April 2019 – Mental Health Musings | A Brummies Perspective

My simple answer to that: the secret to life is that you’re lucky to have it!

I’ve wanted to write about this subject for a long, long time. In fact, in some ways it’s probably what sparked me into wanting to start this blog in the first place if I’m truly honest. But it’s the one subject that has always given me the most fear and anxiety over the years, probably for most of my life once I was old enough to understand it that is.

Do something for me right now….just stop for a moment and breathe in, then breathe out! We all take it for granted, after all we’ve been doing it since the very first day that we came kicking and screaming into this world, but it is amazing isn’t it? Not to get too existential, but you have to marvel at the fact that we are even here at all, marvel at the world around you; nature, animals, trees, plants…even humans! And you can’t help at just being truly grateful for all of it!

In a very straight forward way, life is just for living. Life is an incredible thing, whether it’s a human life, a plant or an animal’s life. And yet, even at 47 years young, it still blows my mind…that’s before we even get into talking about the Universe and Galaxies! We’ve all been given this privilege of being here, by the most ridiculously longest odds. Odds that when stacked up only two or three generations back then you’re talking millions to one that you’re even here, and yet here you are, breathing air, looking at the sky, the stars, the trees and just being…a human being.

The point is to just enjoy it as much as you can! I know that some people can find that very difficult, some people’s circumstances find it difficult but the thing is to make sure you enjoy it because we’ve all been given this amazing gift. Make it something that others can enjoy as well and try to make them enjoy their lives. If you can help other people enjoy themselves, even it’s just while you’re having lunch with them, going for a walk or having a coffee, then that’s what it’s all about.

For me, the knowledge that we won’t be around forever is, in a strange way, very liberating because so many of us don’t know that we’re going to die, or that we don’t know when or that we don’t even have any kind of inkling that we could be dead in the morning?! Once you face the fact that we all have a finite amount of time then there is this wonderful liberation to it. You will find, as I did, that you can say things you want to a bit more and you can do things you want to a bit more. People can even say things to you that they want to because they know the context, they know that time is limited, that time is limited for us all.

Do I have any regrets at this point in my life? None! None whatsoever! I can honestly say that I don’t regret anything. I really don’t. Regret for me suggests something that you wish you hadn’t done and because you wish you hadn’t done it, then it kind of lives with you and colours your life. I believe that everything that you do is part of who you are and as long as you feel like you did whatever you did for the right reasons, for the proper reasons, the good reasons, or for at least positive reasons, then I don’t regret anything!

Does that make me unusual or odd in that respect? Possibly, but I’d like to think that everything I did, if it turned out bad or if I somehow hurt somebody or upset somebody because of it, I either had to do that because it came from a reason at that time, in that context or I’ve redressed that hurt…I’ve apologised or I’ve made amends in some way. Regret for me is not something that I hold onto. I change when I can, as I can to the circumstances that I’m in at that time.

There’s no secret to having no regrets, but I do think that you should correct your mistakes and I think that you have to accept your weaknesses. Know that sometimes you do things that aren’t the way that other people want them to be done. Whether you change them or not is up to you but accept the things that you are weak at and try to learn to live with them, own them…don’t deny that you are bad at something, just accept it or try to be better at it. Make allowances for the fact that you are bad at it and try to explain that to others.

Knowing yourself is an incredibly important part of life because it takes time and it takes an age to get to know your true self. Knowing what you enjoy, what makes you get up each morning, what gets your heart beating…that’s important and I would always tell anyone to write down what you are good and bad at, what you like…what you don’t like. What you like or don’t like about yourself and then to just accept it, because, and let’s face it, we’re all flawed, we all make errors, and living an error free life is just something that none of us can do. But we can be kind; we can be kind to people, it’s so much easier than being nasty. Actually it’s not easier, it’s harder…it’s harder to be kind to somebody but it is better. Being nasty to people for no reason, no provocation, no motive…being nasty is just a bad way of living.

“People don’t realise that now is all there ever is; there is no past or future except as memory or anticipation in your mind.”
– Eckhart Tolle

However, saying that, I don’t think that it’s possible to get to the end of your life without some regret. It maybe the fact that you never got to travel or you weren’t as successful as you’d hoped. Perhaps your life didn’t turn out how you imagined it would. Maybe you weren’t as brilliant, tall, slim, smart, rich or popular as you’d thought you’d be. Or…maybe you felt like you were just too busy, too caught up in the day to day stuff to make the most of things.

Maybe we all do have some regret, but maybe some of us manage to move on and be pragmatic about the things we can’t change while others hold onto to those things close and never let go. Maybe they can’t let go, but maybe that is also fine too.

