Therapy in my Underwear

My counsellor lives 200 miles away from me and we've never properly met each other. Sounds odd? We haven't met in person but we've had near weekly calls since April, making this the most successful period of counselling I've ever had: my previous record was 5 sessions with a counsellor. I struggled to find the right fit with a counsellor much like the struggle to get the perfect skinny jeans: slim in the legs without going baggy over the knees or suffocating my hips. I've had counsellors that have made a good first impression only to end up being disappointing, didn't fit well for long, appalling quality (I'm really stretching the jeans analogy) and over-all a waste of my money.


Over the years I've seen counsellors at college, I visited university talking therapists, I attempted to use a phone service recommended by my doctor when I was at uni (it was appalling) and I've seen some private counsellors too. I took breaks in between because I was left feeling deflated and even more helpless than when I started. After one last attempt at NHS counselling, I decided to search for someone who would hopefully be a good fit for me. But my choices were limited by my location and at the time I was also restricted because I couldn't drive due to severe anxiety.


I decided to widen my scope and look into Skype counselling. If you check out the online counselling directory here you'll see that you can search by location but you can also specify qualities of the counsellor that would be ideal for you such as gender, age and for my search I selected to see those who offered Skype sessions. I found someone whose website really impressed me and fortunately they were just as impressive.

If you live outside the UK an alternative service available is Modern Therapy. They are based in the USA offering counselling services in person and online depending upon your preferences and location. They even offer a free consultation to new clients to help assess what you are looking for from therapy and to assign a counsellor who could be a good fit for you. I really admire the service they are offering. As much as we'd all like to be able to receive free counselling, we often can't stand the wait on the never ending lists. Modern Therapy offer a quality service without charging beyond a patients means. Check out their charming back story here.


FYI I've never actually done a session remotely whilst sitting in my underwear (!) but one of the many advantages of Skype counselling is that you totally could do that. I got so tightly wound when I sat in cold, bland counselling rooms with minimal furniture. I never really managed to feel comfortable. Whereas with this I can be fully dressed or in my pyjamas, sans make-up if that's what I need that day, sat on the sofa cuddling a pillow with a glass of water and a cup of tea in front of me. There's also the bonus that I don't have to avoid eye contact; I never knew how long I should hold it for and there was never anything hanging on the walls that I could look at instead. The only shortcoming with this kind of therapy is that sometimes the internet cuts out and the picture freezes but that's easily fixed. Just ensure that you test out where your connection is best in the house before you start having regular sessions so you can avoid any major disruptions.


I know that having counselling privately isn't possible for everyone but if you're able to spend a bit of money on it each week or once a fortnight it can be worth it. I did spend a lot of time on waiting lists for NHS talking therapies but I was in such a bad way: I needed to get some help urgently not in x amount of months time. The convenience of the setup has been transformative for my progress with counselling as I no longer get into an anxious and stressed state over travelling to my appointments or sitting in waiting rooms. I'd highly recommend it if this sounds like something you'd be open to considering and if you can afford to spend the money on treating your mental health.

Failures and Finding The Positives

 I didn't intend on ever posting this photo as I look terrible, but it does clealy show just how unwell I have been of late.

Let me start by saying that I'm currently still processing the events I'm about to describe as for me they have just happened, although this post will probably go out a few weeks later. Way back in February this year I saw a post pop up on Instagram, it was of two lovely beaming ladies announcing their collaboration on their first ever fitness and yoga retreat. I've been a long time follower of the personal trainer, blogger and Youtuber Carly Rowena. I absolutely adore her approach of loving the body you have and learning to make it stronger, she also posts lots of content featuring her beautiful French Bulldog which helps too! I knew little about her friend Cat Meffan at the time but I now have much love and appreciation for her too.

I'd been considering signing up for some sort of a retreat for a while. Mostly because I've been more and more resentful of the body I have in recent years, I want to become physically fitter and stronger and of course lose a bit of weight in the process so I don't exude a sigh every time I catch a glimpse of my body in the mirror. Last year I resolved a major 'problem' with the relationship I had with my body. I had a breast reduction and finally felt some confidence in the way I looked. I felt feminine but not enormously busty and attracting unwanted attention. However, resolving one problem revealed another one, or at least allowed another one to resurface. Body dysmorphia. I've had it in varying degrees since I was a teenager. I used to be a whisp of a thing, although fairly well proportioned for my height and weight. Upon reflection I realised that I was dieting and exercising from a young age, I was obsessive with the amount I exercised at home. I was convinced I was fat, but looking back at those photos I can see how slim I really was, almost too slim. What I was really facing was puberty. We lack the proper information when it comes to learning about how our female forms change. Boobs, hips and bums pop out for most of us to accommodate for future child bearing. All I could see was what trash magazines had labelled as 'saddle bags' for thighs, 'love handles' for hips and a bum that didn't like to fit in the single figure size jeans that my friends claimed they slipped on.

