Penguin

How To Survive Social Situations When You Suffer From Anxiety

/ bornwithoutmarbles / 6 Comments

Last Saturday it was my Dad’s birthday party. Being a large, jovial social gathering packed with family members, friends and loved ones, I was of course terrified. Parties are always something people seem to get very excited about and dare I say look forward to in the “real world”, but in my world and the world of anyone with social anxiety they are a minefield of stress, uncertainty, embarrassment and awkwardness.
However, I somehow made it through the party this weekend by following a “Social gatherings survival guide” that I created as a military style strategy to manage the whole thing like an army preparing for battle. So, in the interest of helping anyone else out there with any level of social anxiety (aka my fellow soldiers), I thought I would share my survival guide to surviving the obstacle course in life known as “the situation in which you have to hang around people”…

Step One: Make a preliminary plan for the evening – As every good soldier knows, the key to success in battle (aka a social situation) is a step by step plan to follow, much like the guide I am writing here but far more specific and suited to the environment in which you have found yourself. Thinking “I am going out to a party tonight” can be very overwhelming, but if you break it down into pieces it becomes a little more manageable. For example “I will leave for the party at 7pm”, “I will drive to the party”, “I will stay for two hours” sounds far less intimidating. I often find that by setting a time limit I manage to get myself out the house by thinking “it is only two hours” and then sometimes the situation isn’t actually too bad so I can stay for longer having fooled my enemy (aka my brain) into allowing my excursion from safety. Whilst you have a plan though, it is also important to be open to being flexible should opportunities such as staying an extra hour arise. The plan is more of a comforting guide to have in your back pocket rather than a rigid set of actions that you must carry out, even if that means leaving when you are having fun, just because it is in the schedule.

Step Two: Set up a safe base/camp – When putting yourself in a potentially stressful situation it is always important to have a safe place to retreat to when things get too much. Forcing yourself to stand in the stressful fray of pass the parcel or musical chairs, when your anxiety really cannot handle it, does not a good soldier make, and it is important to know when you need a break to refuel on sanity. The safe place will ideally be a place some distance from the battlefield that is a little quieter. A lot of social gatherings in my family happen at my Aunt and Uncle’s house who thankfully are very accommodating to this particular soldier and always have a camp (aka the back bedroom with blankets and cushions) for me to camouflage myself in when things are too much. If you are going to a gathering in surroundings you are familiar with, plan your safe place in advance. This is unfortunately not possible when entering unknown territory, but as a hint, good safe places to seek out in most locations can be found just outside the party venue (aka by the door for fresh air), in a bathroom (not an ideal habitat but guarantees the safety of privacy), or, if you drove yourself to the gathering, in your tank (otherwise known as your car).

Step Three: Lower your expectations – When I entered the party on Saturday I felt an immense amount of pressure. Being a general guest in battle is one thing but being the offspring of the person whose gathering it is is like being suddenly promoted to Commander in Chief. Everyone at the party knew who I was even if I didn’t know them and being related to the host I felt it was my responsibility to ensure the evening ran smoothly, entertain everyone, serve the food and start the conga line. Obviously nobody else expected any of these things from me (which is somewhat sad as I do like a conga line), and people just wanted to see me there. When you go to a party do not feel the pressure to perform or act in a certain way or as if the responsibility of the evening’s success is on your ability to be a good guest, people don’t invite you to a gathering to serve a particular purpose, they just want to see you.

Step Four: Prepare stock answers – When in battle it is likely that you will be interrogated (aka asked polite questions by nice people who want to find out how you are.) This is one of the most stressful parts of an evening in my opinion, as I always find myself tongue tied and never know what to say even to simple questions like “What have you been up to lately”. Obviously it is impossible to predict which probing questions might be launched during socialisation, but some questions are more likely than others (in my experience people are more likely to ask what you are doing with your life than what you think would happen if the world was run by a power hungry fairy with a passion for pogo sticks), and it may help to plan stock answers to whip out when the occasion presents itself. For example this weekend, for the inevitable “what have you been up to?”, I prepared “I am currently running a fantastic blog that you should definitely follow because it is the best thing on the internet” rather than leaving it to my brain to come up with an answer on the spot which would have likely been something along the lines of “um…I am living at home because I am mentally ill but the other day I managed to touch a doorhandle without showering afterwards so that was an achievement ahh please stop talking to me”.