I believe that most people have one thing in common; their regrets aren’t about work, or travel or money. They are about family, and love…in fact it is always about love.

To love and to be loved; love is a very important thing in people’s lives, whether it is family love, relationship love or just friendship love. People should want to have that feeling of contributing to others happiness, but not just happiness but also their sense of being connected to you. That’s what life is really all about, the connections you make with other people, the happiness that you can bring to their lives and also the strength and support and the feeling of being someone worthwhile in somebody’s life….it really is a wonderful feeling.

So maybe all we can do is to live well, but don’t try to live too perfectly. We should strive to take the chances as they arrive and not to put things off. To make the most of it but to know that you can’t live each day as if it were your last because that would just be too damn exhausting.

And most of all, to remember that in the end when you have lived your life, that it’s the little things that will always stay with you; those chances that you did take, that conversation that you finally managed to have to tell someone how you really feel about them, the connections that you made with others, the people you loved and the wonderful moments that you shared.

I must just add that the youtube videos on my posts are not adverts like the other elements dotted around these pages, I do embed them myself. I love the relaxing, calming and atmospheric nature of this type of ambient music with it’s gentle, soothing, instrumental sounds. I also find that I produce better writing whilst I’m listening to it – it can be very emotive at times. Enjoy…

Apologies, it’s been a couple of weeks since my last post. Actually, why am I feeling the need to apologise? After all, I did say to myself when I started on this writing adventure that I wasn’t going to put myself under any pressure by having to publish anything by a set date.

Truth be told, there is a reason for it. I’m not going to lie, I’ve had a bad couple of weeks with my mental health and it just feels like everything has got on top of me lately! It is bizarre how even outside elements can affect you, but affect you they do. And by outside elements I mean the world in general; the news, the farce that is the malarkey that is the ongoing diatribe that is Brexit, the seemingly increasing crime rate in knife attacks, car jackings etc. And before you all comment, I know that these elements are outside of my control and I should just accept it and move on, but anxiety has this nasty habit of not allowing you to do that.

In fact, it got so bad that I got to a point of critical mass and couldn’t take it any more, so I made a decision to mute and even remove news feeds from my social media accounts so that these issues were not preying on my mind all of the time! Worrying about what a post Brexit UK will look like, worrying about leaving the house in case something happened that had me fearing for my safety?! Who is going to sit on the Iron Throne in the final ever season of Game of Thrones? Okay, okay that last one might be a stretch, but you catch my drift right?

“My friend, I am not what I seem. Seeming is but a garment I wear — a care-woven garment that protects me from thy questionings and thee from my negligence. The “I” in me, my friend, dwells in the house of silence, and therein it shall remain for ever more, unperceived, unapproachable.”
– Kahlil Gibran

Moving on…..

On a visit to the GP last December, my Doctor suggested that I would benefit from medication for my generalised anxiety. She could see that I was none too happy about the idea, but then she started to tell me about the chemical imbalance hypothesis. I had read about this before, and I’d also read that, in the wider medical community, there is quite a bit of controversy surrounding this theory. The term tends to be used more as a figure of speech, and by that I mean that it doesn’t really capture the true complexity of mental illness as a whole. In other words, mental health disorders are not simply caused by a chemical imbalance in one’s brain. There is a lot more to it than that. Either way, I made the decision to give it a go.

If I’m honest, I thought I was being strong by not taking any medication, but the truth was I was just prolonging the pain. Admittedly, I was able to survive without medication, but with it I really believe that I am living a much more productive, satisfying and emotionally rich life.

That last sentence may seem an odd statement to make when compared to my state of mind over the last couple of weeks, but it is true nonetheless. However, just because the medication is making a difference in my life, it doesn’t mean that I’m cured. But what it does mean, and what I did notice after a couple of months on the medication, is that I’m now having shorter bad periods with my mental health rather than the protracted bad periods that I was experiencing previously. Episodic I guess you could call it, meaning that the symptoms now come and go in waves.

And for my final Muse…..

It’s Monday morning and people are arriving at work. I make my first brew of the day and start to catch up with colleagues when invariably the conversation turns to; “How was your weekend?” But why, for the most part, do we always seem to answer with the same generic response “Yeah it was great thanks and you?” I’ve often just thought about telling the truth…”Actually it was pretty shit if I’m honest. I had a really bad couple of days with my anxiety which meant I got nothing done! How about you, how was your weekend?” I like to imagine the other person thinking “Oh crap, how do I respond to that?” as you watch them try to wriggle out of the conversation because they are now in uncharted waters and you can clearly see the awkwardness written all over their face!
I can’t be alone in these thoughts…….can I?

Have a great week everyone!