Flash forward to today and I still experience body dysmorphia but in reverse. I look in the mirror and think OK, not great but not fat, right? Not overweight surely. The scales were telling me differently, clothes that fitted last summer were now not an option and I was having to buy size 14 jeans and shorts for the first time ever. Was I just not seeing things that everyone else could see? Were my hips really that wide? Possibly. I know that I need to face these issues in two ways. I need to address my mental and emotional feelings towards my looks and I also need to educate myself on what to eat, how much of it I should have and I need to find forms of exercise that I enjoy rather than dread.

So back in February when I saw that one of these lovely ladies I followed was heading up a fitness retreat, I was on board! I was also on a high dose of anti-depressants back then, feeling OK but still not quite right. In April Carly released her own fitness guide which was perfect! I started exercising three times a week and slowly started feeling the benefits, I felt firmer and had a satisfied albeit exhausted feeling after I exercised. After following the guide for 6 weeks I took my body measurements and weight again...nothing had changed. NOTHING! No inches lost, no pounds dropped and if anything my clothes were tighter than ever. I could have blamed it on the washing machine but I knew something wasn't right. That's when I realised my anti-depressants were causing weight gain.

As the date of the retreat approached (30th September) I was becoming increasingly anxious. I hadn't been exercising as my energy levels were depleted from battling with the withdrawal effects of coming off my anti-depressants slowly. I was still feeling incredibly uncomfortable in my own skin and I was shit scared of what was going to be my first ever solo trip on a plane and abroad. I was going to be surrounded by (hopefully) like-minded ladies that were either wanting to kick start their fitness journey or learn how to improve it, but I was still incredibly anxious about being abroad with a load of people I didn't know for a week. All of this anxiety combined with a terrible head cold left me in a fragile state as I set off.

Making my way through the airport alone wasn't too bad besides a steady trickle of sweat down my back and a fire alarm going off with a false alarm to evacuate right before my gate number was being announced. My anxiety was back in a BIG way. Every move I made, every word I spoke was analysed over and over again even long after they'd transpired. Fortunately I'd told those in charge of the retreat about my situation before I arrived. They were incredibly supportive and friendly towards me. We had a lovely welcome session and dinner but the idle time in between just felt wrong to me. I felt out of place and the whole thing had similarities to my first week of university. A timetable that I looked over and was thinking of ways to approach it or get out of, staying in the biggest room on my own out of the way whilst the other girls were sharing or in close proximity to each other and I was very unwell (just like I was during my freshers week) which isolated me further. I tried, I really tried. I engaged in conversations when I could but I always managed to be positioned in an awkward spot, slightly on the edge or blocked from view when groups spilt off into chatter.

After the first night there I woke up terrified. I'd been waking up in the night and having panic attacks and was due to go for our first workout session at 8:30 am. I struggle with sleeping and early starts as it is never mind getting up to do a HIIT workout that early! I went, I did my best but struggled at the back trying to do advanced moves, sweating bucket loads and feeling my body shaking violently the entire time. Once it was over I joined in the high fives over the first workout and left calmly but as I walked to my room, the closer I got the more I lost control over how I really felt. As soon as I closed my bedroom door behind me I was having a full blown panic attack, the biggest I've had since my first one ever. I felt sick, I was sick. My legs fell out from underneath me, I was sweating, hyperventilating, crying silently and felt my heart hammering against my chest as if it was about to burst out and land on the wooden floor in front of me. 'I shouldn't be here'. Is all I could think, 'I've made a HUGE mistake and I feel stuck'. It lasted half an hour and I then started packing my bags, texting my family and the owner of the place we were staying in, I booked onto a flight back to London for 4pm that afternoon.

