,​Just after my breakdown I told someone that I wanted to get involved with charity to try and make a difference in the world of mental health.  I didn’t know what, and I didn’t know how, but I knew I wanted to do something.  It was a feeling that I couldn’t ignore, and it was resonating with me on a level I hadn’t experienced before.
 
Therefore, I was quite disappointed when the person I opened up to said “you don’t want to do that.  It won’t be how you think it will be”.
 
I still recall that conversation, and I play it back to myself every few days.  I used to be so consumed with controlling and planning my future, and I would leave very little room for uncertainty.  Therefore when my attempt at reaching out and doing something different was challenged, I came very close to giving up that intention.   Luckily the feeling in my gut wouldn’t go away and so I pursued it.  I was desperate to make a difference, and to let go of my fear of uncertainty.
 
These days as my anxiety can take over at any moment I have to live with a certain buffer, and this means I have to embrace uncertainty.  Rather than obsess over the little details I have evolved into living with a “things are working out perfectly just as they are” approach. 

It's taken a few years for me to develop this acceptance, and it is something I am still working on improving.  While it takes work, I know there are a few things I subscribe to that really help me.  As I know how they have had a huge influence in my life, I thought I would share them in case they can help anyone else out there.
 
So here are my top 3 tips.
 
1 – Have a thought through plan B, but don't have a fully detailed plan C, D and E.  Accept that you may need to shift a few things, but don’t obsess over every single possible tangent that a situation may lead to.  
 
You only have a certain amount of energy, so investing some in a back up is great; however using all of it to create multiple back ups will leave you feeling so drained, and you will be unable to navigate any of the back ups should they be required.

​2 – Get the facts, not the fiction.   When you hear something you are often receiving it with a little bias attached.   If the information has passed through a group of people you will have multiple levels of bias attached.  You also always add your own piece of bias to what you see or hear.  We can all get so caught up in something we have heard, only to then realize hours later that it wasn’t that bad, or it wasn’t even entirely true.  
 
Again, invest your energy wisely.  When someone says “did you hear…” ask where they heard it from, ask if they know it is for definite or if it is just a possibility, ask if they are even meant to know this information.  Believe me, their answers to this will give you a fair idea as to whether what you are hearing is definite fact or not. 
 
Not only is this a great time and energy saver, but it will also give more credibility to the things you do say.  If you stop yourself from passing on any hearsay you will find that when you say something yourself it is given more gravitas.  You will also find that once you question sources of hearsay, people will start to only come to you with facts.

​3 – Prepare for the zombie apocalypse.  Ok, don’t fully prepare, but make sure you know who you would have in your survival group.  Create a tribe that you believe in and that serve you. 
 
By surrounding people who support you and have faith in you, it increases the faith you have in yourself.  When this happens you start to trust yourself and that in turn creates the confidence that you can handle whatever life throws at you. 
 
(disclaimer – should a zombie apocalypse occur, I take no responsibility for telling you not to fully prepare)

​So there you have my foundations for starting to embrace uncertainly.  I hope they help, and that you are able to find more peace and enjoyment through letting go.

Also, just to let you know, that person who said striving to do charity work wouldn’t be what I expected was totally right.  I expected it to be largely thankless grafting as I tried to make some sort of tiny difference, and for it to be a somewhat limiting venture.
 
Instead as I type this I am drinking coffee and  looking over Sunset Strip in West Hollywood.  I came over to LA last week to be a part of a Depressed cake Shop pop up at a This is my Brave event, and I have spent the past 6 days working to raise awareness of mental health – while also raising funds for local mental health charities.  I have been honored to have been grafting alongside some of the most inspiring and talented women in America, and I receive communication from people daily about the difference my work and my mental health blog makes to them.  
 
I also know that this is just the beginning, and that there is a plethora of possibilities and opportunities that I couldn’t dream up even if I tried.
 
Yup, this is NOTHING like I thought it would be...

Lots and lots of love to you all,
​Bu xx 

I wonder how many of us are still with our first love.  I would be willing to bet that those of us who aren’t can remember the friend who pulled us through the heartache of the breakup.
 
But what about when it feels like one of your friends has broken your heart?
 
