If you know me well, you’ll know that I love hanging out and talking to people. However, with my anxiety comes a whole lot of things that make something as enjoyable as socialising with people very difficult. In this blog post, I will describe some of the things that fire off bad feelings when I’m hanging out and socialising. The below points apply mainly to online communication, though some of them can apply to communication in the physical world also. Call me petty and weak if you want, but my mind is wired differently to yours, and you can’t judge me or think any less of me for it.

The sound of silence

When I’m in a voice chat with someone, or physically talking to someone who I don’t know very well, I will often sound quiet or not speak at all for a while. I often think that people will make fun of the way I talk, my accent, the way my voice sounds etc, or that they will simply not be able to understand what I’m trying to say. This makes me very sad, as it means that I may have lost a potential good friend. We all need friends in our lives, and feeling like you’re losing someone new who you have the potential to form a really close bond with is the worst feeling in the world.

Was it something I said?

I could be having a conversation with someone, and the person I’m chatting with could just stop replying out of the blue. It’s a two-stage process at that point. First, the anxiety kicks in. Many thoughts run through my mind, such as:

• Did I say something wrong? Did a reference I make, a question I ask or a view I put across cause offence or anger towards me?
• Am I being too annoying by asking too many questions, talking too much etc or does the person think I’m generally just a pain in the rear?
• Does the person simply hate me and not want to talk to me?

Then, the depression starts. I get very sad and begin to feel isolated and alone, I feel guilty because I feel I’ve done wrong by that person, and I start to hate myself more and more.

Out of the loop

I could be with a group of people, and they could be discussing a topic that is completely alien to me. As a result, I will often feel as though I’m completely out of the loop, and not really a part of the group at all because I have nothing useful or understandable to contribute to the conversation with. I often find it hard to express my feelings to others, and as a direct result, they all get bottled up and I start to feel sad, lonely and left out.

Somebody help me, now!

I am often too afraid to ask people for help and support with things, especially tech support, because in the past, people have snapped at me for asking too many questions and I was once accused of “harassing” someone via email. While I do look things up online, often the articles I read will contain terrible grammar which annoys and frustrates me to no end. Also, you can’t always believe what you hear or see online. I just think that talking to someone about your problem is the best support method. I often get very anxious when asking a question or asking for help in general because I feel I have to word it perfectly so as to not sound stupid or anything else. This anxiety ultimately stops me from doing it, and I’m just left alone to figure things out. It’s an awful feeling when you’ve tried every possible solution you can think of and nothing has worked, or you just don’t know how to solve a problem and you feel you have nobody to turn to because you’re so anxious and scared that someone will react badly to your request for help.

Conclusion

I hope this post has taught you some things and help shed some light on the thoughts and feelings that I often experience when I communicate with people both in cyberspace and in the physical world of planet Earth. I bet I’m not the only one who experiences these feelings. Be sure to let me know down in the comments if you have any similar experiences to me and how certain social situations make you feel inside.

I’m sure we all agree that the many impacts of the outbreak of COVID19, such as having to stay at home, having to remain 6 feet apart from one another, having to work and communicate virtually etc, is causing people to go insane. I am no exception to this rule. I already have a myriad of mental health complications, but all this stuff that’s going on right now is magnifying and amplifying these complications to no end. Here are just some examples of how the Corona Virus outbreak is impacting me mentally.

Working Remotely

I have an amazing support network at my college. They listen to my problems, they keep me calm, they are a shoulder to cry on, and they always know how to lift me up when I’m feeling down. Because I am having to work remotely, I feel I have lost this support network. Working remotely is the thing that is affecting me the most. Ever since the college closed, my depression has got a lot worse, my stress and anxiety levels are much higher, I’ve started losing more sleep, I want to cry all the time, I’m mentally and emotionally drained, work is constantly stressing me out, and I’m even too scared to check my emails in case teachers start asking for work that I either haven’t completed or made a complete mess of. I already feel like a failure, failing a college course will only make things a whole lot worse and people will think of me more as a disappointment and a letdown than they clearly already do. What do I do? Do I stress myself out and force myself to complete work to a perfect standard, bringing myself back to the same crisis point I was at in 2013, or do I take the risk of failing the course and having everybody I know and love openly despise me, probably also bringing me back to that 2013 crisis point? It’s a catch 22 scenario!