I did everything I could, I'd just reached my limit. Before the trip I had managed to supress a certain amount of anxiety but as every unravelled I was shaken up like a Coke bottle and my top had come bursting off as it all bubbled out of me. It was a risk to book onto something like this in the first place and an even bigger one to go ahead as planned despite being in withdrawl from anti-depressants. I am disppointed that I didn't manage to stay but leaving was absolutely the right thing for me. I felt like I couldn't be myself, all the anxiety I felt back in my school days had returned, I could feel my voice being supressed back down into my voice box and my body shrinked a little as my confidence disappeared.

It would be easy to only see the negatives in what happened, but I can see what I did achieve.

The positives:

• getting through airport security alone, something which fills me with dread even when we go on a family holiday
• finding somewhere to sit amongst the huge crowds of people waiting for our gate numbers
• boarding the plane alone, lifting my suitcase up to stow away and flying along...all of which usually fills me with paralysing anxiety when I'm with someone never mind doing it on my own!
• introducing myself to strangers
• joining in the welcome games 
• talking to strangers about what I do, what I'm trying to accomplish (writing a book) and telling them about my anxiety and depression
• eating in front of others, I've had problems with this for years and struggled to do so in front of Robbie when we first started dating
• got up early
• completed a hardcore workout in the morning
• talked to two awesome (and well known) Youtubers one on one 

It might not have gone as I'd hoped it would but I'm still glad that I went and gave it a go. I tried and have no regrets. If I'd never headed to the airport, boarded the plane, met all of those people and done a workout...I would have been wondering 'what if?' that and I would have been stalking their Instrgaram stories and posts for the entire week. Things might not always go as we plan but try not to mark them up as FAILURES entirely. Take a moment and think through what you did do, see the positives in what you did achieve. 

Progress Report

Example of mood tracker using bullet journal system, photo from Pinterest.

As promised at the end of my last post, this week I will be discussing how I track my progress. Around the turn of the new year I was seeing a lot of blog posts and Instagrams about bullet journals. I'm aware that the concept has been around for a while but it seems to have taken off recently. If you search for 'bullet journals' on Pinterest you'll see dozens of beautifully illustrated pages that have been painstakingly planned ahead of time. People go to town on their journals using various pens, fonts, doodles and numbering the pages. Despite being a creative person myself, I couldn't get my head around spending hours on setting up the structure of the journal. I respond best to simple plans with some kind of easy to read visual scheme, which is exactly what I created for myself. I decided to take the general concept of the bullet journal; using a dot paged journal and creating a code to easily decipher progress in various topics.

My main areas that I wanted to track included my mood, quality of sleep and daily activities in terms of fitness. Each page contains a view of the entire year ahead, each square represents a day and is coloured in at the end of day according to how it went, whether I had insomnia and how active I was. Over time I can see patterns emerging such as how my activity levels drop if I've had a period of insomnia or a number of low days in a row. I decided to also created a two page view of each month to show how many steps I was wracking up and summarising what I got up to each day. I have to make a note of what I've been up to as my short term memory is terrible. If I forget to sit down and fill the pages in, I really struggle to think back on what I did a few days ago. For the step count pages I've been writing down the numbers provided by my Fitbit. At the end of each month I total up the steps and compare how well I've done against previous months. So far the total monthly step count has increased each month which is brilliant.

Using this type of journal has been a great way for me to track my progress. It also shows how well I'm doing in terms of meeting my fitness goals. I've always known that I experience a particularly bad period of insomnia each month and this has helped to outline when it happens. I love that I can see so much information from month to month on one page. I also find these tables a great way of keeping track of various chores I need to keep on top of such as when did I last change the bedding or clean the bathroom as well as things like when I last gave the pets their flea treatments or whether it's time I changed my toothbrush! I definitely recommend giving it a go, it isn't too late to set one up either!

  

Uphill Struggle

This time of year is particularly difficult for those with depression. January went by all too quickly as did February. I was willing myself to really kick start my 'health kick' all the while feeling incredibly down, exhausted and hopeless. This desire to feel fit and healthy isn't a new year fad, it is a constant desire to be the best version of myself for me. I'm not doing it for anyone else, I'm not attempting to meet anyone elses standards or views of the 'ideal' body. I just want to like what I see reflected back at me, I don't want to feel the pinch of too skinny jeans, I don't want the constant reminder that I'm slightly unfit as I can't catch my breath as I walk up a steep hill. Long ago I mastered the wrong ways of losing weight. I was thinner, I weighed less but I felt awful.

