Today I feel discouraged.

Today I feel discouraged.

Doesn’t sound like a sentence with much weight to it until you consider the whole picture.

The one where after years of suffering from both depression and anxiety you dust your self off and start a project for fun. You know it isn’t going to go very far but hey; a confidence boost is a confidence boost, right?

Right.

You type about your hopes and dreams but then your fingers falter when you stop and take stock of all the things you’ve hidden from over the years. The anxiety driven excuses to avoid life, avoid pleasure and avoid the inevitable moment where you are judged as a failure by either; those tiny, wicked voices inside of your head or the voices of others. You get told you’re being stupid and you agree because what could possibly be so wrong with you that you can’t even handle a conversation with a stranger or walking to the corner shop for a bottle of milk.

You stop typing and then consider what would happen if you could shut off those voices for just one day. Who would you become? What would you achieve when not trapped within a prison of your own making? What a wonder that would be!

You sigh and start typing again.

You look at all that you have accomplished and smile perhaps a little smugly until your brain adds in the word “but” after each statement.

• I am raising two beautiful daughters successfully. “But are you just telling yourself that, to feel better about failing?”
• I have held down a job since the age of 18. “But so do most other people, try again sunshine….”
• I have started a blog and it’s fun.”But you will never succeed. Might as well jack it in now….”
• I got out of bed this morning…..? “Oh honey, REALLY grasping at straws now, aren’t we?”

On it goes, everyday. Other people’s encouragement gets the same treatment from your brain as well.

Negativity breeds negativity and eventually morphs into a depression that you can’t shake or outrun. You give up on everything until; if your really lucky something happens that makes you carry on and forces you to start dreaming again.

For me that was the shock known as ‘Evie’; my eldest daughter. I Found out about her existence on a cold November morning after a meltdown about the absence of banana milk in the local shop. I’m not usually that much of a drama queen and frankly I had been feeling really under the weather so did a test….. Voila I was set to be a mummy.

This forced me to ask the very serious question of, ‘don’t you think its time to get better now?’ From that moment on I’ve tried constantly to improve. I still have panic attacks in crowded or new places. I still feel anxious and like I will fail at everything and I still feel like I have no worth.

What’s different you ask?

I now force myself to do better. For example something as simple as writing this blog or as complicated as learning a new skill. I know that in order to give the girls the mummy they deserve I have to work on being able to do everything that most ‘normal’ mums can. I have to move well outside of my comfort zone (which to be frank is sat with a good book and a mega bar of chocolate) and prove everything I know about myself wrong.

The only person that can do that is me, so here I am ready to start changing my story. I hope you all can join me.

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