The days we don’t want to talk about…

I’ve been deciding whether to write this post or not, but at this present time I feel stable enough to share it, and I think it’s important for people following my blog to know the truth.

Those of you who suffer with depression all know how your thinking can get to a crucial point quite easily. In the weeks leading up to my breakdown I would not say I was suicidal. I was very, very low. The thoughts that often went through my head were ‘It would be easier if I just died, if a car just happened to hit me head on right now as I drive down this road, and it all be over in an instant”. That’s what I wanted, an instantaneous death, that was no one’s fault, just an accident, too quick for me to feel, that would just end my suffering. I would along with these thoughts think about how it would only take a slight jerk of my hand at 60mph to throw me off the road into the ditch beside it, wondering if that would be enough to kill me and ensure nobody else was injured. These thoughts became more and more common, and whilst I was not making plans to end my life, I didn’t want to live.

After my breakdown, and my break-up, which was the icing on the cake and pretty much caused my break down those thoughts started to change. I continued to feel like I’d be better of dead, but I believed it much more than I did before. Before the break up I felt like I was clinging on to my life, and the rope was cutting my hands and I was considering letting go. After the break up I felt like there was nothing left to hold on for. By that I do not mean that my ex boyfriend was all I had to love for, because I have my son and he is worth more to me than anyone ever could. When I say I felt like I had nothing left to hold on for I was thinking of myself. I already felt undeserving of love, undeserving of friendships, undeserving of anything good in life, and the break up put a x1000 on those feelings. Now I definitely didn’t deserve love because the only person claiming to love me had just left me, why would they leave me unless I didn’t deserve that love? It’s a complicated web of thoughts that go on in there, bit the end result was that I felt even more worthless and I didn’t want to live at all. I felt so bad about myself that I believed my son would be better off without me too. It’s manipulative, depression, it brainwashes you into believing the most awful things. And I apologise to my son now, should you ever read this when you grow up, that I felt like my battle was too hard to fight even to stay by your side.

2 weeks ago I made a plan. It all got way too much and it wasn’t a well thought through plan, it was a quick last minute one that would have been devestating had I not been stopped. I waited for a Friday when I knew my little boy would be safe on the care of his father, I awoke in the morning and I put on a nice dress. I did my make up, and I did my hair nice, just as I did it in Paris because I wanted to do something different for my man. I wanted to look nice, on my last day. I packed my lunch bag for work however not with lunch. I placed a bottle of water and as many packets of paracetamol that I could find, any tablets that I had kept back, antibiotics, steroids, anything. I went to work that day, and I ate nothing. O ended up being sent home early because I was so down, but I didn’t go home. I went straight to the place that I had decided I wanted to be when I ended it. My phone rang over and over but I ignored it. I had arrived far too early, it was only early afternoon and people were about, walking there dogs, watching the birds. So I just slept, I slept in my car on and off for hours. I was waiting for it to get dark. I had so many nightmares, nightmares that I was running away from things, storms, the devil, but I was trapped and each time I couldn’t get away. That’s how my mind felt, I was trapped and everything was telling me to surrender. One of my friends found me just before nightfall, when she arrived I was looking down at my phone. She does not know this, nobody know this. I had already taken all of the pills out of their packets, I picked up my phone, that I had not been on all day, to have one last look through my photos, the memories I had made so that they would be the last thing on my mind. As she found me I was sobbing, looking at a photo of my baby boy in the day he was born. That was going to be the hardest part never seeing him again. She saved my life, had she not have searched for me and night had fallen I do believe I would have taken those pills.

I am nowhere near happy, I am not even reaching neutral yet, but I do feel like at present I am out of the danger zone. For how long, I do not know. There is one thing that sets me off, and I instantly start thinking on a very negative trail and that’s my ex. I am doing everything i can to try to avoid him, because I do not understand as of yet why seeing him, hearing him, talking to him is doing this to me so I don’t know how to control it. The more we talk the more I want to die. It’s horrible to say but it’s true. So I am trying my best to avoid all contact, but I have not mastered it yet and sometimes I slip up and start a conversation that never ends well for me.

Looking at the positives, and I hope o do not jinx this… 2 weeks later I am still alive. The nightmares are beginning to ease, although I’m still not sleeping well. But I guess my brain is starting to feel some relief, o have taken actions to reduce the things that were causing me to feel that way and there is much less pressure, which is allowing me to start to recover, very slowly. I have hope now, that I will get better someday.

