Mindset Matters

Long time no see...

My last post on here was not the most positive I’ll be honest, and since I made that post it has been HARD to settle back into life in the UK and find myself amongst the chaos. The later months of last year were amongst the hardest of my life, and by far it was the lowest I have ever felt. It’s hard to explain but I like to try and be honest with people about mental health, because it’s absolutely nothing to be ashamed of, that’s what I tell anyone who confides in me that they are struggling, and if I was to keep quiet and not tell people then that would make me a hypocrite.

So as a result, I post a lot on my Instagram stories about my own experiences with mental health and how I’m feeling, and I figured it would be useful to also post it here in a more permanent format, in the hope that it will help someone going through the same thing, or at the very least of it doesn’t do that then it’s a great reminder to myself that I am stronger than I think.

Around September last year, I was assessed by the NHS and deemed to have Anxiety and Depression. This was something I was already very aware of, having been prescribed Sertraline in January of 2021 when I was living in Canada. Based on my previous, very short, experience with SSRIs I was adamant that medication was not the way to go for me, the side effects I felt were debilitating and I couldn’t face that on top of my already fragile mental state. And so I was put onto a waitlist for Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) in order to equip me with some coping strategies for my stress. This waitlist was 2 months long! But if I had opted to go straight for counselling rather than CBT I would have been waiting for 6 months unless I paid privately... This is something I feel very strongly about as mental health is a growing concern in the UK, and yet the NHS is sadly completely overwhelmed by the amount of people needing their services. I found ways to cope whilst I was waiting for my therapy, but I know there are so many cases where these wait lists are far too long and people don’t get the help they need.

Whilst I was waiting for my CBT to begin, I spent a lot of time reflecting on what were my triggers; my job, my loneliness, relationship struggles, my masters thesis and a huge feeling of inadequacy amongst other things. To combat these I journaled and tried to write out ‘evidence’ that disproved the feelings I was having, for example if my partner didn’t text me back for several hours, my brain immediately jumps to the assumption that something terrible has happened so to try and stop myself from spiralling out of control I would write down all the possibilities from his phone has died to he’s in hospital, and usually seeing my wildly exaggerated thoughts written down would help me realize no he’s probably not been in an accident on the train, it’s actually much more likely he’s fallen asleep when he’s gotten home...

I also read a lot of books. A LOT. Some of them just helped me pass the time, but others I truly credit a large portion of my recovery to. I plan to write a post dedicated to the books I read at some point, but if anyone is interested in the meantime, my storygraph account is here.

When the time came to begin my 6 week course of CBT I was probably already embarking on a recovery journey, however having to recount to a therapist the thoughts and feelings I had been having was incredibly difficult, and the first couple of sessions left me drained. Admitting to a complete stranger that you had contemplated taking your own life is such a raw feeling, and it left me feeling very confused. The therapist I was assigned from the NHS was amazing, I really struggled to see at first how CBT would help me but by the end of the 6 weeks I began to feel a little more human again. I will likely write a full post about my experience in more detail in the coming months.

Since completing CBT on Christmas Eve 2021, I feel like I have gone from strength to strength. That’s not to say I don’t have down days because I obviously do, but I can probably count the number of dips I have had over the last few months on my fingers. 

I still have a long way to go to feeling “normal” again, whatever that means, but I am so thankful that I was able to make it through all the confusion and sadness, and so so thankful that i stuck it out.