Step Five: Bring an inflatable penguin along with you – Yes soldier, you read that correctly, that is a key step to this plan. Like horror films, social gatherings are things that are easier to manage when you have a buddy or someone/something you can trust with you. If you can take a friend or even a small object like a heavy pebble to cling to when things are getting scary it can be a great help in grounding you and hopefully prevent any spiralling into total irrationality and panic.
When my mum was buying things for this weekend’s party she foolishly took me to a balloon shop where she proceeded to purchase helium filled orbs with my dads age on them. How imaginative. Thankfully I was there to help/be an inconvenience, and by the time we left the shop, in addition to mum’s choices, I had obtained an inflatable penguin balloon on a lead which I proceeded to drag around the party with me for the duration of the evening. Sounds silly but it was oddly comforting and whenever I started to panic about someone coming over to talk to me I could just glance behind me and think “it’s fine, I have my inflatable penguin with me, what could possibly go wrong!”.

So there you have it chaps. That is my strategy guide and list of steps to get my fellow social anxiety soldiers through battle. Any situation involving a large group of people is going to still be scary, but hopefully with these tips you can at least feel a little prepared so that things are more manageable. Remember we are all in this war together and you are never alone. Now go forth my brave warriors, fight the fear, stay safe, follow my lead and commence mission socialise….

Social anxiety 1

Social anxiety 2

Oh, and for anyone who wanted to see a picture of my personal buddy this weekend…

Social Anxiety 3

“Can’t you be normal? Just for today?”

/ bornwithoutmarbles / 2 Comments

17 days ago, my Grandma died. Today was her funeral.
I wasn’t going to write a post about it and thus about my mental health in the week that led up to my grandmother’s death because to be honest I think it makes me seem very selfish, self obsessed and ridiculous. However, having thought about it I have realised that the entire experience (I have lost all of my other grandparents before so I don’t mean the experience of a loved one dying, rather it was the events leading to it that I want to discuss), highlights something people often don’t realise about living with mental illnesses.
With mental health issues, as with physical illnesses, there are no days where you can simply “turn them off”. There is no break or holiday from the battle, even when interference from that voice in your brain comes at the most inconvenient and irrelevant time.

We were told my grandma was going to die on Monday the 29th of February. They didn’t say how long exactly, but she wasn’t going to live until the next Monday, so time was precious and naturally my family and I spent what was left of her life at her bedside, even if she was asleep for the last 72 hours or so. I love my grandma dearly and she has played a big part in my life, and a large portion of my childhood memories are constructed from the hours I spent being looked after by her in the house she shared with my grandad.

During the week starting the 29th February 2016 I should have been thinking of nothing but my grandma and my mum who was about to lose her mother, my irrelevant worries about germs, how many steps I had done or calories I had eaten should not have come into play, but no matter how hard I tried, they did. Even family members and friends thought I should give my personal neuroses a break for the week as they really weren’t important in a literal life or death situation, and were just making things more difficult than they were. In all honesty I agreed with them, and got frustrated at myself for not putting my irrational fears aside. I felt like a right idiot, like a person on the Titanic who, once alerted of the fact we had crashed into a massive iceberg, worried not about safety or lives being lost, but whether or not the iceberg issues would interfere with my dinner reservations that evening. I was the character in the disaster movie that you yell at the screen to shut up because they are worrying about such nonsense.

That said, a person with an eating disorder cant “just eat like a normal person” because it is Christmas and it is a nice occasion with nice food and nice people hiding behind every christmas tree, a person with OCD can’t “just stop” their rituals because the the house is on fire (or it has crashed into an iceberg…not sure how but lets just go with it) and they really need to focus on evacuating, and a person with depression cannot “just cheer up” because it is someones wedding and nobody wants to see a grumpy person throwing confetti with a face like a soggy potato. Being on your “best mental health act like a normal person behaviour” is no more possible than asking your liver to be on its “best physical health behaviour” despite having hepatitis. It is like asking someone with a broken leg “to just take the cast off and run” like nothing is wrong because it is the Olympics and therefore a special occasion that requires special effort. No matter what the occasion, the leg, the liver or indeed the brain, is still broken.

When it was the last time I would be able to hold my grandma’s hand I should have clung to it like she clung on to life, but in terms of OCD I was too afraid to touch her even though I have held her hands a million times before when I was a kid and survived to tell the tale. When it was the last time I could sit with my grandma I should have focused on being present with her, but my mind was buzzing with thoughts that I was lazy for sitting at all and needed to go outside to do some walking to burn calories. When my mum came home after a day of watching her dying mother she did not need me kicking up a fuss because I didn’t want to eat my dinner, yet still, every night I would cry over the same meal I have had every evening for who knows how long. It felt wrong, inconsiderate and selfish to be crying about a meal when my mum was about to lose her mother, but as much as I tried I honestly couldn’t help it and it is that message that I want to get across in this post. There were a lot of ways I should have behaved both in that week and on countless other occasions I could list from the past decade but with any illness, physical or mental, the should’s and oughts become difficult to obey.