If you have found yourself in that position, or you are in that position now. Please know that you can get past it. You will not pass it and be magically back to normal, but you will be able to see a future again instead of only seeing a wooden box. My heart goes out to you all, you are not alone.

Until next time.

Starting with myself – from the outside in

It probably took me an hour to brush my hair last night after the shower, lots of miracle oil, a fine comb and clumps of hair all over the bedroom floor…

Yeah it’s safe to say I’ve been neglecting my self care in recent weeks with my low mood, I can’t remember the last time o brushed my hair properly. I had alot of time to think as I was doing this, and I felt guilty. How could I let myself get into this kind of a mess, and how can I ever feel good about myself when im in this kind of a mess. I always say I’m going to start taking care of myself and then I just slip back into bad habits and laziness. But it’s important, and I need to change that now, if I keep doing things for long enough they will just become habit and I won’t have to think about them anymore.

I need to start learning to love myself and be happy with who I am, for me the hardest things to change, the hardest things to be happy about are on the inside, so I’m going to start with the outside to make it a little easier. The first thing I’m going to make sure that I do everyday is take care of my hair, brushing it daily and applying treatments as often as needed to start repairing it. I want nice long healthy hair, so I needed to start giving my hair the time that it deserves. The second thing that I’m going to do is take care of my skin, I am more often than not lazy and sleep with my make up, which is not healthy and rarely ever mositurise. So I have given myself a skincare regime to follow each day, washing my face with a scrub, cleansing it and removing any left over make up and then applying a balm. Hopefully I will see an improvement in my skin and feel better about my face by doing this. The third thing that I am going to do is get back into the habit of going to the gym, which I have let slip in recent months. My body is probably the one thing that I am confident about, I like the body that I have and I’m going to continue to maintain it and also improve it. Something that shouldn’t take too much effort.

Starting with these slightly easier tasks, once completed, once they become rituals, I will start adding more and more things in, all related to self care in order to help me learn to love myself. For example, eating more healthily and ensuring I have regular health check ups, and the big one, stop smoking!

I will get there, day by day, taking baby steps.

Until next time.

Just a little lighter

You know how heavy your purse or wallet is when you have gathered a collection of coins? They are quite weighty when you have accumulated a few right? Imagine my shoulders bear the weight of pound coins, all lined up from the top of each arm to my neck, towering over my head.

Today I feel like maybe just one of those coins have been lifted, and put elsewhere. It’s not a great deal of difference but it’s something, just something that teeny little bit better than the day before. I have slowly started to cut something our of my life, bit by bit, day by day, and I feel the pennies may be starting to drop. People always say that if you go into something with a negative attitude you will likely have a negative outcome. The same can be said for the things and the people you surround yourself with. If you continue to talk to people that out you down, you will continue to feel low. If you continue to spend time with people that encourage you to do bad things, you will more than likely so bad things. If you want to stop doing those things, having those feelings, not only do you have to train your brain, learn to control it. You also have to choose to remove the things that are getting in the way of our a ability to get to where we want to be.

We all too often blame ourselves, we think that we need to be better. We need to get better at dealing with our thoughts and feelings. We should be stronger, we are not like normal people. Then we feel like we aren’t deserving of anything. But we are not all bad, and sometimes we are right about things, more often than not our feelings are justified. When someone is putting us down, instead of feeling like we need a thousand counselling sessions to be able to take that out down, and not let it make us feel like we are better of dead, why not take the put down out of the equation. We may need professional help to learn how to cope with certain things, in life we will always come across people who will out us down, and we do need to learn how to deal with that in the moment. But what we must not do is allow someone to put us down continuously.

I had my first counselling session yesterday. We didn’t get through much, didn’t even finish my story. I only have a very limited number of sessions with this counsellor, so we have agreed to focus on my self-esteem, to make me feel better about myself as a push start to my recovery. Today I went back to the gym, which also made me feel much better than I thought it would, I just had to find the motivation. On Monday I felt like I had no chance of seeing the end of this year, today I am open to the possibility that I may be able to stay here a little longer. But I may skip at any time, the oath is very rocky at the monent.

Until next time.

Understanding Self-Esteem

When thinking about problems that one may have with their mental health I used to think only of anxiety and depression, and forget that there are other things that contribute to mental health such as stress, anger and self-esteem.

“self–esteem reflects a person’s overall subjective emotional evaluation of his or her own worth. It is a judgment of oneself as well as an attitude toward the self.”

