Abigail's Anxieties

Don't worry, I'm still here! Don't worry everyone, I'm still here, I'm still alive, it's just the case that the last year of my life has been rather action-packed and some things, unfortunately, had to go on the back-burner- including Abigail's Anxieties.    In the past year, I've been finishing my BSc (Hons) Food Development and Innovation degree, helping my family care for a member of the family who's had major surgery, dealing with my fibromyalgia that has been getting worse, dealing with many costochondritis flare-ups. Oh, and dealing with the multitude of changes that have come with this global pandemic while being an "at-risk" person living with another at-risk person. So you know...not much. In all seriousness, my family is starting to get into the swing of things with our "new normal" and having some adaptions in the house now that make life easier. In terms of my fibromyalgia, well it's affected my mobility with extre...

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 ...

Why am I doing (and finishing) my Christmas shopping in early November? Now some of you are probably already screaming at the title of this post and are probably considering doing one of two things: 1) clicking away because you don't think you can even begin to understand why someone would even want to be thinking about finishing their Christmas shopping in early November or 2) reading this whole post because you want to understand why on earth someone would be thinking a bit finishing their Christmas shopping in early November. Well if you fall into the number 2 group then settle down and enter my (extremely early) winter wonderland of "Christmas in early November" (insert Christmas music and all that jazz here) Number 1: crowds Now as someone with an anxiety disorder, I'm not good at dealing with large crowds at the best of times, but when it gets to the Christmas season shopping centres seem to turn into a scene from any dead rising game. It...

Feelings of Sensory overload So I wrote this post while I was in one of my university lectures and experiencing sensory overload.  I'm sitting in my lecture as I write this, experiencing sensory overload. Something that I have alot and really affects my anxiety and my ability to perform in class. The only way I can think to describe it to those who don't suffer from this is image that it was possible for you to hear every sound that is happening in the room around you, you feel the vibrations from those noises travelling through your body and there is no way for you to stop them. Now you may think how this affects my anxiety, but to that I ask how doesn't it? The main focus of my anxiety is that I struggle to process information that I'm being told, I'm trying to listen to everything I need to all at once and then I start to panic that I'm going to miss out on something important and that I'm going to fail and my life is going to come to...

University life...how is it going so far? I'm not sure if I mentioned this in my last post but I GOT INTO UNIVERSITY (can you tell I was a bit excited?) and so far I have been loving it. I'm studying my BSc in Food Development and Innovation and even though I am only just about to enter my 3rd week I have to say that I have ended up on the perfect course for not only my future career but also for my mental health at this moment in time. You see, I love food. And not just eating food, but how the food we eat affects us, how society can affect our eating habits and how our actual eating habits compared to what they should be. These are some of the things that I happen to be learning in this first semester, but let me break down my 3 modules for this first semester.  Diet and nutrition: this is the class where I learn what the recommended eating habits of the nation should be. For example, did you know that the recommended amount of fruit and veg a day...

So yeah, where exactly have you been Abbie? An explanation explaining my absence  So yeah, I've been gone for a while, much longer than I was planning to be gone but gone none the less. So why was I away for so long? Where was I? What was happening? Well the answer to these questions are the same thing: A sever episode in my depression and anxiety disorder. You see, it's been a stressful time in my life recently what with getting my exam results, finding out if I got into university or not, starting to feel less and less confident in my own life decisions and this lead to me entering my "episode" as we'll call it. I was stuck in a vicious cycle. My anxiety was convincing my brain that I had failed my exams, and that made my depression kick in and say "well if you have failed, what's the point of getting up and doing anything? The past 3 years at college have been a waste of your life so you might as well rest the waste of it" ...

The setting up of my DSA equipment What it was like for me to have my DSA equipment delivered and set up So today was finally the day I had my DSA equipment delivered and set up for me. And honestly was much easier than I was expecting it to be. I wasn't really sure was expecting, but I certainly wasn't expecting it to only take around 15 minutes to get all of the software downloaded onto my laptop. The most challenging part was probably trying to make small talk with the man delivering, that's the one thing I struggle most with my anxiety; making small talk with people I don't know. Luckily the delivery man was quite understanding about this, and my mum happened to be in the room with me and she's great at making small talk so that took a bit of the pressure off me. The most challenging part was properly once the delivery man left because I just want to jump right in and have a go with all the equipment and software, and instead of having the delivery ...

DSA UPDATE This isn't going to be a long post but more of a follow-up on my previous post about DSA (which I recommend you read here  first so that everything here makes sense).  I wanted to let everyone know that I'VE BEEN APPROVED!!! I'm now going to list off everything that I have been approved for and how it is going to help me. However, everyone (including myself) has to bear in mind that I'm not going to have this from the offset of university as I actually have to be attending classes before I can get all this with is understandable. I mean, they don't want to pay for everything and give it to me if I end up not even doing the course.  Now that that disclaimer is out of the way, let's get to the list: Text -to-speech software with a wireless headset- very often I am sitting and looking over notes so much that I won't even get up to eat in fear that if I don't read over them enough I will never understand them. I also sometimes don...

As a student with mental health problems, is applying for DSA really worth applying for? I'm starting university in September, and as someone with a major anxiety disorder, this can be a very daunting time. Not only am I going to have to get used to a brand new routine in my life, I'm going to have to get used to a new environment, meet new people, have a much larger workload than I've ever had and heck, it's even going to be even more travelling than I've ever had to do to get to my place of education. So what do I do if it's too much for my brain to cope with, I end up having too many panic attacks that I cannot make it in and I end up having to drop out of university. That's where DSA (Disabled Students' Allowance) come in. The sad thing I think is that I didn't find out about this until a speaker came to my college to talk about student finance and even then only spent around 30 seconds on the subject. DSA is basically when as a student ...