Sponsors for 2014 - SEN Magazine & Tough Furniture Ltd

2014 has been very difficult for me. It has been a year with challenges everywhere I turn - I have had significant injuries, a diagnosis of ADHD and a lot more in between. One thing that has been consistent with other years though has been the need and battle to find funding for my sport, in particular the World Championships. I had hoped to raise the money bit by bit over the course of the year but circumstances meant this was not possible, instead I had a lot of stress over the last month or two trying to find what to me is such a large sum of money.

I wrote to companies and appealed over social media through my Go Fund Me page and the response from friends and followers in sharing my fund page and offers to help me find a sponsor were simply amazing. I am lucky to have and know such kind and caring people and I'd like to thank you all now for your efforts.

Fortunately I have managed to find sponsorship and it has relieved such a huge amount of stress. I have always found it so hard to find sponsors so to have people come forward and offer to sponsor me has just been so unbelievable and I really hope that I do not let them down. So I wanted to take the time to announce my sponsors and explain a little about what they do.

SEN Magazine - www.senmagazine.co.uk

SEN Magazine is the UK's leading special educational needs magazine which provides inspiring features, the latest news and practical advice on all things SEN. Keep up to date, read articles by SEN experts, share best practice and develop your skills.

Tough Furniture Ltd - www.toughfurniture.com

Tough Furniture - for challenging environments. Tough Furniture are specialists in the supply of attractive, yet very strong furniture, to suit the special needs of challenging environments where abuse, carelessness or challenging behaviour is a problem.

I am so grateful to both SEN Magazine and Tough Furniture for their support as without it would be impossible for me to fund both myself and the additional supporter that I need to be able to attend. Please follow the links to their websites to find out more about them and like / follow them on facebook. 

Once again thanks to everyone who contributed to my Go Fund Me page. I am still looking for sponsors for the Irish Open next year and UK competitions and raising money to cover my training costs (including remedial treatments) so money contributed so far will go toward my preparation for the World Championships.

For more information check out my newly updated website www.joredman.com

My Competitive Strategies

Strength. What is strength? What does it mean? To me being strong is not hiding your weaknesses, or ignoring them. Rather it is acknowledging that those things are there, accepting and embracing them as part of what makes you who you are and then overcoming that to become all you want to be. To quote Nelson Mandela "I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear". To be afraid but to do it anyway, to succeed anyway, that is strength. 

We all have these situations where we fear something, we fear being different, fear failure, fear being great - there is always something. I fear not reaching my potential, wasting my life and time, not being understood. In fact I also fear the things I do most of the day, feeling anxiety that does not match the importance of the situation. I live in a constant state of fear and anxiety because I feel inadequate when I have to ask why or what you mean. I fear getting it wrong because this has happened so much to me and no matter how much it doesn't get any easier to deal with.

But I am alive. I am here alongside you, living a life, my life. It is probably not like your life, but who has the exact same life anyway? I am guilty of forgetting that being alive is a wonderful thing no matter how anxious you are, how much you fear or how difficult things seem to be - living is good. I have succeeded at something just because I am here.

I can only live my life in the way that makes sense to me. And through that I am free and it is ok. Things are going to be tough, problems will surface and obstacles will be there but I will find a way to stay free, to achieve my goals and be all that I was meant to be. All my life without realising it I have been creating and adapting strategies in order to cope and get the most out of my time here.

A lot of my blog posts recently have talked about how I have been struggling with my concentration on simple day to day things and in how I have struggled to cope with the feelings this brought on in me. But this struggle has always been the same albeit sometimes to less of an extreme. I think a lot, some might say obsessively, I prefer intensely and I have been racking my brain about what I was like years ago, did I have these challenges and how did I cope? And the answers are interesting, or at least they were to me. 

I am exceptionally good at repetitive tasks but they bore me, I need to approach them in a certain way to be able to do them. In my second job I was working on a project and did the same work all day long, everyday. I struggled greatly with this, my mind would wander and I'd daydream about fighting and all kinds of things. I could put together a work process in no time at all but I couldn't sit and read the 10 page guidance notes and updates and meeting minutes that were provided about what the work was for and how it should be conducted. It got to the stage where my manager would just highlight the things I needed to consider that might not be obvious to me. I could just 

see the logical processes and how it needed to work so to me reading all this repetitive documentation was pointless. 

But the data work I had to do was so monotonous - it amounted to a lot of proof reading, data checking and cleansing. As it was I couldn't approach this at all, I tried to do the work but would drift off staring into space. This was pre-diagnosis and I had nobody really giving me any strategies to cope or any understanding of why I couldn't maintain my attention on my work. I realised I was struggling to start and I was losing track of what I had done because there was no order or structure to the work. So I made a few rules and a logical approach to follow and I set about doing the task like this which worked great for a while until the novelty of following the new process wore off and I was stuck again. 

Now I am a fighter, I am very competitive and I was very aware of my drive to win and succeed, kickboxing seemed to be the only thing I could really do long term with any success. It seems like I work at my best with a little pressure and competition. So I thought why not see if I can apply how I am in kickboxing to other areas and made it a competition. Every hour I was determined to improve my record of how many data records I had successfully got through. In the second hour the improvement was slight but after this it would be 50 records more and more and more as I got used to the process and the work just became automatic. I became so in tune with what I needed to look for, correct and match that my brain only saw what it needed to and cut the rest out. I reached phenomenal work rates in the amount I was getting through each time beating the previous hour and throughout this time you couldn't reach me, I was so focused on my activity, on my competition. 