Search the word on the internet and you will come across many definitions like the one above. When I used to think about self-esteem I thought it was solely about appearance, are you happy with what you look like, are you comfortable with your weight, do you consider yourself to be attractive. But I have come to realise that there is much more to self-esteem than anyone thinks at first glance, and that it has a major impact on my life and the things that I do every single day. My ex boyfriend used to ask me a question such as “what would you like for dinner?” and then follow it up almost immediately with ” don’t even say you don’t mind”. I always used to say you know how indecisive I am, I like it when other people make choices for me. Only in the last few days have I actually learnt that my indecisiveness is a result of my low self-esteem. Having no confidence and belief in yourself, fearing that you will make the wrong choice, makes you not want to be responsible for the choice at all. Whether its just going to affect yourself of whether its going to impact others, and that is even scarier. You don’t want to suggest somewhere to eat, just in-case the person you go with doesn’t like it, and then associates that experience with you and blames you for it. Decisions, they occur numerous times on a daily basis, and being indecisive is something that I do automatically every time and would never have thought it had anything to do with my self-esteem!

So what are the signs that you have low self-esteem? You may be well aware that you have a struggle at the moment but you may not have thought that self-esteem was something that you need to work on to help you fight. Here are some common signs that you have low self-esteem:-

Feelings of hate or dislike to yourself
Feeling worthless or not good enough
Being unable to make decisions or assert yourself
Feeling like no one likes you
blaming yourself for things that aren’t your fault
Feeling guilty for spending time or money on yourself
Being unable to recognise your strengths
Feeling undeserving of happiness
Having a negative outlook
Lack of confidence
Inability to express your needs
Focusing on your weaknesses
Feelings of shame, depression, or anxiety
Belief that others are better than you
Trouble accepting positive feedback
Fear of failure

How many of these do you experience? I think I suffer with all of them. Damn that’s pretty scary! No wonder I don’t believe anyone loves me, no wonder I always feel like I cant trust anyone, not boyfriend nor friend, and sometimes not even family. How can I possibly believe that anything will be good when I think this way?

Update with my progress- I have had my assessment and I have been put on to a wellbeing course with the opportunity to have some one-to-one counselling after I have completed it. Bad news is- there is a waiting list for the course, and its going to take a little while to complete it so I could still be a very long way from the help that I need. So in the meantime I am doing my best to self-help, I have brought a CBT book and I am just about to get to the practical part where I will learn things that I can put into practice and share them with you here. My goal for this week is to research and practice methods of raising my self-esteem, I think its a great place to start and will have a domino effect with both my anxiety and depression. Fingers crossed.

One very important thing that I have learnt this week is that to start feeling better, you need to take away the things that are having a negative impact on your health. As hard as it is to do that, you will only feed off of these things and they can very easily reverse any progress that you have made.

In my last post Is love the answer? I talked about wanting to have someone beside me through the journey, how people have caused me to feel this way and I feel like I need people to help me feel better. I do hope that there are currently people in my life, and that I will in the future meet people who will hold my hand through this struggle, but I have learnt that you are better off doing it alone than turning to someone who is unreliable, and causes your head more confusion. If they cant decide whether they want to be there for you or not, don’t accept their help at all. You need support that is concrete, people who you can turn to no matter what.

Until next time.

Is love the answer?

The last few days have been hard, so very hard. How can I be so up and down? My mood has been low for the last 6 weeks at least, it’s rarely even made it to neutral. But why do I have fight in me some days and others I want to give up everything?

Recently a friend of mine wasn’t in a good place, she didn’t want to accept any help from me and I remember telling her that she didn’t have to suffer alone. I said that we were all put on this earth to aid eachother one way or another, if we werent then there would only be one person on earth surely? I said whatever storm she was trying to sail through on her own, I’d sail through it with her. I’d get in her little boat and I’d help her out the other side of it. I still to this day don’t know exactly what she was struggling with, but I didn’t need to know I just needed to be there for her, to never give up. To be something concrete, when everything inside her could not stand still. I hope now that I was there for her enough and that she never felt like I’d leave her in her time of need.

I think about all the things that I have been through that have made me feel the way that I do. People tell me that it’s not my fault, that I can’t let people that have done wrong ruin the rest of my life for me. I would be lying if I said that I don’t recognize that, because to some extent I do. When I’m having a stronger day, when I feel like my life should have value I want to choose to beat these feelings. I want to be happy and successful, I want to be able to be comfortable enough in my own life to be able to give those people the fingers and say haha, you tried to take me down but look at me now. Unfortunately that does not provide me with the motivation that I need, with the strength to actually get to that point, so I need to find another way to do so. I know that ultimately it is down to me to change the way that I view the world, to make myself better.

