Abigail's Anxieties

  I’m not too sure if anyone will have noticed, but now that I’ve decided to come back here to my little corner of the internet I decided that a new beginning calls for a new look. Many years ago when I was setting up this blog, I had rather different tastes and so it was time for this blog to now show those tastes. It started with a new logo. My old logo will always be special to me, it was made in the early stages of this blog but looking back on it I’ve now realised I needed something a tad simpler. So I loaded up Canva and started to think about what exactly I wanted in a logo. I settled with a simple black background with white detailing; something not too overwhelming and gets to the point. Then obviously the name was needed, but something was still missing. I then decided to go for the simple depiction of the brain as what I talk about here more often than not discusses matters of the mind.   I then went about changing the background of the actual blog pag...

Leaving the house with fibromyalgia My tips and tricks As some of you may know, I have a pain condition called fibromyalgia (on top of a few other conditions but that’s for another time) and as a full-time university student, I often find myself having to leave the house on high pain days. Now don’t get me wrong, I’ve had days where I haven’t been able to get out of bed and I’ve tried to do learning at home, but sometimes the pain and fatigue has been so bad I can’t even work from bed. Those days are known as “write off days” in our household. But on other days the pain has been bad, but not bad enough for me to stay at home so I find myself having to get dressed and venture into the outside world. Over the past few years, I’ve been working out what can help me when I’m out on the go to help push through those few hours until I can get back to the sanctuary that is my bed with my heating pad and a mountain of pillows to support my back. And I’m here to share tho...

I'm on medication for my mental health, should I tell people? Now the answer to this question is obviously going to be different for each person. Some will say "I have nothing to hide, I'm happy for people to know" while others may say "I don't want to be judged for it, I'd rather not have people know", And honestly, when I first went onto my mental health medication, my answer to this question was a mix of both these answers.  It almost ended up sounding more like this: "I don't want to hide the fact that I'm on medication, but I am quite young so am I going to be judged for it? Is there even a good age to go on medication for mental health? But I don't feel like this is something I can keep to myself so I need to decide who to tell. How many people do I want to know?" and so on and so on... Many of you may be going through the same thing right now, some may just be interested in what can go through the process...

Yeah, I'm 21 and use a walking stick. So what? When you think of the usual person that uses a walking stick on a daily bases, I don't think that a 21-year-old university student who dresses in vintage style clothing is the first image that comes to mind. But it doesn't have to be, because I have in fact put that image just below for you. Here's the thing, for me, using a walking stick is part of my daily life, You see, I'm currently in the process of being diagnosed with fibromyalgia (in fact as I write this, I'm just over a week away from going to a rheumatology appointment to have some tests done to hopefully get a definitive diagnosis so I finally know what's going on) and my god do I have a lot of pain. My pain is all over my body but the number of intense pain points I have in my body is, in my opinion, stupid. Let's go through the list shall we: -neck -spine -right shoulder joint -left wrist (thank god I...

2018: somehow the best and the worst year of my life. But Abbie, how can something be both the best and the worst? Well, let's just say that 2018 wasn't exactly a quiet year in my life. (and it doesn't look like it's going to be much quieter at the end, seeing that as I'm writing this I'm stuck in bed with the worst cold I've had in years, coughing my lungs up, wishing for my eyes to pop out to relieve the pressure behind them...little TMI? Oh...okay...note to self; don't talk about eyes popping out of skulls or lungs being coughed up too much...anyway!) In January of 2018, I decided that it was finally time to explore my love of vintage fashion (that of the 1940's and 1950's) and well, it ended up taking over my entire wardrobe. Now in my local town and at university known as the girl that can always be seen in vintage clothing, making me easy to spot and often taking up a lot of room on public transport due to my love of giant ...

Dear body, why are you working against me? Do you ever feel like something or someone is working against you? Like it/they don't want you to do well or succeed in life? And that it/they will do anything to get in your way? Well, I feel like that right now. And this thing that's getting in my way? My own body. It started when I was diagnosed as asthmatic  which affects me a lot with physical exercise e.g. walking around and extream weather such as very hot and very cold affect my breathing so I have to use my inhaler but I've had it for so long I'm used to it. Then October 2017 happened and I developed costochondritis which I still have to this day. Most cases sort themselves out in less than a year or at least improved. My case has gotten worse over the past near year and my day-to-day life is affected. I have to take multiple breaks during the day just to give my body a chance to recover. I have to use so much more energy just to get through the pa...

I've finally realised it, I need to make some lifestyle changes All my life I thought that I was being healthy, making the right choices for my body and my life.  And for a while they did seems like the right choices. Although I didn't realise it, I was lucky that I had very few medical problems, my "puppy fat" from my younger years just fell off without me trying and I had clear skin.  But over the past couple of years, my luck has been slowly running out and know it looks like I'm now actually going to have to work towards getting back what was once my "normal" body. Now don't get me wrong, I'm fairly happy with how my body looks now but the extra weight has decided to all just collect around my stomach which could really cause problems for my health in the future.  You see, those with excess fat around the stomach area are more likely to develop type 2 diabetes and heart disease in the future and considering that diab...

My "emergency" kit I have to get me through life So a large part of my anxiety is being surprised by unpleasant situations and that if something goes wrong there is nothing I can do about it.  And when I say emergency I'm not talking about "oh my, someone needs first aid for a broken bone" emergency (however I am looking into doing a first aid course, you know, just in case) but more of a "oh my, my period started unexpectedly" which unfortunately happens far too often for me (ladies, I know some of you can understand me) or "I suddenly have a headache and need some painkillers to get through the rest of the day" which tend to pop up in my life more often then I would like. After being surprised and made anxious one too many times, I decided that enough was enough and that I needed to always have items with me to make sure that no incontinent situation would ever get the best of me again!  With that in mind, I made a list of ...