And thinking back further everything has always been a competition. Working in a warehouse I'd "compete" against all the other workers, wanting to pick more items than anyone else, I'd get so frustrated when I couldn't find an item because it slowed me down... In my first job every piece of work given to me I had to do as quickly as I could to surprise whoever gave me the work and similar to my second job, when entering orders I conditioned myself to see only the necessary fields. There was competition with myself in that I was always striving to add more tasks, more responsibilities to my workload, to handle more and more.

All this competition produced great work but I could not give myself time out, I had to maintain that level of activity all day everyday and naturally this just wasn't possible. I'd get burnout and again be unable to concentrate but overall it all balanced itself out as when I was so focused on my work I was doing vast amounts in such a short space of time.

My mind has to be occupied with something constantly or I just drift off. So now the challenge is how can I keep it occupied, how can I create that sense of competition again in my daily activities and how do I start? I know that I will find a way to do this because the alternative is to do nothing and I can't do that. And right now this is tough, it is frustrating and I get really angry with myself. I am even more anxious because I feel I am getting nowhere but I have encountered this before and I dealt with then just like I will now. My history tells me that although I have those fears, those obstacles I am strong enough and driven enough to overcome them to succeed. And the difference now is that I know. I know what I am dealing with and that has to give me an advantage in producing a new strategy that will enable me to get the most out of my life.

World Autism Awareness Day - In Good Company

Well Wednesday 2nd April was World Autism Awareness Day and in recent months I haven't been doing much to raise awareness or in fact I haven't really been doing much. Since I injured my ankle I have really stripped things back and it wasn't until I did that that I realised just how much I had needed to. I got to the point where I was struggling to do simple things. Then it changed to some days I was getting on really well then other days it felt hopeless. Stripping things back gave me space to let my stress levels reduce and then reflect upon where I want to go and what I want my life to be. As much as I love fighting so much of my focus goes into this and with the extent of anxiety and stress I was under I needed to switch my focus - being injured, as unfortunate as it is, gave me that chance. Normally training and fighting help me manage stress levels but the better you are at the sport, the longer you have been a champion, the more pressure there is to keep there at that level. And this didn't make me feel I could allow some of my fighting focus to switch to the rest of my life when it really needed to.

Not long after I got injured I had this weird thought. I thought of the Lego video games where you can switch from character to character in order to complete specific actions that only a certain character could do. In my mind I felt like something like this happened, I visualised it happening. In the days following my injury I thought heavily about my fighting performances, I watched the videos, I pictured it in my mind. I pictured myself fighting fights that hadn't even happened. And then watching those fights in my mind, I took all the elements that make me this formidable fighter and champion who does not give up on the mats and 'drag dropped' them into my 'normal' self. To me it was a transferal of my skills, my focus and my desire to succeed to where it was most needed and that was in picking myself back up and getting my life back on track. If you want to look at it another way it was like the aliens stealing the talents of the NBA basketball stars in Space Jam, reapportioning talent elsewhere. I knew I could not train, I could not fight and I wouldn't be fighting for some time, so I was putting those fighting resources elsewhere. Honestly for me it is not that unusual. I often have to approach life as though it is kickboxing and fighting to get anywhere, I trick myself into it all being connected to how well I will fight so that I do it. What was weird in this circumstance was the Lego switch / Space Jam thing - just visualising that shift...but in a way I needed to do that too. Because I didn't believe I could do it anymore - rebuild myself that is.

But once I had visualised that I felt rejuvenated. I felt focused and strong to rebuild myself. I hadn't felt that kind of optimism or belief for some months. With some help I took control. I got my whiteboards on the wall and made plans, I considered what was important, what my short term goals were - to sort my ankle, to get some daily routine, to deal with events coming up - and I concentrated on achieving those with a view to then build up to the next lot of things I needed to regain some control over. I looked at what my problems were that were preventing me from doing these things and with help worked out some possible solutions to try. These haven't all been successful all the time but they have helped. I needed help to do these things, to get myself together, from professionals and from friends - some practical help in putting my plans together, in deciding what I needed to do first, in preparing for events and also some help in the form of reassurance and help to understand. I have needed pretty constant reassurance, some of which I don't always believe straightaway and I have been less sure of everything. I've probably had what were essentially the same conversations hundreds of times over the last few months because I have been that unsure, anxious and in need of reassurance.

So where am I now and what does this have to do with World Autism Awareness Day? Well when things are going well for me I don't always feel like I struggle that much. I feel positive about who I am, I feel positive about my diagnosis and I am confident in my ability to achieve. I like to be positive and talk positively about where I am in my life but I feel that I almost forgot that the struggles and challenges do exist and do need to be acknowledged. It is the very fact that I am so positive and just brush off how tough it actually is for me to get on in the world that means I don't always get the support I need. The fact that I can stand up and deliver a talk really well, really confidently is often what most people see, what they don't see was the stress in me getting to the venue for the talk, the agonising over what will happen, where I have to go, what time I need to leave, do I have everything I need, who am I meeting, is someone helping me get there, what do I take, is my speech good enough, the fact I cannot read the audience and how they are receiving my talk....they don't see me changing my speech every day for the last 2 weeks, reading and re-reading until I get it perfect, they don't see me virtually shut down afterwards on the way home, rigid and tense with stress and unable to speak about it, they don't see me struggle to get up and fulfill daily activities the next day and possibly the day after. But my love for and the sense of worth I get from speaking makes up for these things and again how good I feel affects the impact these events have on me, but there is always an impact. 