However, I can’t help but feel like I need someone there to help me through it. I feel as though it took people to break me, and it’s going to take people to make me again. If people can take away my ability to trust, my ability to see my self-worth, make my world a hostile place. Surely it’s only logical for it to balance, and for good people to help build my trust, help me see my worth, and help me my world as a happy friendly place. I didn’t take this all away on my own so why do I have to build it back on my own. Why is that fair? If anything it is adding to the way I feel. If nobody loves me enough to hold my hand every step of the way, to not give up on me then surely what I’m feeling is true? That is feeding it all. Everytime that someone says they will be there for me but they’re not, everytime someone promises me something and breaks it, everytime I feel like someone doesn’t believe in me. I only know love from my perspective of what I feel for those I love. Id never give up on any of them, I’d never put my needs first, I’d help them no matter what or how. Surely if I’m not getting the same in return then I am not loved? And I am not loved because I’m not worthy of being loved. What is the point in living if I am not loved, it’s okay to say that it’s only loving yourself that matters. It’s okay to say that I should only rely on myself for my happiness. But I am not alone in the world, why should I have to do everything on my own and become an outcast from society so that people don’t hurt me, because people won’t help to make me better. Why should I give love and care to others, to not receive it in return. Why should I live if I cannot give or receive love? That is all I want to do, that is all that I feel my purpose is. I don’t want to make money, I don’t want to step foot in every country, I don’t want to go to fancy balls. I just want to love and to be loved, and I see no point in life without that.

Until next time.

Failure is not an option.

So at this very moment it is my workplace causing me the most anxiety, yesterday I achieved my mission and I didn’t have another attack at work!

I need this job, I need the money, I can’t let any negative thoughts or feelings stop me from going to work, I’ll only end up in a worse situation when I can’t pay my bills. As I got ready for work this morning I listened to some motivational speeches, they are always so full of empowering words and today what stood out for me was the sentence “failure is not an option” . I’ve heard this before but only know has it actually clicked on my head. At present, my focus is just to get through each day, day by day, without feeling low, without having an attack. The goal is to have a good day, a happy day. This morning I realised that I have to take away failure as an option, if the option doesn’t exist it can’t happen. That doesn’t necessarily mean that the day is going to be easier, or that all of a sudden my days are just going to be great, but it does mean that I remove the option to give up. If I have a day where something happens that I didn’t want to happen, that I didn’t plan as part of my happy day, it doesn’t mean that I have failed, it means that I must try harder to find the positives in that day, and not go to bed at night feeling like it was a total write off.

I came into work this morning and the first thing I did was stick three photos of my beautiful little boy around my computer screen. This is to remind me of what good I do have, even in the toughest of moments. Every time I feel myself slipping back into that moment where I feel like the world is against me, like I’m not worthy of love, like I’m not worthy of anything, I can look at his cheeky smile. With that I am reminded that I created him, I have made him who he is today, that’s my achievement and it’s the greatest achievement I have ever had. And be reminded that I give and receive the greatest form of love every single day, it doesn’t matter who else wants me, he needs me, every single day.

Those pictures are there to help me find my motivation to keep on going. We all must find the one thing, that gives us the strength to push on through when we feel too much pain to go on anymore. We cannot give up on ourselves, we cannot fail on our own goals, failure is not an option. Success takes hard work, we must work hard, not for anyone else, but for ourselves. You have the power to do anything you set your mind to, and setting your mind is the key.

Until next time.

Why can’t I stop it?!

So yesterday at work I had another panick attack. It’s horrible, how many of these can I have in one month seriously?

I started off feeling really hot and sweaty, then I couldn’t breathe properly. Then my whole body started to tingle and shake, even my lips and my eyelids. My fingers just locked into a position and I couldn’t physically move them. It took me hours to calm down. It’s so embarrassing when your work colleagues start asking you if your okay and start presenting you with things and suggestions to help you. I just felt like such an idiot.

This time I wasn’t able to stop the thoughts in my head to stop myself feeling so low. It just takes hearing one little thing to set me off, why can’t I ignore these things. Why do they end up taking over my body.