Obviously I cannot blame everything on my mental health issues and some responsibility needs to be taken. I may not be able to help being ill but I should have dealt with my illnesses in a more constructive way that week. I should have called my psychiatrist or hospital to manage my worries rather than spilling them over onto my mum who was already full of her own fears and that is my fault. What I don’t want is it to make it sound like mental health issues are a get out of jail free card that allow you to do whatever you want with no consequences. After all the person who cannot run in the Olympics cannot spend the time of the race stealing penguins from the zoo instead and then blame it on the fact they had a broken leg that was preventing them from doing what they should have been.

If anyone reading this is a parent or carer of someone with a mental health condition I just want you to know that whoever your offspring or friend is, they do not mean to create any stress in your life with their problems, and when they do it is because they honestly cannot help it. They know there are times where it would help you if they could “just stop and be normal” and I can pretty much promise you that they will be trying, sometimes it just isn’t possible even when they can see the pain they are causing other people.

Good lord this post has got a bit heavy and depressing so I am sorry about that, but I feel it is an important topic that I need to touch on. Have a picture of a penguin in a sombrero to lighten the mood. Cheerio.

 

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Read this blog and win a free pet penguin…

/ bornwithoutmarbles / 9 Comments

I’m going to be honest with you. I may have lied in the title of this post…BUT WAIT! Before you explode in rage and click the little red cross on this window, overwhelmed by the fury that someone on the internet has had the nerve to lie to you and use the promise of your very own waddling flightless bird to catch your attention, please hear me out. If you do I will give you a cookie (this may or may not be another lie.)
The most difficult thing about starting a blog is the uncertainty as to whether or not anyone is actually going to read it and this concern has held me back for a long time. However, this year I have made a resolution to go for it anyway as I think I have a lot to say on certain issues and the sure fire way to make sure nobody reads my words is to not write them down at all.
For the past few years mental health issues have been on the rise and with 1 in 4 of the UK population suffering with a mental health problem each year, it is now a big issue in our society. True, there are a lot of voices discussing the issue, from health care professionals and charities to newspapers raising awareness and generating scare stories of the much feared “mentally ill” (deranged humans so frightening that it is now common place to see at least one person dressed as a “mental patient” at Halloween or to watch a horror film where the villain is clinically insane). However, I personally don’t think that there aren’t enough voices from the mentally ill people that the horror films, headlines and statistics are about. It is to these voices that I would like to add, and, rest assured, I’m really not that scary.
With three mental illness diagnoses under my belt, the survival rate of some of which is lower than your chances with certain types of cancer, (hence the importance of speaking about mental health), I have been in treatment for well over a decade having first got ill around age 11. People often refer to the process of “going mad” as “losing one’s marbles”, but to be honest I don’t feel I have lost any marbles, rather I was born without them, as I showed signs of various mental health conditions shortly after my exit from the womb. Maybe my connection to “sanity” was cut at the same time as my umbilical cord, but, rather than mourn my lack of balls (unfortunate phrasing but I can assure you that we are still talking about the metaphorical glass balls of the marble variety), I’ve decided to use my marbleless brain to try and help people who are also struggling in their search for mental stability amongst the giant haystack that is everyday life.
A very wise and wonderful nurse once told me that “there is nothing wrong with you that what’s right with you can’t fix”, so, as an aspiring writer, I am therefore going to use my love of writing to find my way in this “crazy” world and hopefully help my fellow mental health warriors along the way. I know that by writing a blog I am not going to “fix” or “cure” anybody, but still I am going to do my best to do what I can. Picture this blog as a hug to a broken leg if you will, it won’t heal the bone inside but it might provide a bit of comfort, even if just for a little bit.
This whole grand plan may very well go down in flames and have no readers other than my mother (hi mum), but this year I am going to get off my ass give it a go anyway rather than continuing to put my hopes of helping people “someday” off even longer and finding myself still sitting at this computer screen in fifty years’ time, crying into a tin of baked beans and asking where all the time went and what happened to my dreams. Don’t get me wrong, I love baked beans, but that image of the future just isn’t part of my plan.
So yes, I will admit that I may have lied to you in the title of this post in the hopes of piquing your interest, but I hope you will forgive me and continue listening to my voice in this crazy life of a mentally ill person trying to find their way whilst attempting to support, educate and maybe even help someone else struggling out there. As for the promised pet penguin and proposed cookie for all readers, I promise I will be working on it.