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......
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......
