I’ve spent lots of time figuring out what can help my anxiety and depression, I like trying to do something, something with tangible rewards so I can say to myself ‘yes I feel like sh*t but look what I’ve done’. I’ve found that sometimes it’s a loooooong dog walk (that’s really rewarding but high effort), sometimes it’s wordsearch/sudoko, sometimes it’s vegetating watching a sitcom for the 100000th time (looooow effort). But I always come back to my crochet! I can sit with a film on and crochet for hours whilst completely ignoring my surroundings! At the moment I’m working on a blanket for my sister for Christmas, in the past I made myself a blanket and a scarf and soon I’ll be starting ear warmer headbands! Making myself feel busy slows down the dark spiralling thoughts

We’ve all met them, the ‘you have anxiety? Don’t worry so much?’ Or the ‘you’re depressed? Well stop being miserable’ I don’t know why they can’t understand it! Being such an empathetic myself I always put myself in other peoples shoes and feel how they feel, so I don’t understand why people are so ignorant to mental health. I’ve been told ‘you know your work doesn’t help, you just don’t want to do anything to help yourself so you’re doing it to yourself’ but it’s not so easy to change your exterior surroundings. There are so many things out of our control and people don’t understand that. You can’t just quit work because you need money to live (unfortunately) and you have working commitments, trainings etc you can’t always just up and leave. Everyone knows that so why be that a*s saying ‘just change’. Winds me up.

I’ve tried many times to explain to people how I feel not for sympathy but so they can know why I act or look the way I do. The one thing my mum always says is that I don’t look depressed (lol) so my mental health must be good right now. The problem with me is that I’m high functioning. I will go and do things because I do t want to be perceived as being boring but 99% of the time I hate it and would rather be at home crocheting. I’ve often said I’ve run out of fuel like a car and I just can’t go on I can’t do anything. That’s when I’m fairly catatonic and stuck to my sofa. I have days where I feel like I’m drowning but not in water, in sand. If you’ve ever tried climbing a sand dune you’ll know it’s hard, you feel like you’ve traveled far because of how difficult it is but you’ve climbed a few feet! All the struggle you’ve faced in this climb seems useless because you’re not going anywhere. That’s one of my common feelings.

When things are bad, they say people are around you to help you don’t they? Well my mum is so self centred she can’t even begin to fathom how to deal with me, my friends all have their own lives too. The ones I do reach out to just criticise me, how am I meant to get help when no one wants to help me?