Loving the Life Less Lived

Marie Mitchell Gail

Description

Like many people, Gail Marie Mitchell battled with anxiety and depression for many years, finding it exhausting, stressful and demoralising at times.Realising that this approach to her condition was futile, Gail chose a different approach: acceptance.Taking control in this way removed some of the pressure and enabled Gail to focus on developing coping strategies, creating the tips and tools that are included in this empathetic and practical book.Gail focuses on the positive aspects of her condition, showing how a person living with mental illness is so much more than the label that society puts on them. She found acceptance empowering, enabling her to live her life to the full. Perhaps not the life she had planned, but one that is happy and fulfilling and that she loves. She is Loving the Life Less Lived.By sharing her experiences and describing what she learnt from them as well as the resulting coping strategies, Gail has created an essential companion for anyone dealing with mental illness and their family and friends.

Informations

• Publié par: RedDoor Publishing
• Date de parution: 26 janvier 2017
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781912022779
• Langue: English

Extrait

LOVING
Living with Anxiety
THE
LIFE
LESS
and how Acceptance has the Power
LIVED
to Change Your Life
About the Author

Gail Marie Mitchell has tried her hand at many things over the years from studying chemistry at the University of York to teaching in the favelas of Brazil. She now works in the exciting world of accountancy, supporting small charities in the East Midlands area. She lives in a country idyll with her husband and spends her time working, writing and trying to make sense of this crazy, confused and broken world we live in. She has lived for much of her life with anxiety and depression, conditions she has slowly learnt to accept and celebrate and which have led her to write Loving the Life Less Lived .
GAIL MARIE MITCHELL
LOVING
Living with Anxiety
THE
LIFE
LESS
and how Acceptance has the Power
LIVED
to Change Your Life
Published by RedDoor www.reddoorpublishing.com
© 2017 Gail Marie Mitchell
The right of Gail Marie Mitchell to be identified as author of this Work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
ISBN 978-1-912022-77-9
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, copied in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise transmitted without written permission from the author
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Cover design: Liron Gilenberg www.ironicitalics.com
Typesetting: Tutis Innovative E-Solutions Pte. Ltd
Song lyrics on pages 60 , 199 and 200 by Martyn Joseph, all reproduced with kind permission
All statistics and information taken from the Mental Health Foundation is reproduced with kind permission www.mentalhealth.org.uk
Any use of the information in this book is at the reader’s discretion. It is not intended to replace medical or psychiatric treatment or specialist teaching methods
Dedicated to Angela Leaney who unwittingly inspired this book – from 3500 miles away
Contents