Television News Channels and the Internet

The television is constantly on during the day at my house and tuned into a news channel. I may be in my bedroom upstairs with the door closed, but sound travels and I can still hear it from downstairs. All these news channels are talking about is the damn Corona Virus! Nothing positive is happening in the news these days it seems! It’s gotten to a point now where my mind can’t tune it out anymore. The internet and social media doesn’t help either, but I can’t just stop using social media; it’s my primary method of contacting people. I’d just feel even more isolated than I feel now if I withdrew from the internet. The more I hear about CV, the less hope I have of this whole thing ever coming to an end.

Concerns about Family Members

I have external family members, both very young and very old, that I worry about on a daily basis because of Corona Virus. Keep in mind that I haven’t been allowed to see these family members for almost a decade, and a lot of things have probably changed since the last time I saw them. For all I know, half my family could be dead now. I made a lot of happy memories with these people; it’d be devastating if it turned out that some of them had left this world. It’s a constant fear that is pushing my depression and anxiety ever higher.

Those are 3 things that are really messing me up at the moment because of the whole COVID19 thing. Hopefully this madness will end soon! Stay safe and stay alive!

In my last blog post, I detailed the mental health struggles I face and how they affect me in daily life. In this post, I will describe some ways I help myself, and you can help me, deal with these struggles.

Won’t you hold my hand?

We all need a hand to hold once in a while. I am no exception. My typical positions are:

• I place my thumb on the back of your hand and my figures on the palms, or the other way round
• I rest my hand on the back of yours. Use this if you’re uncomfortable with position 1.

This provides a sense of peace and relief in periods of depression, stress or anxiety.

Take a walk, just a little walk

I’m sure we all agree that a bit of fresh air now and then allows us to escape from what’s going on around us and breathe freeand easy. The sensory overload of too much loud noise, the stress of a fast-paced work environment, the anxiety of overcrowded places, they can all be fixed with a breath of fresh air.

The sound of music

It is scientifically proven that the music we listen to influences our mood. Upbeat music makes us feel happy, slow violin music makes us feel sad. Music is a great way for me to escape from my feelings and enter another world. I like many different types of music from rock to hiphop to rap. Music can also sometimes defeat a misophonia attack.

Conclusion

These are just some of the ways in which I deal with my daily mental health struggles. We all have different ways of dealing with things. Let me know down in the comments how you deal with issues in your daily life, be it emotional or physical. Let’s start a community!

For years now, I have been struggling with my mental health. I have trates of depression, anxiety, misophonia and PTSD. In this post, I will try to describe what is going on inside my mind and how it affects my day to day life.

What goes up must come down

One minute, I can be calm, happy and generally in a good mood. Then… the depression starts. This presents itself in many ways, from a low mood to a full blown fit of crying, tiredness, lack of mental and physical energy and even a loss of apatite in some cases. These episodes can last from a couple of minutes to a few hours.

Anxiety, sane and insane rivalry

This affected me massively during the summer of this year… or let’s call it Family Feud Season. I would often have it for days on end. I’d b feeling restless, constantly shaking and moving around, my heart rate would be through the ceiling and sweat would pore out of my body like a very high powered tap. Both my mind and body goes into hyperdrive. I feel there is no way out. I feel isolated and lonely, like I have nobody to turn to, no shielding or protection. In the best case scenario, this will only last for a few minutes.

What’s that sound?

