Only human

It's been over five weeks since I last blogged and even longer since I read anyone else's blog. Hope all of you are well and for those of you with blogs I am slowly making my way round reading up on all of your news.

I'm afraid the stress of work and home life took its toll in May and I became so drained I had to withdraw and focus on only those things six inches in front of my nose. I wasn't a cheery person. It can be inspiring sometimes when blog authors set aside the carefully curated content normally on show to open up when their life is on a downer because it shows they suffer the same trials as the rest of us but in this case I was on such a downer writing about it would have made things worse for me. So I withdrew from everything, even going out, talking to people and self-care.

My GP surgery has a mental health nurse so I went to see her for a chat (i.e. I blubbed massively in front of her) and she told me about an NHS service called Talking Therapies, which I could self-refer to. I gave it a call, had an assessment and chose to do a five week self-help course. Once a week I attended a session where counsellors explained the impact of anxiety and stress, the role of negative thinking and gave us homework to do every week to help us begin to understand the factors at play in our own lives that were contributing to our mental health in positive and negative ways.

It has been eye-opening to discover I have had anxiety all of my life (which I thought was just normal scenario planning), and which has become quite severe over the last few months since I came back from Australia. Being removed from every day life for three weeks helped me relax more than I ever have over the last 15 years (in fact, since the last time I went to Australia) and then trying to cope (or go 'back in the box') when I came back brought everything to a head. I knew I felt that living with my MIL was hard but wasn't consciously aware that some of my feelings were the same as I experienced when I was living at home with my own parents, which I did not like and I left as soon as I was able to financially support myself at 19. My brain remembered, however, and has been employing all sorts of physical and mental protection strategies, the majority of which were/are simply not necessary and made me unwell.

I'm now feeling better able to cope with life. Tomorrow I have my course assessment, and I will decide whether I want to go on and talk to a psychologist or work with the strategies I have learned on the course for a bit longer. They can take up to 12 weeks to have an impact as they gain strength and momentum the more they are practised. I have no idea at the moment which way to go but my conversation with the nurse tomorrow will help me decide.

So that's it really. I do have a few things to blog about that have happened over the last few weeks. The sheep were sheared, the Oxford Sandy and Black weaners have arrived, and I have returned to bargain snuffling and reading, as they are two of the things I identified on the course that I enjoyed and had stopped doing, but that is for another day.