For me, friendship is one of the single most beautiful things in life.  My friends are my world; I am naturally a rather cynical being, but my friends are the one area of my life that I have no boundaries with.  I trust that they love me, and I love them unconditionally.

Some of the heart wrenching moments of my life have come when here have been any sort of altercation with these people, and I am (still) devastated to say there have been a couple with whom reconciliation hasn’t been achieved.
 
When this happened I felt the same aching, longing and general disbelief that I'd associated with the end of a romantic relationship .  The things that further twisted the knife was that these were not the people who were meant to make me feel like this.  These were the people who I had believed would undoubtedly be with in 60 years time, recalling stories of our past and still laughing so much we ached.
 
When you lose a friendship, it’s a strange dimension of pain.  It is not something that we can prepare for, and I believe it can be trickier to navigate through than with than a “traditional” break up.  After all, there aren’t stereotypical coping mechanisms associated with friendship breakups; there aren’t the mandatory hours allocated to eating whole tubs of Ben & Jerrys, while watching Thelma & Louise,  or the encouragement to “get a new haircut”, “overhaul your wardrobe" or " go on holiday with the girls”.
 
I’d be lying if I said that I didn’t still ache for certain people, however me saying how much I (still) love them isn’t going to help anyone out there. Instead I wanted to share a few things that I learnt as I worked through my heartbreak.

​

• Spend the spare time you suddenly have (as lets face it, a lot of daily whatsapp messages and a weekly phone call can add up!) investing in yourself.  Grab that book you kept meaning to read, practice that hobby you've been putting off until ‘tomorrow’.
• Do not, under any circumstances, enter into bitching or point scoring.  You are hurting because you love them, be sure to respect that fact and don’t mar it by lashing out.  
• As an extension of the above, don’t use social media as a channel of passive aggressive action.  Once again, "unfriending" people, blocking people, "unfollowing" people and petty comments are not cool.  They are simply detrimental to the memories you share, and to your own classiness. 
• Perhaps more importantly, the above also really dents the opportunity for a possible reconciliation.  It would be horrendous to realize that some love and friendship could have been salvaged, had you not made them out to be the she-devil to all who would listen.

 
Friendships, like ‘other’ relationships, can have bumps in the road.  What really counts is how you deal with them.  Question the bumps, grieve if needed, and then take a step forward. 
 
There is always the chance people will come back into your life when you are both ready, but even if they don’t you can still  to be thankful for all the good times.
 
Also, remember that we only hurt when we lose something we truly loved.   xx

I just had one of those moments when I thought "I MUST share this; maybe noone will see it, maybe it will just be there for me to read in the future, but I must do it".

I was trying to explain to someone how I try to manage aspects of my mental health.  One of the ways I do it is via this blog. I strive to fight the stigma that is attached to mental health issues.  The stigma is huge, and stale and will take so much chipping away at.  

It has formed over time, and now has so many layers, each like a layer that has to be removed.  Some are like limestone, some like shale; others like composite rocks - opinions and prejudices that have all gathered together to make one larger established opinion.  

If I can reach some people through my blog then they can help me chip away at a layer; then they mention mental health to someone else and that chips away at another layer, and so on. 

Then, on bad days it's in front of me; and while I may feel like I'll never be able to do those things again, it was ME who jotted them down, so it is like a sign from ME that I might just be ok. 

I don't know if that makes sense?

I named this post in honour of an amazing woman I know who is currently undergoing chemotherapy.  She always encourages me to take baby steps, and highlighted this morning that my diary is one of them.  That is why I felt I'd like to share what I do, just in case that baby step can help others.  

This lady pointed out today that we approach our illnesses in similar ways, even though hers is more physical than mine.  What a wonderful thing for someone like me to hear.  Here I am trying to remove the stigma attached to mental health, and someone in the throes of a most crippling illness highlights that we are choosing to work through it all in a similar way.  

Both of our illnesses are crippling in their own way, and both deserve support and understanding.  The point I made in response to this lady, is that I feel how we choose to battle our illnesses is what defines us deep down. The illnesses affecting us are parasites that try to stop us being us.  The illnesses try to define us.  They take over us on our bad days, so it's up to us to build defenses on our good ones. 

I'd like to finish by asking you to think about real baby steps, whether you are ill or not I think there is a point here that is valid for us ALL in life.   