For the past few weeks I've been walking as much as I can. It's alarming to see how little I moved when I was really depressed. I walked my dog as much as I could, others subbed in for me when I was particularly tearful. Other than that my movements were limited to going back and forth between my bed, the bathroom, the kitchen and occasionally venturing out for a food shop with someone. A weekly trip to Waitrose (any other supermarket works just as well) really racked up the daily step count! Nowadays if my step count is lagging a bit I'll go off to ASDA because it's HUGE and pace up and down every aisle, even the ones I don't need to go along, just to push towards my step count. Most people can achieve the daily recommended 10,000 steps fairly easily if they work in the big city or are generally on their feet for most of the day. For me it is one of the achievements that I need to remember and hold on to when I am feeling useless and worthless. The small goals soon add up and as time goes by you'll forget when you last felt out of breath. Despite my good intentions, depression can still get to me, infiltrate my goals and set me way back along my line of progress.

The photo above depicts one of my greatest achievements last year. Surprisingly not mastering how to ski. I tried, I really put every ounce of effort in that I could muster. That doesn't mean that I will never try again. I hope I will. That trip was almost a disaster for me. I didn't feel like I deserved to be there, I failed at skiing therefor I didn't deserve to eat the lovely food or go out to beautiful places with everyone else. My subconscious was punishing me further when I had already been kicked down. I've recently realised that my subconscious frequently meddles with my thoughts.  Any compliment I receive is immediately squashed in my mind, declarations of love are translated into pity, even my own ambitions of losing weight and exercising more are stomped on by the voice telling me "there's no point, you'll always be chubby". It will take me a long time to reprogramme my subconscious, it has been polluted by anxiety and voices that really did tell me I was useless, fat, undesirable, the second choice and first to lose. I'm doing my best to stay on track by creating motivation boards displaying the things I really want to achieve, words reminding me what I enjoy doing, reminders of what I regret not doing during the days I feel down. I've also drawn up the next few months so I can see when we have social events coming up, my motivation to keep doing something physical each day so I feel comfortable and possibly confident when I have to dress up. I'm not going to let another summer come and go by with me feeling uncomfortable in summer clothing, feeling ashamed as my thighs chafe after being liberated from jeans only to feel super uncomfortable in shorts and dresses. Fingers crossed these thoughts carry me through the bad days. I just completed a 30 day squat challenge, I can't say that I've ever done 1,900 squats before! It felt great and after a rest day I will be progressing to level 2 of the squat challenge and adding a abdominal challenge into the mix too!

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Self Destruction

I was supposed to start this year by going to the Harry Potter Warner Studio tour. We received two gift tickets from my parents last Christmas, as in 2015. Initially our tour was booked in for October as I'd heard that death eaters roam the Diagon Alley set. Unfortunately I got super anxious in the weeks leading up to it. Fortunately the tours can be rebooked up until the evening before in case of sickness etc.

Sometimes I set myself up for setbacks and failure. Whenever we're expecting guests at the house, I either go into hibernation mode with intervals to dash to the kitchen for food in stealth mode OR I throw myself into baking in batch mode, cooking up a storm and generally exhausting myself right up until they're on the doorstep. Neither are ideal. Baking is usually a good coping mechanism for me. However, it's not wise to do so when I do it to the point when I've been on my feet for hours without a break, my body is trembling and I've managed to work through all meals of the day. That right there is setting myself up to fail. Of course I'll be more prone to anxiety and dips in my mood if I haven't eaten, my body is already trembling and I haven't taken a second to breath and prepare myself for a wave of people coming into the house.

When I rebooked the studio tour I set myself up once again. I reschueduled for another early morning Saturday tour. That's red flag number 1. First thing after I wake up, I'm more likely to be convinced that the day ahead will be a diaster and that I am already a failure. Also, Saturdays will be SUPER busy with families that can't go during the week. Combine that with the Halloween season and we have a potential meltdown scenario. I was also going to be driving solo to Watford for the first time so we could stay there the night before to avoid having to get up super early to drive. So that would be a solo drive, a brand new route, Friday evening rush hour traffic and picking up Robbie from a busy train station. Of course all of this produced the same amount of anxiety I felt the first time around. Fortunately we were able to ammend the booking once again. That alone is progress as before I would have eaten the cost of the tickets and purchased new ones just to avoid the high level of anxiety I often feel when I have to make a phone call.