How things have been for me recently has made me reevaluate the importance of giving a balanced view, of being positive but also of acknowledging the struggles - this was what I wanted to share for World Autism Awareness Day. I don't want you to underestimate me or what I can do but I don't want you to think it is all easy and that I cope fine all by myself. I am a fighter and if I want to do something I won't let anything beat me but it comes at a huge cost and I am not achieving my potential - how can you be when you get to the point where your life has to come to a standstill on a regular basis? Even just looking at the days following events like competitions and speeches - those days are wasted. I have all these skills, all these qualities and talents, capabilities most would wish for but I struggle to connect these and link in to the rest of the world - I'm like an island full of resource with no bridge or connection to mainland and that is why I need you to be aware, why I need you to accept this is how I am and maybe if you can why I need you to help me connect.

Anna Kennedy and I at Red2Green

I spent the evening of World Autism Awareness Day with my friend Anna Kennedy at charity Red2Green's launch of the In Good Company project. The videos feature adults on the autism spectrum sharing their personal stories and strategies they have developed to overcome challenges in order to help others get a better insight into the world of some people with autism. They also help to highlight the diversity of those on the autism spectrum and that people are unique and present differently. There is also a link on the channel which also gives instructions on how to make your own In Good Company video so that you may share your experiences living with autism should you wish to be involved.

I filmed for my video back in August just as I started training for the World Championships, I had had a steroid injection in my ankle as I had bursitis so could not kick or move much and I have since gone on to win another world title. I was happy with the outcome of my video but found it difficult to watch with the audience. Partly because I realised how far away from the person I saw in the video I had gotten and partly because I was anxious about how other people would react. It was good for me to watch my video because it reminded me of who I am and what I can do.

You can watch my video here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ucBVt8ung6M

Concentration Issues and Trips to London

Well the last blog post I wrote was quite open and raw for me to write.  I don't usually go that public over the way I feel when I am or have been struggling, I need my own space to deal with things and if I open up it usually leads to a lot of questions and attention I just don't want.  So why did I choose to open up?  Well simply because if I don't talk about it how will anyone ever know or even begin to understand?  And why is this important?  My challenges are hidden, I don't look like someone who struggles and it is perhaps less obvious given that I grew up undiagnosed and learnt to keep things covered up, to avoid that undesired attention!  But my challenges are what they are and if the people in my life can understand these a little theoretically that should makes things a little easier right?  

As usual I did intend to write again before now but hey at least I got round to it whilst still in March and that is actually a pretty big achievement for me right now.  I have been struggling a lot more to concentrate and start things recently, I mean the last blog post took me over 7 hours to put together (I hope this one is done quicker!).  Concentrating has always been a bit of a battle for me, everything at the last minute under lots of stress is usually how it goes but I haven't been able to concentrate on the simple things lately.  Unless I am really interested or really motivated to do something I get bored very quickly and no matter how I try I just can't seem to keep my mind on doing it.  Suddenly everything in my brain feels very far apart and it becomes really difficult to get to the areas I need to.  I also then, just to make it easier (!), get all these thoughts and ideas on some really random things often completely unassociated to what I am actually trying to accomplish which of course distracts me further and before you know it all this time has gone by and I have done nothing.  Another thing that also happens such as right now is that everything in my environment starts to annoy me more than usual.  This evening writing this the living room light is bugging me, the cushions on the sofa just don't feel right to sit against, the flickering TV and sound from TV over my headphones are distracting, the dog chewing his chewy bone....and this is all before you get onto the lure of social media.  I stay up really late a lot and get lots of things done just simply because the atmosphere at night feels different, everyone is asleep, everything is quiet, there is less going on and this just means I can think clearer and concentrate better.  And um just to illustrate my point here I started this about 4 hours ago and this is as far as I have got....... If you think that is bad, it doesn't beat my record as a child at 9 years old who wrote 5 words about rocks in an afternoon!!  So it seems to make sense to stay up and get things done when I concentrate better but then you get the cycle of not being able to get up and function in the day.

So as I was saying...lately my concentration has been worse.  I feel like I have lost track of everything in my life and I'm playing this immense game of 'catch up'.  In the last couple of weeks through not training I have vast amounts of excess energy.  I want to bounce around the house like tigger and dangerously my body is not telling me that I can't do this, it is my brain thinking this wouldn't be a good idea rather than any pain signals stopping me from doing it.  It is frustrating.  But now there is some exercise I can do safely without causing further damage to my ankle.  So why don't I just do this?  Problem number 1 - I don't have a plan.  Solution....make a plan?  Which leads me to my next problem, my plan ends up taking me several hours to put together (without the concentration lapses) and then to actually do the exercises in said plan takes me ummm hours because I have made too comprehensive a plan with too much to do!  And failure to complete and follow said plan results in extreme cup breaking frustration.  Ok...so try it without a plan?  Just do what you feel like?  After a little go on the exercise bike, a little go on the punchbag and a half hearted stretch...I'm bored, I want to do something else, I'm thinking of something else.  I need the plan or I need the supervision I get at training.  I'm not somebody who isn't driven, I'm certainly not lazy - I work hard when I train so why do I have this problem now?  I love to train, this should be a breeze, but it isn't.  Why?  Maybe if I knew I could fix it.  Is it the chaos in my environment, the chaos in my brain and the chaos generally in my life, in that I have lost track of what I actually need to do?