We can't remember it, but we fell so many times when we were learning to take baby steps.  Heck, I still fall over now!  So it's ok if we seem to be making progress with something and then stack it.  After all, we all got there in the end with the walking, didn't we?

Thank you for reading, and take care

Bu xx

If someone had asked me 6 months ago what my thoughts on anxiety were, I’m not sure I would have had many opinions to voice.  I guess I thought it was someone being more worried than usual, and that they were likely to avoid situations that made them feel uneasy.  

If someone were to ask me about it now, I still don’t know quite what I’d say; but that’s because I have been battling with anxiety disorder since April.  

This may be news to a lot of my friends or family who read this (if they do in fact read my blog – what a great way to find out if they do!) as I have kept it largely to myself while trying to work what my anxiety is is all about and how I can control it.  I think I may have worried that people may not know about anxiety, and therefore I haven’t known how to speak to them about it.

Due to this I want to take a few steps to try and communicate about it with people, but not in a preachy way – I want to approach it in a way that actually helps; and think raising awareness about aspects of anxiety in a ‘real’ way is key.

For today I thought I would attempt to describe how feeling edgy and anxious can affect breathing.  It’s one of the main signs of anxiety, and I’m eager to try and explain how it feels to those who have not experienced it.   

So, uneasy breathing…

For those of you who are athletic, think of that feeling when you can’t quite get your breathing right (normally at the beginning of a run) and you are totally aware of the fact.  

You know that you know how to breathe, and you know that you should be able to do so naturally, so why on this occasion won’t it fall into timing.  You try adjusting your stride length or the tempo of your music but it doesn’t help. 

Got that image and recall how frustrating it is? Well that is the feeling – only those moments where your breath catches in your throats can affect someone who is anxious at any time, even when they are sitting down with a cuppa.

Maybe you’re not athletic?  Ok, cast your mind back to a time when you have been faced with lots and lots stairs, or are having to rush along.  You are very aware you’re your fitness is being tested and you can’t breathe properly.  The problem is that you don’t want anyone else to know that you are struggling and so you try to hide the fact, all the time you are getting warmer and warmer… 

If you’re lucky that will be as bad as it gets, but imagine at that point someone starts talking to you, - so you have to try to have a conversation, all the time trying to appear calm but inside wondering when you can gasp for air?  You are conscious of the burning sensation, and the fact that no matter what you do you can’t pretend that everything is “a-ok”... 

If you can cast your mind to those feelings of not being able to inhale enough while trying to subtly gulp as much air as you can, and then add to that the feeling of someone having their hands around your throat while standing on your chest (a very agile someone, it seems!) then you are getting close to how it feels for someone struggling with breathing due to anxiety.  Combine it with a emotions that may include desperation, shame and frustration, and you are there.

The problem with being in this situation (other than the obvious) is that the more you are aware of breathing being an issue the worse it becomes, and the more your breath catches.  Also unlike the other situations, sitting down and taking some time doesn’t automatically rectify the situation.  

What can you do if this is affecting you, or someone you are with?   

Understanding why it happens and escalates does really help.  The slightly ironic thing in this case is the fact that you feel like you can’t inhale but that largely due to the fact that you’re probably not exhaling.  

When you are inhaling in short sharp breaths you can’t suddenly take a deep breath without first exhaling a long breath – go ahead and try it, the attempt at a large in breath will stick in your throat.  

Also when you breathe in a short sharp manner you get chest pain and heaviness due to the stress you have placed on your muscles in your chest (its common to feel like you are having heart problems in a panic attack, but the pain is your chest, not your heart).  

The lack of deep breaths can make you lightheaded and dizzy, it increases your heart rate.   Different people are affected to different levels, if my anxiety turns into a full panic attack I I also get numbness in my hands.  All of these symptoms are scary and can start a downward spiral of panic.  This is why I feel it is important to understand why they are happening, as at least then they are slightly less alarming (only slightly).

So there you have it, I guess my closing point for this post is just to say remember to exhale – I know it’s the opposite of what instincts may say, but I promise it really does help.

If you’ve made it this far then thanks for reading.  I hope that the post has been useful in some way for you even if it’s just slightly increasing awareness or understanding.  

All the very best to everyone 

Bu x