The evening before I was due to post this, I very nearly set myself up for a setback again. Some of you will know that I am a creative person. After burning myself out over the years of art exams I wasn't certain that I'd find that desire to create again. Over the past couple of years I've dabbled with small projects and started creating on my face (!) I've really enjoyed it but there have been times when I will go months between creating anything. Yesterday one of my favourite makeup brands announced the opening of their annual competition, the NYX Face Awards. For years I watched the American competition and hoped that it would happen here too. In the midst of depression I completely missed the first one, nothing was on my radar at that time. Last year I decided to create my entry, I was excited initially but I realised that something wasn't quite right. I wasn't enjoying the process of creating something exciting. It was causing sleepless nights as I attempted to squeeze out some creativity, something original. I ended up working throughout the nights whilst everyone else was soundly asleep. It simply wasn't doing me any good, my health was in decline again as were my spirits as I doubted my skills. I wish that I had been working on developing my skills over the past year, gaining confidence ready for this years competition. Perhaps if I didn't have a mind fogged up by depression I could have figured out when the competition would fall this year. This time last year we were on holiday in Switzerland. I can recall furiously checking and refreshing the Instagram post of my video entry to see how many views and likes I was receiving. Part of me wanted some kind of recognition, a vote of confidence to say that I had some talent worth honing. The other part of me was in sheer bloody panic at the thought of getting through to the first round only to realise I'd exhausted my ideas already. Last night was a restless night as I saw the announcement, submissions for the competition are now being accepted. My mind was a flash of colours and shapes as I closed my eyes ready for sleep. Rest did not come until the early hours of this morning when everyone else was getting up to start their day. I came up with some options for my plan of action. Either I accept this challenge and do my very best BUT risk the progress I've made in the improvements to my lifestyle including exercise, healthy eating at 'normal' times of the day and getting restful nights sleep. OR I watch as others enter, take inspiration from that and attempt to use this year to hone my skills at my pace whilst maintaining the progress in other areas of my life. I think the choice is obvious. The competition will be there next year and perhaps I might be more prepared for it when it does come.

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Challenging Myself

 

The theme of this month has been 'pushing myself'. I had a week more or less alone each day, so I had to be there for Toby (my dog). Now, most dog owners would say 'well yeah, don't we all?' and of course I am but since I've been struggling so much recently I've skimped on the morning walks. Other members of the household enjoy taking him out in the mornings anyway, so in a way I rested on that and became somewhat complacent. I'd go out with him as often as I could in the afternoons, but some days I'd feel horrendous and the last thing I was thinking of was putting my wellies on and going for a long trudge. Alas no more. I will at least walk him once a day, stretch his legs and mine, breathe in some clean fresh air and actually attempt to reach my daily recommended step quota!

I can head off with good intentions, plug one ear into my iPhone and listen to an audio book. That has been my method recently, listening to a good audio book which I reserve only for when I take Toby on a walk. That way I'll get out with him as I should and I'll be jumping at the chance to continue listening to the book. My books of choice are usually something comical or something on depression, quite the contrast eh? Not always, sometimes the two coincide. One minute I can be tearful as I relate to their story so much and the next I can be chuckling at their mishaps as they so often sound like something I too have done. As I said, I go off with good intentions, but that doesn't mean I am calm and collected. Oh no, anxiety is a fickle companion. I can be stumbling along only to hear a rustle, most likely the wind or a squirrel but my mind will say 'someone's following you' my head snaps around to see where the attacker will come from. No one there. My head is still going through the self defence acronym from 'Miss Congeniality' 'SING' Solar-plexus Instep Nose and Groin. Knowing me I'd end up doing it only to apologise frantically as I panic that I might receive a lawsuit despite it being self defence!

Today it wasn't me that was panicking, not me initially anyway. Toby had his defences up as he saw a man that according to him did not belong on the green opposite our driveway. We had to continue walking towards him as that was our walking route. He started barking and howling at him and what appeared to be an industrial hoover that he was dragging to the back of his van. I am incredibly short sighted even with glasses or contact lenses. All I could see was a man in blue work overalls with a prominent thick moustache and a matching thick mop of curly hair. My eyes were seeing a comical Pixar worthy character, not dissimilar to the dad in 'Sunny With a Chance of Meatballs' except his comical bushy eyebrows had migrated to the top of his head. The man chuckled and tutted as we came closer and as I attempted to drag Toby along, he said "don't like me eh? I don't like you much either" I just apologised quickly as I attempted to bribe Toby to walk further along the past at a fast pace. We just about made it a safe distance for him to stop barking, only I stumbled and stepped on one of his paws causing him to squeal and yelp loudly. 'Fantastic', I thought 'now everyone in a close radius thinks that I abuse my dog to stop him barking'. Of course my mind jumped to that assumption. Anxiety you fickle bitch.