I need wall planners, timetables and task lists but took this a step further with a new organisational app on my phone.  My wall planner gives me a visual of events in advance, my timetable handles the upcoming week in more specific detail and the task lists tell me what things are outstanding to input onto the timetable.  The new organisational app allows me to schedule these tasks and routine tasks with alerts so that I don't forget to eat my lunch (have a giggle but this happens on a daily basis).  My husband and I have set new routines to ensure everything is tidied away before bedtime so I can get straight onto my tasks when I get up and we also set which tasks additional to basic routine I must complete the next day, as left to me I'd set myself a ludicrously ridiculous amount of tasks to complete (just like the excessive training plan).  I also don't know what takes priority, the only thing in my life I ever really gave priority over anything to was kickboxing!  So I need his help to work out what I should get done first.

I have kept to basics on this app so far, I have to do ankle exercises 5 times a day so just to make sure I have been doing those has been a challenge.  I have been setting myself little tasks to help me get in more control of the areas of my life I need to.  Judging how long tasks may take is a bit of a problem as it can range between such a long period of time if I'm struggling to concentrate.  Also if I'm a little bit late in starting tasks it piles the pressure on to catch up with the rest.  But nevertheless the reminders have been working.  There feels like there is a little bit of progress and as long as I feel I am progressing toward something I am usually able to placate myself.  And this is true of now to an extent except when the ultra perfectionist side of myself shows up and shouts 'don't you realise how pathetic this actually is?' at me.  I feel like I should be doing more, I could be doing more and I put myself down massively because I feel like all the things I am struggling with so much other people don't even need to think about too much.  It is like there is always this never ending battle going on within me that is not even apparent on the outside.  It is tough.  When you identify what you find difficult, you take control and try to put things in place to make life easier and essentially function to the best you can and then at the end of it all you turn around yourself, tell yourself you are stupid and less just because the very way that you are means that you have these challenges, that to be worthwhile you shouldn't have these challenges and in the process rip apart all of the solutions you worked so hard to implement.  And I, as of yet, can't seem to stop this.  From the outside it can look like this huge attention seek thing, but I hate the attention and from the inside it feels hopeless.  I need reassurance but hate that I need reassurance.  I hate that it is so illogical because I would never tell anyone with my challenges what I tell myself, so why do I think it of myself?  Why can't I see all the good things that make me who I am right now?

This week has been a good example - this week I had to go to London to do a speech.  The speech was right in the centre of London, there was no way I was driving here, it was a train and public transport job.  So what happened?  Well I don't travel by train often nor by any type of public transport.  I get overwhelmed by the noise, I panic with lots of people round me and struggle to work out where I am meant to be.  It would be very easy for me to get lost and if I did get lost I would not be able to recover the situation, the anxiety would be too great.  And when I say anxiety I mean you can't think, can't process, can't make sense, everything is a fog type anxiety.  So I need help.  I need somebody to accompany me, help me find where I need to go and get there in one piece, on time and calm(ish).  A lot of this falls down to my husband to help me with but he works full time and it is not always simple for him to get time off, if he got time off everytime I needed help he'd have no holiday for actual holidays.  So I had to find someone else to help me and even though I know I need the help, I feel embarrassed that I need to ask and I struggle to ask.  And on this occasion finding somebody was really difficult, my recent difficulties had meant that I had been struggling to plan and think things through in advance.  For me to cope with this journey, I had to be accompanied and my husband had to put a very basic step by step list of instructions together which told me what to expect and what I had to do.

Just like when I fight, when I am delivering my speech, I feel more confident and more relaxed.  I can struggle to hold a conversation sometimes but I can stand up and deliver a speech and I actually want to stay up there as long as possible, I guess it cuts down on the conversations afterwards!  I like that what I am saying is all planned out and I even throw in things on the spot now that I manage to keep relevant.  When I finish speaking I feel achievement.  If you have known me for many years you might understand why I feel this but just for the benefit of those that don't, I grew up not daring to speak to people.  All through my life there were silences, with family, at school, at kickboxing, with friends.  Anything that I didn't know how to approach or deal with met with silence.  So speaking to a room of strangers is a huge achievement every time I do it.  I took the fear of letting people hear my voice and decided I didn't want to let that stop me from being heard, so I put myself in front of a room full of people and spoke when nobody expected I would.  I have proved I don't need to be feeling at my best to achieve this or to even do it well, I don't know how to give less than 100%.  I enjoyed this speech, it was the first time I had done a speech like that one and I'd worried a lot about getting the most meaningful and important points across and not leaving anything out.  On the way home from London I was totally drained.  I was desperate to get home.  But compared to the day after, the evening after is always easier.