Misophonia is where certain sounds can trigger emotional responses such as sadness, fear, anxiety, anger or frustration. I can’t deal with sounds that rise and fall an octave, or sounds with certain echo or reverb effects, especially if there’s a lot of tail in the reverb. I get very freaked out and it can be an anxiety trigger. I once had to miss 5 minutes of a college lesson because of it. Even after those 5 minutes had passed, however, the attack continued. It was well after an hour when the episode finally ended and the symptoms receded.

The voices! The voices!

I like to separate these episodes into 2 types.

Classic attacks

I’ve had these attacks for as long as I can remember. Sometimes, I hear weird voices and sounds in my head, as if there’s an audio editor in there applying weird cutting, mixing and splicing effects to the sounds. It’s so weird that it’s quite hard to describe.
Some triggers for these attacks include the following.

• prolonged silences, such as when a music track suddenly pauses or fades out, especially if the fade is very sharp and tight.
• Sudden sounds, such as PA system announcements, and unexpected airline announcements.
• Certain types of music, especially music tracks with a low-pitched voice mixed in, such as a telephone hold service or those old Disney feature presentation logos.

New/Misophonia-based attacks

In recent times, in the last 5 years or so, I’ve had attacks where I feel a presence, as if someone is in the area with me. Sometimes they can be floating around and sometimes they remain in one position, suspended and frozen in mid air. I also can’t touch anything during these attacks as I’m simply too freaked out to do so. This presence is often accompanied by breathy moaning/sighing noises. Think of the old Skype login and logout sounds, but more creepy and horrifying. This type of attack can be brought on by my misophonia, hence why I refer to it as a misophonia-based attack.

Listening to something quiet or on low volume can sometimes stop both types of episodes, but sometimes, I just have to ride them out as nothing I do will stop them.

Oh god, it’s happening again!

I once witnessed my mother have 2 Grand Mal seizures, one in her bedroom and another right beside me in a hotel bathroom. The hotel bathroom one was the most terrifying, as I pretty much witnessed the whole scene, from her body crashing to the ground, to the moaning and crying sounds she made as the seizure progressed. Thankfully, she survived the whole thing and is doing really well now.
As a result of this, I now have PTSD trates. These attacks often come in the form of repeating, repeating, repeating, repeating flashbacks of those horrifying nights, or some other scene/event, either related or unrelated. They can occur randomly, though nowhere as near as often as they used to. More often now-a-days, they are brought on by certain events that happen in movies, TV shows or real life. These include the following.

• Loud bangs, explosions, gunshots etc.
• Brutal torture/murder scenes, such as the famous shower scene from the 1960 Alfred Hitchcock movie Psycho.
• Scenes of intense emotional and/or physical distress.
• Scenes of physical abuse/violence.

8/16-bit, cartoon and sci-fi sounds are not seen as PTSD attack triggers. This means that 8-bit sounding gunshots, cartoony punching sounds and lasers are completely fine.

shutdowns

Sometimes, if I feel high stress or anxiety, I will go into shutdown mode. Mind and body simply stop working. I am perfectly awake and aware of what is happening around me, I just can’t speak, move or do anything. It’s kind of like when too many people visit a website at once and the server becomes unresponsive for a while because it has too many requests to process and can’t handle them all, or when there is a surge of electricity and the trip switch flips, knocking out the power to your house to protect your appliances. These shutdowns are a protection mechanism. If I didn’t shut down, I’d most likely have an anxiety attack, much like if there was no trip switch to go off in a power surge, there’d most likely be a fire. Shutdowns vary in length; the longest shutdown I had was about 11 minutes long. Also, one or more of the above can be happening during a shutdown. I may or may not feel tired or develop a headache after a shutdown; tiredness is more common. Take this into account if you ever see me still and quiet for a long time or I seem out of it.

Conclusion

I hope I have explained myself clearly and that you can understand the things I have to battle with on a day to day basis. Mental health is something I feel very passionate about. I feel we should all be able to talk about it. It’s OK not to be OK.