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Getting Back to the Good

Good God, I've actually done two posts in a row?! I'm determined to return to doing what I love most, one of those things being writing. As most of you will know writing has become a form of therapy for me. Although I did start seeing a new counsellor at the beginning of 2016, after a few months I decided that I needed a break. I'm fully aware that talking therapies aren't easy, it takes time to heal and talk through (in my case) almost 8 years of damaging thoughts and behaviours. I decided to take a break because the conversations started going in bad places, touching upon subjects and people that I hadn't intended discussing. After most sessions I'd sit in the car for a few minutes and simply feel shit. I felt worse than before I arrived for the appointment. I believe that counselling is very benefical for some people, particularly for those whom have never discussed life changing events in their lives or long term concerns of theirs. After concealing my illness for 5 years I was suddenly talking about everything very openly and then I started writing as a way of helping myself process years worth of thoughts and feelings on bullying, anxiety, depression, self harm and eating disorders. I've had a lot of time to process everything and perhaps my silence over the years caused more damage, but now I'm really dealing with everything and have found a great deal of clarity on matters that were once very confusing.

In the previous post I touched upon how hard the past few months have been for me. I had a HUGE operation which although it has been life changing for the better, it also caused a massive shift in my day-to-day life. Prior to the operation I had been eating healthily, attempting and succeeding to film videos, I was doing a lot of writing for my book and I was exercising 6 days a week. I was preparing my body for what was to come. I've had operations in the past which have left me feeling incredibly weak and as a result were the perfect conditions for depression to manifest in. This time around I wanted to give my body as much strength as possible. I succeeded in that. Of course any operation will knock you for six as your body has been pumped full of anasthetic and drugs. I was fully prepared for how long it would take to heal, I knew that I would experience discomfort as I tried to sleep each night and I certainly wouldn't be able to exercise for a couple of months.

I was, and still am very happy with the results. It's given me a lot more confidence but I know that I still have deep rooted self esteem and body confidence issues. Most of those issues come from being bullied, over-eating as a coping mechanism at that time and subsequently yo-yoing between diets and various eating disorders for years. All of that caused a lot of damage to my body and my mind. The combination of not being able to exercise, coming back from a tropical holiday to the grey skies of England and daylight saving all contributed towards a severe period of depression. The feelings of being useless, worthless and incredibly unattractive all came back. My anxiety reached all-time highs as I found myself hiding behind doors as the house was full of people, I'd be trembling with anxiety and silently crying until everyone left and I quietly whispered through the crack in the door to reveal my whereabouts to Robbie. There has been a massive contrast between those moments and me managing to drive to Southampton or Winchester to visit family and friends. It can be confusing for others to hear that I'm really struggling when they witness times when I seem to be on top form. It's true that some aspects of life have become easier, but those have been replaced by new fears and concerns. My lowest points have become dangerously low as I sink into a deep depression which may only last an hour or so, but those minutes are incredibly damaging to me. I sink into a short, sharp depression in which I could easily make some drastic and permanent decisions only for me to lift out of it an hour later.

After a second consecutive night of sobbing in bed about not being able to live like this, I asked Robbie what he thought I should do. It's usually directed at me, what I think I should do and frankly if I knew...well I'd be sharing that revelation to everyone else like me. We talked it through and determined that there were some things that had been making a difference prior to my operation, that was the last consistently stable period I had. Since then I've been exercising a lot less and my anxiety has been so severe that I've been unable to attend appointments for accupuncture which had been significantly helping my insomnia and mood in general. It took me a long time to realise that accupuncture had such a significant impact for me. There were weeks when I had really bad insomnia after having a good sleeping pattern for a while. It suddenly hit me, I hadn't been for an accupucnture session for over a month due to not being able to afford it. That was the only thing that had changed in my daily life.