To say that an event like this wears me out is to put it mildly.  The day after I got up for an appointment, otherwise I probably would have just ended up chilling out on the sofa all day.  To cut a long story short I wasn't happy after this appointment and I needed space to work things out.  During appointments, meetings and sometimes even general conversations I find it difficult to process what is going on, what it means or how I feel about what is happening.  I hear what is being said, I understand what the words mean and all that kind of stuff but I struggle to apply what it all means to myself, how I feel about it and even what I action I want to take.  This can be a big problem and pretty frustrating.  I often can't work all this out until I'm on my own and have some peace and quiet but of course at home I can't just sit down and think....I have a puppy.  I also have problems concentrating and I was sat at home with every sound from the street dancing around in my head, an excited puppy pouncing on my feet, feeling drained from the day before and I knew I just had to get somewhere so I could think and process what had just happened.  So I picked up the mischievous puppy, bundled him into his seatbelt in the car and we drove for two hours.  My car to me is absolute bliss...until I am stuck in traffic or dazzled by millions of lights at night of course.  In my car I can turn up my music and I can't hear all the distracting sounds that plague me all day.  I find it really calming.  Oscar was perfectly happy chewing his toys and snoozing on the backseat.  We stopped and went for a little walk half way and once I felt calmer we went home.

After we got home both of us crashed out on the sofa and slept until my husband got home.  I went up to bed and continued to sleep.  I was the most awful wife - I could not speak to him, I couldn't be near him and he could not comfort me.  I needed to be on my own and it is difficult to explain now why at that moment I can't tell my husband nicely that I don't want a hug, I don't want to chat and I just want to be left alone.  But he understands.  And fortunately he picks up very quickly on how things are and gets why it is like that, he knows when to back off.  In total I slept around 6 hours, woke up for a couple hours then went back to sleep for the night.  In reality after the day before doing the speech and travelling to London I needed a lot more than this.  But in spite of the after effects, going to London and doing the speech was worth every second for the sense of achievement and the insight I am able to give to others.  And the rest I will just have to figure out......

Injuries and Rehab

As a sports massage therapist I also have a blog about injuries and sport related stuff (Top Form Blog - nice little link there although I am just as bad at updating that blog as this one!) and I thought with my latest injury it might be a good idea to detail there how I am treating and rehabbing that injury.  If you follow me on social media etc you will know that last week whilst competing in the Irish Open I sprained my ankle quite badly and have now been forced to sit down and chill out for a while!  So this idea got me thinking a little bit more deeply about how I should go about this because the impact not training will have on my levels of stress is bound to be fairly significant but perhaps not quite appropriate for my more factual, business related blog even though the psychology of injury will be mentioned.  I thought do I run the blogs simultaneously with the how crazy it makes me become against the what exercises I am doing etc?  But then I realised if I am going to be true to this then I really need to back things up a bit because there is a lot more to my current stress levels than my current injury predicament.

I don't know what has led you to my blog now, I don't know if you really know me or if you do what capacity you know me in - have you seen me fight, have you heard me speak, do you train with me or are you friends with friends I have or you might be my own friends and family?  If you have heard me speak then chances are you may have this perception of me that I'm this fighter, I don't give in and my life is all positive.  While this is true - I have a lot of positive things in my life and I don't give up - I am real and I don't have it all worked out, I hurt, I fail and things don't always work and this is sometimes barely noticeable.  I grew up until my 20s without a diagnosis of Asperger's Syndrome and I struggled a lot particularly with stress and anxiety.  My poor mum wanted to take me to see a doctor when I was a teenager and I refused, I was convinced that I was "wrong" and seeing a doctor would confirm that.  So I hid how I felt, it wasn't that difficult as I struggle to show how I feel but I made extra effort to be like everyone else and fit in - I still do it to an extent.  But it is exhausting, even just being in this world is exhausting and there is a time every year where I just can't do it and keep up / cope with the demands in my life, sometimes it is very brief and sometimes it drags on.  

This is where I am now and where I have been for the last 4 months and it is true the longer it goes on the harder it is to get back on top.  So I figured in this period of time where I am recovering from my ankle injury there is an opportunity to really focus on rebuilding myself to the strong, focused person I am and getting myself back on track to show the world who I really am and what I can do - and why not blog about this too?  I mean this is the embodiment of what has made me who I am and this will show how I got to where I am - this is what I do and what I have to do. And essentially it is like a rehab just more for the mind.

Last week I was absolutely devastated.  I was competing in my 11th Irish Open, I was the fittest I have ever been, I felt after my hamstring injury in 2012 that I'd finally got back to my best and maybe even surpassed my best, I'd really put the hours in to my training for this.  I've had injuries before but something like that had never happened to me during a fight and I felt like I was just getting into the fight as it happened.  It is one thing to lose but it is another when something like that means you don't know how things would have turned out and for me that was quite difficult to deal with.  All those "what ifs".  At first I was gutted because of the competition but then as I started to realise that I wouldn't be training or competing for a while things went a little out of control in my mind and I began to wonder if I would ever get to the level I was at again, if I'd ever be the same.  I was more gutted because of the hard work and length of time it had taken me to recuperate from the hamstring tear and well, I'm not getting any younger, how many more years do I have?  I got home and I am such an active person, I hate to be sat still.  I wanted to smash the house up, I wanted to smash my foot to pieces, I was angry and frustrated.  My brain was racing and I was still - it seemed I couldn't do anything I wanted to do.  Normally when my mind is that active I am bouncing off the walls and I can't sit still - so this week I have struggled to live with myself and it has been an achievement to have avoided a meltdown and not break anything.  I thought things could not have got any worse before I went to Ireland and this was something I totally did not expect.  