I shook and I trembled as I came into work this morning but I am here and I am trying again. I can’t give up I have to try and try harder every single day. Today the goal is to not have another one. No matter what the day throws at me I need to be stronger than it. I have to try and remind myself that I’m living and breathing and I have a very positive future ahead of me but I just have to push myself to reach it!

Until next time.

Anxiety checklist – first success

I recently made myself a checklist to follow each day to fight my anxiety and try to live my days without suffering.

I just conquered two points in one scenario and I feel great!! I have touched on how I do not value myself and have no self confidence. This has caused me no end of insecurities in relationships, always feeling like other girls have way more to other than I do. There is a girl in my office that I have had an issue with for a long time. She was very jealous of my relationship with my ex and she made that very known to me. Instead of taking that in my stride and feeling good that I had what others wanted I let it eat me up inside, I hated her and everytime I saw her my anxiety flared up. Heart racing,hands shaking, blood boiling, day ruined.

Today I had an issue with one of my systems and had to use a manager’s computer to complete a task, right by her desk. At first thought of going over there to do it I started getting the sinking feeling in my tummy and I wanted to look for an excuse not to. But I didn’t. A daily goal is to face a fear, being anywhere near her was my fear and I did it. I walked over with my head held high and I did what I needed to do. I even had a conversation with someone and managed to smile, I didn’t hide away. I can do it, if I tell myself to, if I want it enough. How great is that?!

Which brings me to my second point, whilst there I could hear her conversation with her manager. They were laughing and joking about her being a ‘pikey’ and talking about Snapchat, oh I hate that app. Immediately I feared they were making indirect digs at me, joking about her stealing my boyfriend and talking about her sending him indecent things on Snapchat. Something I always suspected was going on. Maybe I was right, but hey maybe I was not and why should I choose to beat myself up and feel down about something that may or may not be true. Even if it was true, still I shouldn’t let it get to me, cause I deserve better than that and now I’m choosing to believe it. I fought a cognitive distortion, overthinking, jumping to conclusions. I stopped it, with my own brain, who knew I could do that?

I am so impressed and so happy with myself. 😊

If I can do it so can you!

Until next time.

Anxiety – A daily checklist

This is my first constructive post that I hope may help people.

After reading lots of different blogs last night I realised that we often read about the things that we should be doing, agree to try them but then never actually put them in to practice. I have made myself a small checklist of 5 things to do every day to help me have a better day.

Compliment myself – Last night I listened to a guided meditation and this really stuck out for me the most. She said that no matter how much a person loves you, no matter how much they value you, you will automatically see that they value you the way that you value yourself. This is one of my biggest struggles, I do not value myself at all so I don’t see how anyone else could value me. So this is my first item on my checklist, It wont make me love myself overnight, but day by day I hope it will change the way I see myself. This may be as simple as complimenting myself for my hair or the outfit I have chosen that day, or complimenting myself for the way I handled a tricky situation at work.
Do a good deed – They always say that helping out another person will make you feel better. I am definitely one of these people, I feel great when I have made someone smile or just made their day a little easier. Whether its telling someone that they still have the label on their jacket or giving someone the extra change that they need to complete their purchase at the till point. This will not only remind me that there is good in the world, but It will help me to believe that people see my worth, because I am giving them a reason to.
Fight a cognitive distortion – This one is going to be tricky and I’m not quite sure yet how I am going to do it. I have a really bad case of ‘All or nothing thinking’ which is very common it seems in those that suffer with their mental health. I want to start by trying to have control over my mind at least once each day. To remind myself that I am in control, and when that panic takes over me, whether I am mind reading, or jumping to conclusions. I am going to try to stop in that moment and think the opposite to what I am thinking, no its not the end of the world, it doesn’t have to be all or nothing, maybe they are not thinking that. I will try to give you some examples of this one as I go along.
Face a fear – Similarly to number three above, I want to try every day to do something I am afraid of. By this I don’t mean tackling my biggest fears, just doing one small thing. One of those things that people always say your silly for being afraid of. For me this will most commonly be the fear of what other people think. I may pick an outfit out of my wardrobe in the morning and then put it back because I think others will judge me, or I might hold in my need for the toilet until those popular girls have moved so I don’t have to walk by them. When I do walk by them I tend to hang my head in shame, hide my face, avoid contact, for what reason? Now it is my mission to everyday face one of these fears. Maybe it will be just walking by someone I am afraid of and smiling at them.
Meditate – I think it is important to give your brain some me time, to just relax and really try to exhale all those negative thoughts and inhale all of the positives. It may not seem to benefit you much at the beginning. When you think about it, you are allowing yourself that time to address the negative thoughts, rather than them just building up and then exploding in an attack. I may even try to do this twice a day, once in the morning to clear my head of anything negative I have awoken with, and once at night to clear away all of the negative that has built up during the course of the day.

