Life Via a Line

I think recently I have suffered with a little bit of anxiety.  My legs are not in a good way according to my latest MRI.  I can feel that my heart races, my body temperature rises, my hands shake, my stomach churns.  My thoughts start spiraling to the worst that could happen, and suddenly I feel so unequipped, like everything’s going to fall apart and I won’t be able to handle it. It makes me feel so powerless when anxiety takes over, almost like my brain and body are being hijacked, and there’s little I can do to feel safe or in control. Except, I know that’s not actually true.  Anxiety can have both physical and mental symptoms, and unfortunately, us humans can’t just will it away,  although there are things we can do to calm ourselves.  I know because, like most of us that have suffered with it, I been there many times recently and I’ve coped both poorly and well. I’ve panicked about panicking, believed every anxious thought, judged myself as weak and ...

I'm sat in the day room before treatment and I am for some reason recalling a conversation between my wife and I.  Last year my wife told me to stop resisting.  Stop fighting she used to say, stop fighting against being poorly. She used to tell me to allow every drop of treatment to enter my body in a positive way instead of every treatment session starting with me battling.  She used to question why in my treatment, in my work and other aspects of my life I fought.   I looked at my wife and in my mind I told myself do not resist.  I had been fighting, sometimes fighting for fightings sake, sometimes against God knows what but I was fighting.  I had never, even for a moment, thought about this concept.  I knew about letting go because everyone wants to be mindful and hippie.   It had never crossed my mind to do anything except fight.  This condition had taken my life as I knew it, my golf and in time a full time job and th...

I have mixed feelings about advice to be honest, sometimes when someone dumps something on me, I take the initiative and voluntarily start giving them solutions to their problem, even though this isn't strictly what they asked for.   When someone used to dump their problems on me, I used to think: “Oh, they have this problem and would you believe it, I have the answers. I’ll be a good friend and help them solve it because I care about them.” Over time, I noticed my friends body language towards me when I would go into solving zone and they would come across irritated.  I could tell, even though I believed in my advice, they didn't.   This led me to question how I reacted when I shared my problems with others and I looked at how they responded, often by giving me unsolicited advice.   Isn’t it funny how we often don’t know that something’s annoying and maybe even condescending until we’ve been on the re...

From an early age, at Primary School, I was taught about happiness and love.    In society today, anyone not smiling 24/7 is asked why the long face! Sometimes, although the majority of us do not wish to disclose it, sometimes we feel down.  Sometimes it feels like we have failed or even that life is cheating us of our due.   Social media really doesn't help as it seems everyone is loved up and happy and living the perfect life with the perfect body, perfect partner and perfect everything included, this I feel has unfortunately become society's norm.   Anyone with half a brain now's that life is not like that and I feel sorry for the youngsters of today brainwashed by social media growing up expecting this lifestyle that actually doesn't exist, are they ebwn equipped to deal with the downfall.  24/7 society craving happiness.  I’ve very very rarely bought in to this continuous happiness myth and believe me, I do not nee...

Growing up, I used to believe that there was something seriously wrong with me, I used to stress about it and thinking of how to fix myself was my main pastime.  I was very emotional inside, sensitive and intense.  I told this to myself, and plenty of other people told it to me too, both directly and indirectly. I had an analysis of life rather than an experience of life. When alone, my life was deep and vivid and rich. I felt it all. Little did I know then that actually no one  knows  how to live. We just  do  it. Emotion would often hit me at really inconvenient times, I tried to keep it under control.  I struggled to trust myself, I struggled to trust my thoughts.  My own body confused me and my sensitivity was out of control.   In 2010, when I became ill, I fell apart, It all fell apart. I realized that there was more to me, and the life I was living was a fake, a construction of me based purely on my thoughts.  Re...

 “There's a right way and a wrong way.” my famous nuns at St Augustine's RC Catholic Primary School in Hythe told me this.   The right way was the way my parents and the nuns wanted things done. There were a great many rules surrounding the right way for nearly everything, in an attempt to ensure that we got it right, and, when the rules weren't enough to enforce the rightness of our behavior, there were punishments or harsh words at school.   I have spent a great deal of my adult life learning to deal with the fallout of this type of ingrained thinking, it was actually important once upon a time for emotional survival and physical safety but now is no longer useful in my life.    There are still some huge blind spots in my view of things, places where I, myself, still expect those around me to conform to my concept of what is right, I   was certain my way was perfect and necessary for everyone.  It's easy to believe, be...

Up until the last few years, I have struggled to share my pain.  For years I took great pride in how stubborn I was. It wasn't until I had no choice and I was backed into what I felt like was a corner that my prideful attitude started to shift.  Actually, from this point, my whole life started to change.  I was slowly reaching out to others and asking for help.   Asking for help meant that I was sharing my pain and sharing what was happening with me and as weird as this sounds, I believed it was making me stronger.   I didn't expect that once I started to ask for help that people would just repeatedly offer without me asking.   I am stubborn, letting go definitely does not come easy for me.  I still resist change even after all this hippy soul searching my condition has put me through.  I struggle to accept that change is hard work and it also requires a willingness to let go a lot.   Naively, I thought that once...

