Tag Archives: emotional health

This year feels different

I opened the door gently to January 2023 and found my brain kept wanting to think ahead. I can’t tell you how different – different in a good way – that feels. There have been so many years where January has rolled round, I’ve read and discarded all the ‘New year, new you’ articles, forced myself to grind through the gears and splutter into action.

This year feels different. I know we’re only ten days in, but I’m taking each and every tiny, individual step right now and seeing it as exactly that. Something positive with no strings attached. For too long I’ve attached a huge importance and meaning to lots and lots of things. Holding on for dear life. But my grip is loosening and I’m cradling life, holding it lightly.

This is new to me, and I’m loving it.

I think I’m able to look forward because I’m learning how to look back. I mean properly look back, not just rehash what went before but look back so that I can move freely, in whichever direction I want to. I was so bored and fed up with forever trying to move forward only for the bungee cord to snap me back and leave me swaying in the wind, not knowing (again) which way was up.

I wonder if there comes a point where holding onto the past is easier than trying to work out how to live in a new future?

I wrote about asking for help when self-care isn’t enough back in October and the counselling sessions I’ve had since then have made a huge difference to how I view myself and my life. My past and my future lives.

I guess in that room on a Monday amongst the tears shed, words shared and the momentary silences I’ve begun to understand what emotions are. And what they aren’t.

I’ve been walking around thinking that sadness, dread and anxiousness were my permanent state whereas happiness and joy were no more than fleeting friends. That I was sad, that I’d never be happy, rather than recognising that none of these feelings are permanent. They’re all fleeting friends – some more welcome than others.

I feel gentler waves of grief these days and recognise for the most part when it’s coming towards me. There’s a niggle in my stomach, an uneasy feeling I can’t quite put my finger on. If in doubt, I go for a walk, I play music. I read and sit with it or go and make a cup of tea while I work out if it’s staying a while or just passing through.

But more importantly, I’ve learned to feel and relish the moments of joy and happiness. I understand that they too will move through me, but I’ve learned to enjoy their company and the door is open for them to come back anytime they want.

The second big shift is how I manage my boundaries. Scrub that. To have boundaries full stop. I see that it’s freeing. That being able to say no clearly, confidently and without guilt is the opposite of what I had resisted for so long. I’d been wary of having clear lines for fear of upsetting…upsetting who? I’d been contorting myself to try and fit into a world that wasn’t shaped for me. I now see that I need to create a life that’s designed just for me, truly live in it and have clear, sharp lines outlining it.

‘You need to learn how to start saying no the things you do want to do, with the recognition that you only one life, and you don’t have time and energy for everything.’ Elizabeth Gilbert

I think the difference this year is that I feel grounded and I feel free. I don’t feel as weighed down by life. Less battered and bruised. I’ll always be a work in progress but I’m finally beginning to feel like me. And I quite like me.

And so, on this, is our sixth damp January living in Ilkley I wish you and yours a 2023 that you too can hold lightly in your hands.

A month of settling

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November was a month of settling into the dark afternoons and dark mornings. Settling into coats, hats and scarves. Settling into the rhythm of talking to a counsellor once a week

It’s been a month of letting thoughts and ideas gently drift and settle somewhere in and around me. Every Monday for the past seven weeks I’ve sat down with a counsellor and over the course of an hour we’ve talked. I’ve talked, she’s listened. She’s talked and I’ve listened. I can’t say that I look forward to the sessions exactly, but they’re part and parcel of my Monday now. I do feel better, clearer as I put my coat back on and walk home through town, and I know I’m feeling the benefit.

I can’t be too specific about what that benefit is yet because the conversations are leading me to rethink and reframe how I view myself and my life experiences. It feels a little like throwing the Christmas tree lights into the air and naively hoping they’ll land perfectly unravelled, but the reality instead is that you have to still unpick, unwind and unkink them, and even then, they probably won’t lie just the way you want.

But let’s just say that there are some recurring themes. Take my leaky boundaries (actually, don’t take them, come and help me fill them in) and what prompts me to self-sabotage them. The way I squish and squash myself into ever smaller corners, making my needs subservient to other peoples, leaving me feeling cross and resentful mostly with myself, because I feel invisible and unseen – again.

How ‘and this too shall pass’ has taken on greater meaning as I explore my relationship with my emotions, learning that they are temporary. That they don’t define me. That the sad, angry and cross emotions, can be just as fleeting as the happy, joyous and carefree. Understanding that I don’t need to absorb other people’s emotions and add them to mine.

Despite, in spite of all this confusion of thoughts and feelings, I can feel the glimmers of hope and light. I can feel something small but significant, buried deep within me shift.