Before Ireland I had been really struggling.  Since I had come back from the World Championships last October things had slowly been deteriorating to spiralling out of control.  I struggle with the loss of the structure, routine and focus on the goal of winning the World Championships, it is really difficult to adjust after a week in a new place to come back to a change at home.  I stopped being able to sleep and was not sleeping until 4 or 5 am every night, this improved with the addition of Oscar the puppy to our house - he keeps me busy and calmer.  But presently I can't sleep without my ipod on because my head is too active.  My difficulty with concentration had got to be so bad that until now I have been unable to start anything and see it through.  I struggle to know what to do and when to do it, even to the extent of making sure I eat if I don't have a plan.  I am distracted by absolutely everything - I get distracted by my own thoughts and deviate from my plan because I decide it is better to do something else but in the end that never gets done either.  If a motorbike drives up and down my street a few times, it drives me insane, I can't block that sound out and I start to get angry and throw things.  When things are out of order, if my house gets messy or my inbox is overrun with emails I lose track of everything - I don't know what is going on and I get very annoyed and agitated.  When you need a good amount of structure and organisation in your life to function, such as I do, to feel as though you have "lost track" of everything is simply debilitating.  I have felt unable to do anything.  For the past 4 months I have hated myself, I have been so cruel to myself, picking apart every facet of what makes me who I am.  I have woken up more times than I can remember wishing I hadn't woken up.  I feel like a failure.  I have wished I didn't have autism, I have told my husband that I bet he wished he never married me.  I can't always identify what I feel or why I feel it and I call myself stupid, useless and pointless - nearly on a daily basis. 

I am perfectionist.  I don't do something unless I can put 100% into it, totally all or nothing.  This means I put great pressure on myself.  I know what I am clever enough to do and I fear not achieving what I am capable of achieving.  I'm good at what I'm good at and terrible at what I'm not good at and there tends to be no in between.  And this is not helpful when you feel you have lost track of everything in your life.  To say I have been highly stressed would be an understatement and to then at the start of the year have competition after competition in these loud, busy, extremely full on environments - I have thought at some times that I might explode from the stress.  And no matter what I say here or how much I choose to reveal I can never truly explain just how things have been for me over these last 4 months and even if I could there are many people who would never really understand.

I am lucky.  There are lots of people in my life who love me, care about me and who I have worried.  There are lots of people who support me in many different ways and I appreciate it all because I need that support.  How would you cope if you received messages everyday from someone saying they are stupid, like everyday?  I mean are there only so many times you can tell them "no you're not" before you get a bit pissed off or would you be able to understand?  Then there is also the poor lady from the Asperger's team who tries to help me and gets told that she asks stupid, pointless questions and that for that reason I won't answer them.  And how would you cope if your daughter wouldn't open up to you, or your wife told you that you hate being married to her and marrying her has to be the biggest mistake you made?  When I behave, think and talk this extremely it is almost like I have been taken over by this darkness - I feel dark, I feel slow, full of hate and this, I think, happens because I am overwhelmed, by what I feel, by what is happening around me and I just don't know what to do with it all, where to put those feelings.

Strangely it is this ankle injury and new focus of making it better that has led me to this point now, today.  This point where I am focusing on pulling it back round rather than just making it from one day to the next.  Many of the things I have listed above aren't going to go away - they are features of the person I am, albeit presenting in an extremely amplified way due to the levels of stress.  I haven't gone into what has made me stressed but I'm trying to establish a business, fund my sport, do my sport, write a book and god knows what else.  There are seasonal stressors too and it all just builds up.  That's about as much as I can explain except to say there is also this thing I do where I look at everyone else and what they seem to seamlessly with little effort manage to do and achieve and compare against what I struggle with.  For any person it is simply the worst thing you could possibly do to your self esteem, it only makes you think about what you aren't and what you are lacking and when I do this I forget all the good things I am and all the things I have achieved.  I write them off as "normal" and that "anyone could do it".  And then I feel less.  But I am not less.  I am a whole person, there is nothing missing from me, I am what I was meant to be.  If I grow into more then that is great but I'm not deficient in any way right now.  

Realistically this is what I do best.  I know how to drag myself back up, I know how tough it is and I accept that it is just how it is.  I accept that my challenges are there and I know I just have to find ways to manage each thing that crops up.  I am real, I don't have to be on top all the time to be the positive example of someone living with Asperger's - it is not my success that makes me the positive example it is the very fact that I am real, that I do live through the challenges, I do hit the figurative brick wall and fall down but I still come back and I will come back and I will smash that wall down.  Now I can't fight or train for a while but there is a reason that I do fight so well and that is because of what my life is.  When I step onto the mat to fight it is my sanctuary and I am fighting all these things that build up inside of me.  You cannot do a sport like mine and be successful if you don't have the mental approach and that is not that you are mental enough to fight!!  I know that if I approach anything in the way that I approach my fighting then I will achieve it, I will not be beaten and that is what I have to do now.  People underestimate me all the time and really that is their loss but when those people then put limits on what I can do, well then I have to prove them wrong.  I couldn't care less what people think of me or the way I act but never think you know what my limits are because that is up to me.  I don't live my life to impress anyone else, what I do I do because I choose to.  So sit back and watch what I do best and that's to kick life in the face, or maybe I'll just settle for a punch for now as I do have a bad foot?!

