared of men dressed as women.

18) My lucky number is 18.

19) I have double jointed shoulders.

20) I have never been outside of Europe.

22) I have only been a guest at one wedding in my life, which was my auntie's and uncle's last year. 

23) I love mini versions of things, shower gel, shampoo, cheese grater. Anything really.

(mini pig, mini table & mini umbrella, mini ice cream, omg!)

24) I haven't learnt to drive yet, I've not even had one lesson.

25) My fave animal is a giraffe. 

And in time, this too shall pass...

Now after being ‘diagnosed’ with some kind of mental health issue, be it anxiety, panic attacks, depression or perhaps you are just a negative or shy person once there has been a label given to you it can suddenly feel like people expect you to wake up and it have disappeared overnight. It isn’t something you can cure, but there are ways which you can help yourself feel better.

You start to get into a routine in which your mind has controlled which makes doing anything outside of your comfort zone seem terrifying. So many times I have stuck to doing things and being in situations which don’t scare me. In the past as soon as I have taken a foot outside my comfort zone I have felt anxious. This has led to me being scared of doing and going to simple everyday things. If you are reading this and suffer from any of those issues mentioned above you will understand that just the thought of doing those things genuinely scares you. You wish you could and want more than anything to be able to say yes to an invitation or just simply go to that place which terrifies you.

I have spent the last few years in the same mind set. But it recently got progressively worse to the point of me refusing to go to see James Bond at the cinema with my boyfriend and instead him having to take my little sister because I was too ‘scared to go. At the time it felt like the only option was to run away from it all and say no instead of facing the situation. It is easy for people to say ‘lifes too short’ or ‘don’t worry, you’ll be fine’ but once your brain has gone down that path it seems like there is no way out.

Getting to how I feel now hasn’t been easy. It has taken quite a long time for me to change my thought patterns and it is very difficult to force your brain to think differently after it has believed certain things for the length of time that it has.

Only recently, after getting some help and being in more control of my anxiety I have been thinking I never want to have the feeling of regretting not doing something or never enjoying every day things because I was too scared to do them. The lady who I saw for the therapy sessions taught me how to put things into perspective. Using this technique every day has already made a massive difference to my life. If I start to feel a little bit anxious about something or a situation I remember her saying to me put it into perspective. Now instead of avoiding a situation to prevent myself from feeling anxious or having a panic attack, I try and tell myself it will be OK if I do feel anxious or panicky but nothing too serious will happen. It feels better to be able to say you tried to do something which made you feel anxious instead of wondering what might have happened if you hadn’t gone or done it in the first place.

Another very important thing is to start taking control of your problem rather than it be in control of you. It is more than likely that it is something which you have to live with and therefore accepting that fact is a massive step. For a while after being told that I had some kind of anxiety disorder I found it hard to accept that some days I felt fine and only the next day I felt completely awful. I decided to start calling my bad days ‘wobble’ days because then I know that’s all they are and I know I can feel better again. You should never ever be discouraged by a ‘wobble day’ and they are only as severe as you let them be. I have read a very good book which I would recommend to absolutely everyone. One thing I use to encourage myself on a ‘wobble day’ is that there is no such thing as no point of return. Once you understand where those awful feelings have come from you can  move forward.   For people to say ‘There is always tomorrow’ it can make you angry when you have suffered from anxiety for a long time. When you are in that specific mind frame you think you will feel awful forever never mind tomorrow. My auntie has always said this to me and it is a very helpful thing to say to yourself to see things in a more positive way. Remember that if you have a bit of a ‘wobble’ you can use tomorrow as a fresh start and no matter what happens you always have that opportunity to forget about yesterday.

Anxiety and panic attacks are really really horrible but it is important to never look back on the times when you have felt at your worst and never compare yourself other people. You must try and use your new ways of thinking to your best advantage. Why should you miss out on all the little things in life which you haven’t been noticing because you feel afraid.

For me it wasn’t about completely changing as a person and all of a sudden becoming some kind of adrenaline junky. It was important for me just to enjoy the everyday situations which I hadn’t felt comfortable in for a while. Going on public transport without feeling anxious has been a massive step for me because I had started to actually feel scared of catching trains. Going to the cinema and out for tea without feeling anxious was another thing which I felt very proud of myself for doing last month. Now, they may seem like insignificant things to other people but they were things that I was afraid of. 

So, no matter how big or small your fears are once you start to face them you feel so much more confident and feel happier in yourself. Once you feel like you can do those little things without your anxiety creeping up on you it gives you a boost to do more things, perhaps things which you wouldn’t have even dreamt about doing before. One night last month was the first time in a verrrry long time that I went to an actual pub surrounded by drunk people and even had a couple of drinks myself without feeling an ounce of anxiety and afterwards I felt so happy with myself that I could actually do it.

You should take this part of your anxiety or any other kind of issue at your own pace and take each step as quickly or as slowly as you feel comfortable with. This time it isn’t about people telling you what to do it is about you being in control of your own personal situation. You only have one life, but it is yours so don’t let anyone or anything take over the control which you have. 

Monthly Goals - March

Get fit 

I really want to get fit and healthy again. I am hoping to run a 10KM race in June and would love to be able to complete it in under and an hour. I have started back at circuit training again, I have actually missed the sweating and the aching, I feel so much better for doing it. 

Drink more water

This will be a continuous goal for me as I don't drink nowhere near enough water. I am really crappy with drinking anything except tea and always wait until I am thirsty which is very very bad. 

Stay Positive 

Being a natural born worrier this can sometimes be a struggle for me. I have got better at thinking more positively recently. I need to keep it up and not let my pessimistic mind take over. I am going to take time to not 'sweat the small stuff' and when I notice myself feeling anxious or worried take a step back and try and take a look at the bigger picture. After going to see my therapist lady, she got me into the habit of writing down or making notes every time something made me panic or feel anxious, this helps me see that the things I am worrying about probably aren't as big a deal as they seem in my mind, when I see them in black and white.

Eat Breakfast

Again, this is another thing I am really bad at. I rarely actually have a proper breakfast ever. I often don't feel hungry when I first wake up and can sometimes even skip it all together, or only drink a cup of tea. My boyfriend eats breakfast everyday and after spending a few days with him and him making sure I ate something made me realise how much better you feel if start the day with something. Even at first if you don't really feel like you could eat anything. It gives you more energy, you don't get the sickly gripey feeling which encourages you to grab something quick and sugary and it keeps you feeling full till at least 12 o'clockish. 

Keep up with this blog

I have read other people's blogs for quite a while now and always wanted to write one myself. But I thought I wasn't creative or cool enough to do it. I am so happy and grateful for the response I have had so far. The range of different people who have sent me messages or shared my blog posts have been amazing. I am so glad to be helping people and making a difference however small it may be. 

Accept myself for being me

This is something we can all be guilty of and people often don't see the amazing things in themselves which other people do. I am going to try and start accepting myself with my flaws and all. I have always been my own worst enemy and give myself a hard time when something goes wrong. I am particularly bad when I have wobble with my anxiety, and see myself as a failure. Accepting that anxiety is a part of me has been a big chunk of moving forward for me. Everyone has bad days and deals with them in different ways. From now on I am going to try and accept my wobbles and I know that have and can feel better again.

My sis pointed this picture out to me the other day from my Auntie and Uncles wedding last year. (Nearly a whole year ago actually)  It reminds me of how perfect the day was and how excited we all were to be bridesmaids. I feel lucky to be so close to my cousins and sister, we have had times when we haven't seen as much of each other but nothing ever changes when we do. Not many people make me laugh like these three do.