I’ve been living with anxiety for most of my life – but I never actually realised it was anxiety. I thought everyone was ready to get off the bus or train five minutes before they needed to be. I thought everyone practised conversations before having them (even what to say Read more…
There are many different approaches when it comes to anxiety and depression, but one you may not have considered before is neurofeedback. What is neurofeedback? Neurofeedback is a type of therapy where an EEG (electroencephalogram) is used to monitor your brainwave activity. A program will then use cues such as Read more…
Mindfulness seems to have become ubiquitous lately; it’s everywhere, mentioned in relation to just about everything. It’s the buzzword on everyone’s lips. But what is it, and can it help your mental health? What is mindfulness? The short answer is that mindfulness is being aware of the current moment – Read more…
I wrote a whole book about having a nervous breakdown… but the truth is that there’s no such thing. Wait, what? No such thing as a nervous breakdown? Yes, really. There’s no such thing. When I had a breakdown/lost my mind/went mad the official diagnosis on my sick note was Read more…
When you’re struggling with any kind of mental health issue, some form of counselling or support can be really helpful. Often one of the main problems with depression and/or anxiety is that we don’t like to burden our friends and family with our problems. When I was ill, I felt Read more…
Last week after the announcement of Chester Bennington’s death a friend posted a brutally honest update on Facebook, saying their antidepressant dosage had been increased and they were suffering with the side effects. This post was not to garner sympathy but rather to encourage people to talk about their mental Read more…
When I had my breakdown, I got to a point where I realised it was down to me to drag myself out of this. There was this real “shit or get off the pot” moment where I said to myself, you either get on and kill yourself, or you figure Read more…
When I was younger I was painfully, mortifyingly shy. I can remember being in first school and wetting myself on a regular basis, not because I didn’t know I needed to go to the toilet, but because I was petrified of asking my teacher if I could go to Read more…
I make no secret of the fact I had a breakdown in 2010. I think it probably stuns a few people when I talk about it, but it was a year or more of my life; I can’t just pretend none of it happened. I think a lot of Read more…
I had a nervous breakdown in 2010. While I was recovering, I met a man and became pregnant quite quickly. I wrote this in November 2011, when I was around 3 months pregnant with S. I had come off my antidepressants when I first found out I was pregnant, and Read more…