CBT part 1: the beginning of my journey

(image source: pinterest)

ONCE again (broken record here); sorry for the delay. I wanted to get a proper feel for my Cognitive Behavioural sessions before writing a post. And then so many sessions got cancelled so all in all; I've had about 4 CBT appointments so far.
I was referred to CBT whilst pregnant as I was on Citalopram at the time. It's strange really, my doctor has never wanted to refer me to anywhere to talk about my issues, they just prescribed me this or that and hurried me out of their office. But as it turns out, these sessions have been more helpful than pills ever were.

In the same way, I always struggled with counselling in that sense. Yeah, it felt great to get all of these feelings off my chest but then once my counsellor determined I was "better" - then that was it. Goodbye Emily, have a nice life, next patient please.
I absolutely dreaded my counselling sessions because although it was good to talk, I always left feeling emotionally drained and so down. I figured that it was a laboured process, and you had to re-visit all of these bottled up feelings before you could be "better".
One day I went to my usual counselling session, in an upbeat mood. I didn't really have much to talk about. I felt good. Happy. So my therapist decided that her job was done. I was fixed and no longer needed weekly sessions. I had opened up to her about things I would never have dreamed to tell my closest friends and family, but was that really it? What if I suffered with SAD that year? Or I randomly had a panic attack? Or I (god forbid) had to deal with death again? Would I just magically be able to cope?
Cognitive Behavioural Therapy is different. One of the first things my therapist Abby said was - 'Your anxiety is never going to go away. But you can learn to accept it and just be with it". Abby teaches me to manage my anxiety by changing the way I think about my behaviour and consequently; the way that I behave.
Firstly, Abby is no typical counsellor. She is upbeat, quirky and actually used the term "just fuck off" in my second session. You can't help but feel positive when she's around. And I think that is so important - positive energy begets positive energy. Who's going to feel upbeat and positive around someone sat in a chair just staring at you with pity in their eyes, waiting for you to cry? (Yes, that happened).

During my first session, Abby spoke to me about my life. Just asking me very general questions as if she was a new friend over coffee getting to know me. Obviously, talk turned to Evie because lets face it, who wouldn't brag about that cheeky lil face at every opportunity?! We got talking about how her sleep was going and before I knew it, we were talking about my anxiety.
And it was as easy as that. No awkward staring, no probing. She managed to pick up on the anxiety I had when Evie went to sleep. I would lie in bed and wonder whether she'd somehow managed to smother herself, or randomly stopped breathing. Now, forgetting for a moment that I'm sure all mothers think this and that Evie literally doesn't move an inch in her sleep; this was really playing on my anxiety. I would lie there and chew it over and over, my breathing would become heavy and laboured and I would toss and turn. Eventually, I would have to get up and go check her. Once I was happy she was ok, I would get into bed and think 'ok what's next to get anxious about?'
Just from this one conversation, Abby taught me a technique to manage my breathing, body language recognition, a delay tactic and a way to understand how anxiety disorders work.

• The 'square breathing technique' regulates your breathing - a tool used during panic and anxiety attacks. It's basically breathe in for 4 seconds, hold for 4, out for 4 and hold for 4. I've had so many people tell me to focus on my breathing during an attack but come on, who actually does it when it comes down to it? Certainly not me. But counting whilst tapping in time to the counting, distracts me as my mind is focused on the tapping and the counting.  
• Body language is just that. Body language. Whilst I was stressing trying to get Evie back to sleep for more than an hour at a time, I would unknowingly be tense, with my shoulders high and my jaw clenched. Just taking the time to stop and notice these things made me feel instantly a little calmer and subsequently, calmed Evie down.
• The delay tactic was to help with my OCD tendencies when it came to going in to check on Evie. As well as Evie, my anxiety causes me to get horrible, random thoughts about people I care about and I have to call them or text them to make sure they're ok. But by delaying the action on these thoughts, I'm training myself to resettle, much like I had to do while sleep training Evie. So now if one of these thoughts pops into my head, I wait 5 minutes and if I feel ok, I'll wait 10 minutes etc etc.
• Understanding anxiety disorders was a big one for me. Abby actually turned around and said that she often has crazy, irrational thoughts as well. And, shock horror, everyone does. She used the example of; 'I could just drop my baby down the stairs right now'. Someone without an anxiety disorder can have this thought - but they will then think, 'wow that was weird, what a random and horrible thought'. However someone with anxiety will think, 'why did I think that, it must mean something, I'm now going to drop my baby down the stairs, I must be insane'. It's about learning to think like person A and not like person Anxiety.