My every emotion, feeling, or mood follows on directly from my thinking.  My thinking is not always accurate or actually even important and it does not always indicate what’s best for me. In reality, my feelings are nothing more than feedback about my thinking. My famous team of nuns from primary school always taught me to let emotion be my guide.  I believe this is very good advice and I have always followed my own feelings, gut feelings rather than listen to someone telling me what to do.       Several times I have misread my feelings and it has got me into trouble, once when I was 17, working at Our Price I got a slap round the face when I asked someone out after misreading my own feelings and also misreading signals.  I always feel what I think, that doesn't mean though that I am always feeling the truth - I that makes sense, it does in my head but not necessarily now I have written it down.  Feelings from thinking do not stretch to...

When I was younger, my family defined who I was and their mistakes left me feeling not good enough and not worthy.  At this young age I had never ever heard Maya Angelou’s words, “You alone are enough,” so I tried to prove my worth by getting a Saturday  job at fourteen in the small pharmacy up the road. £11 for 4 hours.  My work, school, tennis and my time spent at church youth club became a means to prove to others I was good enough.  I was more than good enough.  Now, at the age of thirty-nine, fastly approaching 40 years old, I still recognize this tendency to demonstrate my value to others.   I know I will likely need to work at reminding myself of being good enough and my worth for the rest of my life. Shame seemed to blossom inside of me and it encouraged me to keep a perfect house and to build a resume that said I was  somebody .   Obviously these are not bad things.  I don't regret some of my accompl...

It's 3am and I am sat up with a cup of tea writing this blog post. 2am is a friend of mine.  We are used to each others company. I am used to hearing my wife and my little labradoodle sleep while I am trying to make my brain tired again.  On rare occasions, I do not fall back to sleep and just stay awake reading.  The majority of time sees me attempt to go back sleep at around 1.5/2jr mark.  I haven't always suffered with Insomnia.  I slept through the hurricane and even a couple of earthquakes as a youngster.  Insomnia can be caused by both psychiatric and medical conditions.  In today's society we all focus on unhealthy sleep habits, specific substances, and/or biological factors in a quest to pinpoint why we cannot sleep or better still stay asleep.  A lot of research is poured into Insomnia currently especially in the world of cycling when it all comes down to marginal gains.   Through recent research, ...

I believe there is no single way of defining if someone is vulnerable. If we look at public services, there has been a shift away from defining vulnerability based on personal characteristics to a focus on the circumstances that make an individual vulnerable and the support required.  Someone may be vulnerable if in receipt of social care or even while in hospital, if disabled, with a long-term health problem, in a domestic abuse situation, or someone who becomes homeless or if their home is flooded.  The circumstances around being vulnerable may not always be long-term. Vulnerability has never been my strong suit. In order to be vulnerable, I needed to be OK with me, That’s the thing about vulnerability that no one tells you about. Being vulnerable is not just about showing the parts of me that are shiny, pretty or even fun. It’s more about revealing what I deny or keep hidden from others.   I had to love everything about me, if I...

Neuromuscular disorders like mine can affect the nerves that control your voluntary muscles. Voluntary muscles are the ones that I can control, like in my arms and legs. My nerve cells, called neurons, send the messages that control these muscles. When the neurons become unhealthy or die, communication between my nervous system and muscles breaks down. As a result, my muscles weaken and in some other conditions muscles can waste away. The muscle weakness for me has lead to twitching, cramps, aches, pains, joint and movement problems.  I suffer from hyperexcitability, I have continuous firing of my peripheral nerve axons which in turn activate my muscles fibers.  Symptoms for me include muscle stiffness, continual contracting and twitching muscles, never ending cramps, increased sweating which is bloody awful at night and delayed muscle relaxation which occurs even when I am asleep. The muscle pain from my condition is horrendous hence the high lev...

I have touched several times on material possessions in various blog posts.  Minimalism and living with less is important to me.    This every worsening global economic crisis and changes in social attitudes made me realise that the more I bought, the more miserable and trapped I felt.  We used to live in a larger house with space we didn't really need which only equaled more stuff, more spending, and more worry.  Enough was enough, we sold up and sold 75% of the stuff.  Possessions do not make me happy, the initial excitement upon purchase soon burns out. True meaning and happiness come from experiences. From family and friends. From hobbies. It comes from the things that I do, rather than the things I own. Brands and big companies want us to feel that we need material possessions.   They want us to spend money, constantly consume, and place all of our self worth, confidence, and happiness on “stuff.” They w...