I don’t know how useful this will be to myself or any of you, but I hope this inspires you to do something if you aren’t already. We must actively try to battle this, every single day. The do nothing approach will not work for us, it wont just go away by itself and another person will not make it go away for us. The only person you can rely on for your happiness is you.

Good luck with whatever it is that you do each day to combat the bad, if you have any suggestions for me please do help!

Until next time.

Being the Victim

Victim, I’m not sure I like that word…

There is a phrase that has been repeating itself over and over in my head over the past few days. “You always act like the Victim”. I have had a lot of time to think this over and I had never really noticed it before but I guess it is something that I do, subconsciously. See who I am and who I want to be seem to be two very different people separated by a loss of control over my mind. I know who I want to be, how I want to act, and I have all the right intentions. These intentions seem to travel from my heart, into my head, and there they are manipulated into something so far from how they begun. Like a game of Chinese whispers. I always thought that I was a selfless person, that I put others above myself always and that I was a very caring and understanding person. Maybe I still am, but just not to everyone?

Let me give you an example, on mothers day this year I went out to town with a friend who was at the time with child. She was so distressed and upset because her partner hadn’t got her a card or gift from “the bump”. Some people may not believe in this practice, but as a mother I know that parenting begins the moment that you conceive, and I wanted her to feel some sort of recognition for all the sacrifices she has already made. I am a single mum myself, and I didn’t have a lot of money. But I raced around, I bought a card and flowers, and some cookies. I placed them on her doorstep, knocked and hid. I will never know how that made her feel, of course she thanked me a great deal and I think that she appreciated it, as would have I. That’s the me that I feel that I truly am in my heart, and the me that I wish I could be every minute of every day.

Let me give you another example, another very close friend of mine found herself in a similar struggle to that of my current struggle. I wont go into any details because that is not my story to tell. That girl is my life, family that I wasn’t born into, family that chose me. I had a feeling that if I didn’t pull her away from the situation very quickly she would loose herself, and maybe I would loose her forever. I couldn’t bare the thought of my friend suffering any worse than she already was. Without even asking her I booked her a ticket to travel to the country that I live in and I drove 3 hours to pick her up. I took her away from a bad situation, and I knew it wouldn’t fix her, but it would give her time to reflect before making any rash decisions. I barely had any money myself, and I certainly couldn’t afford to do what I did, but I did it anyway. That’s how important she is to me. I would do the same for anyone that is close enough to me.

So why is it that when it comes to men this side of me seems to disappear of the face of the earth? why is it that I feel like I am still being the same person that I want to be, that my friends can see, but to men that’s not how it comes across. I always thought I made compromises in the relationships I have had, but maybe I didn’t. Taking a step back and looking at it, my feelings have always been my number one concern in a relationship and for that reason I have neglected the feelings of the other party. I don’t agree with that, It goes against everything that I stand for. A relationship should work both ways, so why do I feel like only I can set the boundaries? I am starting to see that I don’t always play the Victim, I am always the Victim. Maybe not in reality, but I am in my head. My brain processes all of its thoughts with me as the Victim, always trying to protect me. My brain thinks its self defence, but really its self destruction. Every day in a relationship it is telling me I am the Victim, just like I was all those years ago and that I cannot trust any man. Its not just men, but women too. Anyone new that I meet faces the same barrier, I have no self confidence, no self worth and that affects me with everyone I come across in life.

What I need to do now is focus on building self esteem, building that confidence so that whether I’m walking into a new situation or a new situation arises within a longstanding relationship, I don’t instantly believe I am the victim. I want to be able to be in that moment with no preconceptions, no worries, no paranoia. I don’t want to walk into a room full of new people and think ” why would anyone want to talk to me, I’m not worthy of anyone’s time”. I want to have the confidence to walk into that room and think ” I am going to start a conversation with as many people as I can in this room, because I am a great person to talk to”. It seems so far away, but I know I will get there one day.

I found it very hard to fall asleep last night, thoughts were running wild. But I did come up with something that has given me some excitement in this dark time. I have set myself a goal for the year ahead, and something special to celebrate with when I reach my goal.

Until next time.