Well, I'm sorry for rambling on but that was my experience of my first few sessions of CBT. I might carry on doing posts like this (albeit a bit shorter!) condensing the next sessions and talking about the techniques I've learnt. 
What I will say is, if you're struggling with anxiety, I really urge you to push your doctor to refer you for CBT. As far as I'm aware the waiting list for NHS funded CBT is quite long (I was prioritised as I was pregnant), but it is so worth it. I wasted so much time on Citalopram when I think I could have managed my symptoms much better with weekly sessions. Don't struggle in silence and feel free to email me if you have an questions!

e,x

Long time no blog!

Hi strangers! It's been over a year since my last post - I guess time kind of ran away with me. And then I went and had a baby.

Evie was born on March 21st and is just the peachiest peach in all the land. I could just sit and ramble on about her for days but I shall save that for another day. Here's a quick summary of whats gone on in the last year;

• intermitted from university 
• worked full time as youth support worker
• fell pregnant
• had to intermit for another year
• had baby (tends to happen at the end of a pregnancy)
• so currently on maternity leave winging this whole parenting gig

In terms of ~mental health~ things are on the up. I was on Citalopram from April 2014 until about two months ago. I was on it throughout my pregnancy as it was safer to stay on it and monitor Evie than it was to come off it before I'd been on it for a year (they're the rules apparently - you have to be on it for a year before coming off). Anyway, she had very, very mild withdrawal after being born but nothing to be concerned about, just made her a bit jittery for a week or so. I'm now embarking on a CBT (cognitive behavioural therapy) journey. My next post will be an outline of my CBT so far - I may do a week by week overview after each session. 

So this was just a quick update before next time, hopefully I'll get round to it soon while juggling babies, milk, sick, toys and constantly ensuring Sophie the Giraffe stays firmly in the pushchair or in Evie's hands and not on the floor.

Going from nights out in Brighton to playing pick up sticks with a toy giraffe, what a difference a year makes eh?

Stay excellent,

e, x 

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Who am I and what on earth is this all about?

Bloody hell where do I begin? I have been meaning to start this blog since the beginning of 2013 but just haven't. Partly down to laziness, partly down to my time being utterly consumed by my degree and partly down to being utterly HTML dyslexic (that is a thing I swear). But alas, I've sat down on a Sunday afternoon meaning to start my final assignments and the ultimate procrastination technique has actually become something productive. Half a pack of polos and 6 hours later, here we are. Who'd of known eh?

Who am I?My name is Emily Rose Antonia Akerman. I am 21 years old and originally from a small town in the middlest middle of England. So after 19 years in a small town bubble working as a barista (that's a coffee nerd fyi) and trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my life, I moved to Brighton. I began my BA (Hons) Education degree aiming to become a primary ed teacher and now am aiming towards working within the youth work sector, targeting mental health. Before this though, I had been accepted into London Met to study Fashion Marketing and Events Management. Oh how things change during a two year gap year.

What is this all about?
This is the long bit. Go grab a cup of tea and a hobnob or something. When I was around 11 years old, I began having night terrors. For those of you who have never had a night terror, or even heard of one; it might just be the most impossible thing to explain. Even I'm not sure what was really going on. All I remember is having the most terrifying, realistic yet surreal dreams. The one I remember most vividly is being able to see a wooden train set. I knew my mum and younger brother weren't there but I couldn't see them, just the train set. We were playing along quite nicely but then everything started to go wrong; the trains would come off the track and the tracks would fall apart. I remember shouting stop it, stop it, in my dream and getting really distressed. I woke up and ran downstairs. I started crying hysterically and apologising to my mum and dad. I didn't want to go back upstairs at all (something I'd later recognise as the flight or fight response).