2013 Review

With January already being nearly over I am well behind with this blog post and pretty much everything on my to do list but Christmas was hectic and things have been a little more difficult for me in the last couple of months combined with the addition of a mischievous puppy into the household...I have got very behind!  I did so much in 2013 that I thought a Facebook status would not be enough for me to sum up the incredible year I had so I thought I'd be better off reviewing it in a blog post.  This was something I wanted to do because although it has all happened and a lot of people know what I have done and achieved I actually have to remind myself sometimes, especially when things are tough, that I am capable of doing great things.  In life it can be so easy to focus in on the negatives and forget to celebrate the positive achievements we make and one of my aims for the rest of 2014 is to remember and be grateful for what I have and what I have achieved rather than what I struggle with.

At the beginning of 2013 I could not have imagined how things would have turned out, all the wonderful experiences I have had, the incredible people I have met and of course all the things I have achieved.  The year as well has not been without its challenges or difficulties but in life you have to expect these things and carry on regardless as much as possible.  

Fighting in the Clash of the Titans

In terms of kickboxing I had a fantastic year.  There were the usual obstacles and barriers including injury and 6 weeks of illness at the beginning of year but in spite of this I started off 2013 well winning WKC National Championships and WAKO British Championships and getting a bronze medal in the Irish Open.  I also participated in the Clash of the Titans fight show in Huddersfield, a full contact event where I fought and defeated a taekwondo world champion.  I love events like this and will always fight when my coach asks me to but if I'm honest I was feeling tired and ready for a break after all the intense training in the run up to Ireland combined with being ill.  However I am glad I pushed through and did it as after I fought I felt incredible.  It was awesome to be part of such an event packed with great fighting and atmosphere.

Winning my third world title in Italy

Other competitions I won later on in 2013 included the BCKA National Championships, my interclub competion.  I also won the FSK British Open and beat another world champion in NWCKB's fight night toward the end of the year.  But the biggest thing was winning my third world title in Italy in October.  Just prior to starting training I had been suffering with retrocalcaneal bursitis and I had to modify training to see if it would heal on its own.  Unfortunately I needed to have an injection and this meant again more modifications to training, it wasn't the ideal start to training but then again I have come to accept that things are never ideal!  The conditions in Italy weren't exactly ideal either and I think a lot of people struggled with them but considering I always have to contend with the competition environment things felt almost impossible in Italy but I got through it and retained my world title.

Disabled Sports Person of the Year

I was lucky to get a lot of help in raising funds to be able to compete and help in my preparations for competitions.  And at the end of the year I won Northants Sports Disabled Sports Person of the Year and was given a Martial Arts Illustrated Hall of Fame award.  Two incredible accolades I was proud to receive.

2013 was also the year in which I began to run my own business.  I qualified at the end of 2012 in sport and remedial massage therapy.  This has been a source of much frustration and a very steep learning curve.  I never expected running a business to be easy and I did know that my additional difficulties would not make this easier but one of the things that I have learnt indefinitely is that I am very good at what I am good at and anything else I'm just terrible at!  The challenge for 2014 is to find a way to be able to concentrate more on just what I am good at with strategy for what I struggle with.  I wouldn't say that I was failing or that things were going slower than expected, I feel that I have achieved a lot more than a lot of people just setting up a business would just not in my business.  Sometimes the frustration has got the better of me but stepping back from the situation and looking at it again I can see that the experience is one that is helping me to grow and develop as a person.  I'm not somebody who just gives up, I am a person who will find a way to succeed.

One of the worst moments of 2013 for me was losing Becks the family dog I grew up with.  Becks was more than a dog to me, he was my best friend and he was so important to me growing up.  I was absolutely crushed and devastated as much as I had been expecting this eventuality.  That dog gave me more than he could ever have possibly known.  He can never be replaced and I will always always miss him.


In November my husband and I gained another nephew, Harvey Jai.  We were a little surprised when my sister in law told us we were to be an uncle and aunt but were pleased to finally meet Harvey on the 13th November.  We now have a niece and nephew to spoil and play with.  We were lucky enough to go on holiday with my brother in law, his girlfriend and our niece to Mablethorpe.  We haven't been on a non-kickboxing related holiday since our honeymoon, so it was really nice to be away and just chill out especially to spend some time with our niece Aimee.

With Anna Kennedy

As I said at the start of this blog post I have been fortunate to meet some amazing people and do some amazing things.  I have spoke several times in London, been to the House of Commons twice and much more.  It all started back in April when I found Anna Kennedy on twitter, we exchanged a few tweets, she put my story on her website and asked me to speak at Autism's Got Talent in May.  I had never spoken to an audience of that size but that didn't put me off.  It was a fantastic experience to be part of and I was truly overwhelmed by the response to my speech.  Not long afterwards Anna Kennedy contacted me again and asked if I could speak as part of Autism's Got Talent at the Autism Show where she asked me to be a patron for her charity Anna Kennedy Online.  It was truly an honour and great responsibility to be asked to fill a position such as this and I was happy to accept.  Becoming a patron for Anna Kennedy Online has been one of the proudest moments of my life.

