Healing the Whole ...

I have already confessed my anxiety to this blog. I suffer from what has recently been described as high-performing or high-functioning anxiety. The more I feel I am losing control of the world around me, the more anxious I am, the more desperately I struggle to regain control. Often I can't and so it can quickly become a spiral of helplessness dragging me down into a pit of despair. I used to spend days in this pit of despair. Often in bed unable to face the world. I wonder writing this how many meetings I have cancelled by email too petrified to lift the phone. I wonder how many people suspected the real reason behind my last minute change of plans. My business mind starts to calculate the money lost. The productivity hours wasted while I lay in bed mentally paralysed. I am managing it far better now. Five years of hard work on every aspect of my personal development. Physical. Mental. Emotional. I can't neglect any part of my whole else I will end up back in the pit. It

I am very similar to a teenager. To know my mood, all you have to do is listen to the music I am playing. Linkin Park if I am angry. Lionel Richie if I am sad. 90s dance if I want to get motivated. Motown if I want to fall in love. When I lost my babies I couldn't listen to music. It was too painful. I didn't feel there was a song on this earth that could match my emotion. It wasn't a conscious descison though, much of my life after that was on auto-pilot, so it was in the car I first noticed it. I'd usually have my music blaring out loud singing along, but it was several months before I even turned on the radio. My grief felt so unique that no one could possibly understand it, let alone have written a song about it. I wrote poetry as my own outlet. It was about a year later when Eric Clapton's Tears in Heaven was played while I was with a group of friends. I knew the story but this time the song spoke to me totally differently. I had to leave the room as sobs wra

A good male friend once told me that women are emotionally selfish. We get a problem and tell a man about it and that offloads the anxiety from us onto them. And then we forget about it. We're not interested when the man tells us how to fix it. In the telling, the burden is lifted from our shoulders. I don't agree such emotional selfishness is limited to women. We all want that person or persons we can be vulnerable with and reveal our darkest fears. Because by revealing them we are facing them. I am an anxious person. You wouldn't believe it to look at me but the tell-tale signs are there. I am looking at my typing fingers with cuticles ripped to pieces as I nervously pick at them. My sleep is full of troubled dreams. My running slow and arduous as my body struggles to cope with the anxiety of my mind and the physical demands of my exercise. "What is troubling me?" someone might ask. The truth is I don't know. I struggle to articulate my feelings. But whe

Something amazing has just happened to me. I have been feeling really shit lately. Too many reasons to go into here but as I sink deeper into the pit, everything starts to become a struggle. I was walking down the street this morning and was stopped by a man. He looked untidy. Probably homeless I thought. I stopped expecting him to ask me for money. Instead he asked me how I was.  "You bought me lunch in the park," he reminded me when I looked a little blankly at him. I remembered. It was probably about two months ago. Maybe more. He looked different. Better. He told me how he had been detoxing in hospital. That he was getting his life sorted. Who knows if that was true but he did look well. His eyes clear. His skin a healthy colour. He asked me again how I was and I smiled. Really smiled. For what felt like the first time in a long time. "Good" was my reply. "Well you're smiling," he said, "and you gotta smile. Because what else is there?&q

My ex sent me a video today. He's an maintenance engineer in a vehicle manufacturing plant and the video is him with a sledgehammer bashing some equipment recorded in slow motion. 'Thought you would like this' goes the message. He thought I would like because he knows I like strong men. I was always extremely attracted to his muscular arms and legs. He's a kick boxer so that helped too! It's evolutionary. Like it or not, women are the weaker sex and when it comes to the bedroom I want a man that looks and feels strong enough to own me. But I also want a man who is emotionally strong. And here lies my problem. Because my ex, like myself, grew up being told that vulnerability is weakness. That the best form of defence is attack. Our parents did this to make us strong but instead they made us weak. Afraid to open our heart. Afraid to feel what we feel. Afraid to truly love anyone who could hurt us. It has taken me a lot of time and a lot of tears to get to this p

What a day today has been! It started with my last relationship contacting me via text message. He has been trying to get back in touch and I have been ignoring him. I thought it was the right thing to do as he was angry and saying cruel things I knew he didn't mean. Today his anger reached boiling point. He would use the texts and photos I sent him during our relationship to 'ruin me'. Now he's being dramatic because nothing I have sent him has the power to do that. Shock people maybe. Ruin me - no. But I saw how bad his anger was. This man is not vindictive. Clearly I needed to manage this break-up better. Then I saw my ex-husband. We are in the middle of our divorce. Finalising the finances is hard. He believes we have it all settled. He expects me to follow the plan in his head. I don't want to. My priority is financial sustainability for my daughter and I for the future. It is not to keep him happy. Yet he needs to be managed too else this will spiral out o