So...along with my plans of writing, filming and keeping on top of my household chores, I'm going to be slotting exercise and accupuncture back into my schedule. Ideally I'd like to get back into blogging, perhaps on a fortnightly basis to alleviate some of the pressure I started feeling from weekly blogging. I put a lot of pressure on myself to create 'perfect' content in a limited time frame. Some bloggers manage to post more than once a week and sometimes daily! Unfortunately that's just not realistic for me as I'm attempting to juggle my mental health issues and attempting to find happiness in some of the things I do each day. For now my idea for the blog, 'Cheerful Chelsea 2.0' if you will, is to create updates on how my mood, anxiety levels and self confidence levels have been for two week intervals. I'll also be trying out various work-out plans and making a note of how much I enjoy them, whether they have an affect on my mood and any results I may achieve from them. I'm not becoming a fitness blogger I swear! I just want to help myself and others with mental illness by narrowing down some realistic, affordable and achieveable exercise plans. I know the struggle of watching late night/nocturnal hours of television when hour long product adverts come on teleshopping long after the usual channel has stopped airing. I get sucked in and become transfixed on them and a few days later I have some INSANE workout plan or fitness gizmo which ultimately gathers dust as I pile on weight, have super low energy levels and quietly sob over my desire to change but lack of means to do so. This idea for the blog might not be embraced by many, bet hey ho I'm giving it a go. Perhaps it will keep me on track with things and make me stick to an exercise plan. I simply can't live the way I have been for any longer, I just can't be a 24 year old that is this ashamed of her body. I'm young, I shouldn't be worrying about these things and I shouldn't have caused this much damage to my body and self esteem by dieting since I was 16 years old. I hope you will check back in a couple of weeks time to see what I have to say! If this idea goes well I will also be posting some time lapse videos of the exercises I've been doing to show how I'm progressing and also so I can see how much fitter or flexible I become over time. Remember, all of this takes time, that SUPER amazing body transformation video you watched took TIME. Healing takes TIME.

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Stepping Out

For the past month I have been religiously wearing my FitBit again. Last Summer was a big struggle, but I got a small amount of joy each day from seeing my tracker smile at me and showing how much I moved. Bare in mind that I would be pretty chuffed if I managed around 1,000 steps a day. At that time I wasn't going out much and struggled to remove my blank stare from the TV and slight comfort of the indent I'd made in the sofa.

Nowadays I'm moving around a bit more. I push myself further each day, even if that's just from chasing Toby (our dog) around the table or doing one more lap of crazy dancing around the island in the kitchen. Some days I venture further afield for a medical appointment- of which there have been many over the past two months- or to pick up some food shopping, walking back and forth along shopping aisles aimlessly AND forgetting multiple items, having to loop back really builds up the steps! I thought it would be an interesting way to keep track of my moods over the months if I translated my daily steps into a graph to post on the blog each month. In a line graph you can clearly see the peaks and troughs of my moods. Towards the end of the month I introduced the magnesium supplements to improve my sleep, which has in turn meant that I've been getting up earlier and having longer days. I always keep track of my day-to-day activities in a planner/diary. My mind is like a faucet at the moment, I can barely remember what I did yesterday never mind last week. I can use my daily notes alongside the graph to identify which days were really bad, which days I pushed myself despite crying most of the morning and the odd day where I forgot to put my tracker on until 4pm! As I said there were days that I cried a lot, I was on my own in the house and was feeling extremely anxious. In the past I would have drawn a line under the day and headed back to bed. However, I had a few responsibilities as I was looking after to Toby and some chickens down the road, the small walk to feed them left me feeling sick, trembling and crying by the time I reached our house again. I had a couple of those days and I 'rallied' through to the end until Robbie got back from work. I often end up baking my way through the depression...although that doesn't always work in my favour as I'll try a stupidly hard recipe and be left crying over a failed bake and a kitchen covered in a sticky mess.

The path to progress isn't always smooth, and you won't be seeing me consistently reaching 10,000+ steps a day anytime soon. As you can see towards the end of the month I had some really big days, followed immediately after by a lull or a rest day. As good as the victories feel, you need to remember that you are ill and you'll feel the aftermath of a fantastic day when you wake up in the morning. My body usually feels like it has been run down by a bus on my rest days...I couldn't move far even if I wanted to. Just remember it's OK to feel that way and don't allow anyone to push you beyond a pace that's comfortable for you.

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