I feel better able to navigate day to day challenges. And crucially, I’m beginning to recognise some of my more unhelpful responses and reactions, and even working out how to reverse out of some of them, some of the time.

I’m mindful of my counsellor’s early observation that I seem to be ‘holding’ a lot of things. I guess I feel like I’m holding fewer things.

It would be far too easy to write November off, viewing it through the fog lights we’ve got used to turning on, at least in this small corner of Yorkshire. Trying desperately to illuminate our way through, but never quite being able to see clearly or with any real confidence or conviction.

It has been tough in places but the Vitamin D prescription has helped, and so did the GP gently reminding me that just because I have a history with cancer and chronic fatigue, it doesn’t automatically follow that they are to blame when I feel rough or out of sorts.

Sometimes there’s a more straightforward answer – like a Vitamin D prescription, but sometimes it is a sign that I need to address long-term underlying issues I’ve been conveniently ignoring for too long.

Asking for help when you’re a coper

A full body MOT: mind, body and heart

She was superb. She listened, asked me questions and at the end suggested a bit of a body/mind MOT, starting with blood tests. She mentioned anti-depressants too, but emphasised that she wasn’t making any hard and fast decisions, but wanted to see what I thought. I’m not against the idea. I’ve taken Citalopram twice before, first back in 2009 around six months after Saskia was born, and again a few years later after I was diagnosed with ME/chronic fatigue.

I also had six CBT sessions back then, but didn’t find them particularly useful at the time, and I didn’t try again. I did have grief counselling after mum, dad and grandma died, regularly saw a friend for holistic therapy and had a few sessions with a counsellor at Maggie’s when cancer treatment finished. But I’ve never had long term, consistent talking therapy. And there’s stuff from my childhood alone that would scream, ‘you should talk to someone Harriet’.

The GP was clear about not jumping to any conclusions about any of it. We agreed that it would be too easy to assume that the chronic fatigue was back, or to blame menopause and tamoxifen for the physical stuff, and it was reassuring that she’s very much looking at my physical, emotional and mental health. I told her that I’d emailed a counsellor just before coming down to the surgery.

When self-care isn’t enough

I guess I have to face the fact that there comes a point where self-care just doesn’t cut it. But the difficulty is that I identify as a coper, it runs deep through my core. I hate the thought that I can’t, might not be able to cope because it’s not who I am, is it?

I remember mum saying that if I told her that I wasn’t feeling well when I was a child, she knew to listen, because normally I just trudged on, kept on going, coping. But as my sister pointed out in one of our WhatsApp exchanges yesterday, ‘there’s no need to put up with feeling low, no medals in that, as we know’. It’s just that it’s so much easier to nod along with the articles, podcasts, interviews and conversations about other people asking for help. Yes, absolutely, ask for help, don’t struggle on. Find someone to talk to.

But when it’s you, you’re the one finding life hard and can’t find the words to explain why, why the tears keep coming it’s different. I know I haven’t imagined the headaches, sore throats and viral symptoms, but it’s clear there’s something else going on too.

I know I’m not a failure, but that doesn’t stop me from feeling like one

I know I shouldn’t, but I feel like I’ve failed. It would be so much easier to blame a cold or virus rather than feel like all that work I’ve put in over the years to look after myself physically, mentally and emotionally isn’t enough. All those dog walks, Pilates and HiT classes, those morning pages and books I’ve read, podcasts I’ve listened to. That despite all that trying, just like those school reports I found in the garage a few months ago that said, ‘Harriet just needs to work harder.’ ‘Harriet needs to speak up and ask for help.’ ‘Harriet really needs to knuckle down now.’ It’s never quite enough.

The thing is, back then I was trying. Trying as hard as I could to keep going, working furiously beneath the surface while it was chaos at home. Living with an alcoholic father, a mother trying to survive, keep a roof over our heads, and food in the cupboards was not easy. I didn’t know how to ask for help back then and figured I’d just say quiet, keep turning up and hope things would come good. And seemingly no one at school twigged that maybe I needed something other than ‘try harder’ in my report either.

Trying hard and holding on

It’s not that surprising that the weight of the past few years will become too much at times, and that the events of decades earlier will crop up too. As the counsellor I’m seeing on Monday said in her email, ‘It sounds like you have been going through and also “holding” a lot of things’ and that was just on the back of a few sentences.

She was right about holding on.

Right here, this evening sat on the sofa watching the Lionesses play USA at Wembley I feel ok. But yesterday I didn’t, and I know that there’s a chance I won’t do tomorrow, and that’s why I’m taking a deep breath and asking for help. But I will keep on walking, and moving because heading out for a head clearer on the moor is never a bad idea.