These night terrors slowly started to manifest into panic attacks whilst I was awake and conscious of my actions. I started to hyperventilate and think that I was dying. I would cry hysterically and tell my mum to call an ambulance because I was having a heart attack. Nothing could calm me down or convince me otherwise; bear in mind my mum is a nurse but even that didn't work. All I could do was ride it out. I would have panic attacks on a near enough every other day basis. I was eventually diagnosed with panic disorder when I was 15, when the doctor gave me a print out on breathing exercises, some prescription for propanolol and sent me on my way. The propanolol gave me hallucinations for the first few weeks. I distinctly remember walking through Birmingham with my then boyfriend and suddenly stopping, thinking I had just stepped in a puddle of pennies. It also made my heart slow down so much I could feel it getting slower and slower. Despite this, it sort of worked and I managed to get to the point where I could go for months without having a major panic attack and only take propanolol when I really needed it.

This was the case up until July 2012. On the 3rd July 2012, my world came crumbling down when I found out that one of my best friends and former boyfriends had taken his own life after a long struggle with bipolar disorder. To this day, I still struggle to come to terms with it. It was without a doubt one of the worst days of my life and that more than likely rings true for the masses of his friends and family who came together for his funeral, unable to comprehend why James was no longer with us and why couldn't we have stopped him. Despite going through a difficult grief process, I moved down to Brighton in the August. James' ashes had been scattered underneath the pier and so there was some comfort in knowing he was close.

Without knowing it, my panic disorder was rearing its ugly head again but through the guise of what I came to understand was generalised anxiety disorder. It all happened after a few weeks of complete and utter breathlessness. It felt like there was an elephant sat on my chest. It got to the point where I called a non-emergency ambulance line because I thought I was dying. Despite this harrowingly familiar feeling, I felt 100% certain that it was nothing to do with my panic. After a long doctors appointment with a very strange Transylvanian doctor who specialised in mental health, it would seem that I was experiencing anxiety attacks. This feeling of breathlessness started to manifest into ye old panic attacks. The joy. Because I knew I was having an anxiety attack, I would panic that I would have a panic attack and of course the inevitable would happen.
I hadn't realised that I was anxious. I'm usually a very confident, bubbly person. But without realising, I had become withdrawn, I wouldn't speak in class and would very rarely go out and make mischief like a true fresher is supposed to. I would instead, sit and worry about my family, my workload, what others thought of me, money etc etc. I became so overwhelmed, I literally could not see a way out.

To rub salt into a very deep and very messy wound, I had been suffering with SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder) for around 3 years. SAD is a seasonal depression, caused by a faulty hypothalamus, not letting the happy chemicals in my brain work like they should. Normal things that make me happy such as puppies or watching people fall over on YouTube just won't do it for me during these horrid winter months. SAD is another one of those things which is so hard to explain unless you have experienced it or have watched someone go through it. I remember getting so angry at a friend for claiming that 'SAD is just a cry for attention, everyone gets a bit moodier in the winter'. I wanted to make them switch with me for a few months and then come back and tell me if they 'just felt a bit moodier'. There is nothing about SAD which makes me want to flaunt it as a cry for attention. Winter should be fun. Christmas is in the winter and no-one should be depressed at Christmas. When else can you eat your body weight in desserts without shame? But the truth is that I spent Christmas 2012 in bed because I physically and emotionally could not bring myself to get up.

Very few people know about my plethora of mental health issues. It's not something I personally like to divulge to those who don't know me. In fact, some of my very best friends still don't know a lot of these things. And so truthfully, the reason why I didn't start this blog earlier might be down to the fact that I wasn't sure how much of myself I wanted expose when I'd become such an expert at pretending to be "normal". But after reading so many inspirational celebrities, YouTubers and bloggers come out and admit that they suffer (I'm looking at you; Catherine ZJ, Zoella and Tanya Burr); I decided that if I could help at least one person, I have done myself and everyone who sits under the mental health umbrella proud.

And so here I am, feeling pretty emotionally naked. But most of all, and quite shockingly so, I feel relieved. I feel a bit like I could go run into the pouring rain naked and dance a bit. Although I feel like that isn't going to help the whole mental health label. I'm not too sure where to which direction this blog will end up going, if it even goes anywhere that is. But I'm doing this for myself. I'm doing it for anyone out there who ever feels like they might lose hope. For anyone who feels alone. For anyone who is a bit of a wallflower. For anyone who wants to be able to talk about why Illamasqua Skin Base might just be the holy grail of all foundations, but also talk about why they feel like they have no reason to get up in the morning. And I'm doing this for James.

Stay excellent, all of you.

e, x