From there I continued speaking at local schools, I like to speak to the children about their goals and achievements and one of my real highlights of the year was when at a school one little girl who had been having a tough time told me that when she was older she wanted to be like me.  I have had a few people tell me before they would like to fight like me but this was the first time I could remember someone say they wanted to be like me, it was very special and really touched me to have made such an impact on someone.

It wasn't long before Anna Kennedy was calling me again, we had a trip to the House of Commons for an event on women in sport and Positive Image.  Here we met Victoria Pendleton.  Then later on in the year Anna put on her own event at the House of Commons to present the findings of her survey into autism and diagnosis.  I had put together a comic on autism awareness which was also launched here.  At this event I spoke about my own experiences based on a speech I had given at Anna's Autism's Got Talent Roadshow in November.

Speaking at Autism's Got Talent Roadshow

Meeting Victoria Pendleton at the House of Commons

Speaking at the House of Commons

Speaking at House of Commons

With Anna Kennedy at AGT

My 2013 was packed full of some amazing things I never thought I would do as well as some tough times such as losing my dog.  But in spite of the bad things and as fantastic as the good things I did were what I was most important to me was that I ended 2013 certainly richer in good friends.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdMwWAf5alE - Autism's Got Talent Roadshow speech
www.joredman.com/
www.annakennedyonline.com

Some photos by So Shoot Me -
https://www.facebook.com/soshootmeportraitphotography?fref=ts

Sports Awards, Hall of Fame Awards...Speeches....

I always seem to be saying this but it really is true so maybe I should be getting used to it but November has been a very busy, hectic month for me.  Sooo much has happened, a lot of wonderful things but truthfully I have been struggling a lot.

Since coming back from Italy and the World Championships I have really struggled.  It is not something that is new, I always feel this way after the World Championships and I always forget (inconveniently) that this happens.  I get extremely anxious because that goal I was focusing on is suddenly not there anymore and yes it was something I achieved and that was great but it is a bigger change in my life than it may outwardly appear.  My training - diet and exercise regimen is so structured, I need adequate amounts of sleep, a little bit of remedial work, eating at specific times and of course training.  I have fixed appointments in my calendar and I have something to aim for.  Then I go away to a place I have never been before - where things might be done slightly different to the last time I went to a World Championships and then I come back home to a completely different scenario.  When I come home everyone wants to see me, wants to congratulate me and catch up.  All that structure and training routine is not there anymore, I can still go to the sessions but most of my team are not there, they are resting.  I can eat what I like, when I like.  It is all different.  It feels impossible to keep up that training regimen without the rest of my team doing it, without that clear goal and when those months of hard training are taking their toll.  I do need a rest, but I don't like it.  So I'm anxious, I have all these other things I can be doing but I don't know where to start or what to do.  I don't have the structure I need anymore and I know in a month or two I will be back in that hard training again anyway so whatever I do now is a gap fill.  It is tough to deal with and I have been very anxious these past few weeks, so much so it has been hard to get on top of things.

But nevertheless I have still had some great things happen.  For a start I was nominated for Northants Sports Disabled Sports Person of the Year, an award I won last year.  I was nominated by my friend Austin Hughes who came along with my husband and I.  My coach Alex Barrowman was also up for the Coach of the Year award after winning the district award.  I didn't expect to win as I was up against some tough contenders who had competed in the Paralympics, plus I had won the award the year before so I was incredibly taken aback when I was announced the winner.

My coach and I at the Northants Sports Awards

 

This was a great achievement but then I was invited to speak at Anna Kennedy's Autism's Got Talent Roadshow at Baston House in Bromley on the 16th November.  It is always an honour to be a part of these events.  Everyone performing is so talented at what they do and there is always a great feeling amongst those performing at the show.  I had a difficult and emotional speech lined up, I wondered how I would be able to deliver it without any problems but I needn't have worried.  Normally for Autism's Got Talent my speeches had been about the things I had achieved and telling my story, I felt this time that many people were already aware of my story and that I needed to deliver more of a message through my story.  I am proud to say that it went amazingly well, I had a lot of positive feedback afterwards and Anna requested that I do this speech again when I speak at her autism event at the House of Commons in December.  After then I will hopefully be posting and sharing this speech on youtube.

The very next day, 17th November, I was at the Martial Arts Illustrated Hall of Fame awards where I was put forward for an award.  I was given my award for determination and achievement in martial arts.  It was an honour to receive such an award in the presence of so many dedicated and talented martial artists.  There was also an opportunity to say a few words and five years ago I would have been too scared to but this time I saw it as practise to speak to such a large audience.  I spoke for only a few minutes but had standing ovations from some areas of the crowd which I didn't notice until I was told by people I was sitting with.

Martial Arts Hall of Fame Award

It has been wonderful to have been recognised both in local sport and also the world of martial arts for my achievements and I also really enjoyed speaking at Autism's Got Talent.  Now all that needs to happen is this anxiety to pass and to establish a good structure again.