About the Author
Prologue: We’re all Flashing
Tips from my Toolbox: Introducing the Toolbox
Over to You: Introducing the Toolbox
1. You’ve Got to Have a Dream
Tips from my Toolbox: Small Steps to Success
2. When you are Going Through Hell
Tips from my Toolbox: GPs, Professional Help and Medication
3. One Woman in a Thousand
Tips from my Toolbox: Let them people go
Tips from my Toolbox: Music
4. Look Ma, No Hands
Tips from my Toolbox: Eat, Move, Sleep
5. Count Your Blessings
Tips from my Toolbox: My Positive Book
6. The Long Road to Healing Is Worth a Thousand Miracle Cures
Tips from my Toolbox: Self-Help Books (or just books!)
7. Accept Who you Are but Believe Who you One Day Might Be
Tips from my Toolbox: Acceptance
Tips from my Toolbox: Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT)
8. Still Crazy After All These Years
Tips from my Toolbox: Coping with Panic Attacks
Tips from my Toolbox: Guide for friends, family and colleagues
9. People Who Inspire: You never know how far your influence will reach
Tips from my Toolbox: Hobbies and creativity
10. The Tiny Mustard Seed of Faith
Tips from my Toolbox: Mindfulness
11. What If? And Why Not?
Tips from my Toolbox: Hypnotherapy
12. Who Will Write the Next Chapter?
Tips from my Toolbox: Build your own box of tools
Further Reading
Prologue: We’re all Flashing
The day I decided to write this book I had a panic attack. There’s nothing remarkable in that – in my forty-something years I have had hundreds of them, too many to mention, more than enough for it to be my ‘norm’. That day was different. As usual, ‘panic’ took its punch, a roundhouse to my delicate self-esteem, whispering its loathsome, piteous half-truths that were guaranteed to seep through my withered defences; it went for the knock-out.
‘Here we go again,’ I thought, waiting for the referee’s inevitable ten-second count to my defeat. ‘I panic. I cry. I run away. I never go back. It has always been that way, always will be. Why would today be any different?’
It had been a strange old day, wet and wild, made for snuggling by a fire, not battling around a supermarket. Come to think of it, no Saturday was ever made for battling around a supermarket, certainly not for anyone who is followed by the Poison Panic and shadowed by the Fearful Phobia. And at that time I was strange, too. I was changing my medication and as well as the expected tearfulness, shakes and churning stomach that accompanied my every waking moment, there was a weird hypersensitivity hanging around me like an aura. I felt dizzy but at the same time hyper-alert; everything was loud but strangely distant, the lights had a migraine-inducing brightness, but it seemed like I was somewhere else. It was a day when I should have known better than to venture out alone.
Unusually I was on my own and in a supermarket with which I was unfamiliar. I won’t say its name, but it was not the orange, blue or green one – it was the yellow one. I picked up the minimal groceries I needed by deeply breathing my way around the aisles and mentally reassuring myself it would soon be over. I then headed to the checkouts. Self-checkout seemed the best option. I only had a few items and the queues at the manned tills were gridlocked. I got to a till pretty easily. I was on the home straight.
Progress is a wonderful thing, as are computers. I even celebrate self-checkouts… when they are working. That Saturday, they were most certainly not working. The first item I scanned triggered the red flashing light above the till and told me to ‘please wait for assistance’. OK. No problem. I mentally comforted myself using all the therapeutic techniques I have learned over the years. There was one attendant on duty and he was very busy, but he came eventually, swiped whatever it is that they swipe and I was good to go. The second item I scanned produced more red flashing lights, more waiting for assistance. I started to breathe more deeply, trying to calm my body and mind, but my mental reassurances were becoming verbal. ‘Don’t panic, we’re nearly there, it’ll soon be over,’ I found myself repeating out loud as tears streamed down my cheeks. Once more the assistant did his best to get me scanning again, but come the third item the red flashing lights started again, same for the fourth, same for the fifth. There was more waiting, with each time taking longer than the last. Each time my adrenalin rose, the world become more surreal. It was time to sob hysterically; time to run away; time to never go back. Panic had entered the ring – the undefeated heavyweight world champion. Panic would win. Panic always won.
But something was different this time. I looked at the groceries we needed for the weekend. I thought of the emotional energy I’d put in getting them from the aisles. I didn’t want to go through all that again. I didn’t want to have to phone my husband (who was at an important meeting or would have been with me and supporting me) and tell him there was no lunch. I didn’t want to tell him that, when he’d finished his meeting, he’d have to go and get the food shopping himself while I waited in the car, unable to cope with even this simple task.
No! For the first time ever I decided that I wasn’t going to roll over while Panic lifted its arms in the air and claimed another victory.
There are angels all around us. They are there when we least expect or believe in them and they come and go unaware of the profound consequences they have on people’s lives. Well, maybe they’re not angels, rather Good Samaritans, but in the midst of despair they feel like they are heaven sent. Today the angels were dressed as middle-aged men: one in a trench coat and panama hat, the other in a rather ordinary blue anorak. They were waiting at other malfunctioning self-checkout tills. They couldn’t help but notice the tearful woman at the nearby till muttering to herself and looking as though she was about to implode. The milk of human kindness encouraged them to ask me if I was OK and if there was anything they could do to help.
‘Not unless you know how to mend these machines,’ I said pathetically. ‘I’m having a panic attack but I’m not going to let it beat me. I’m not going to run away.’ (This in itself was progress – usually by this stage my ability to speak escapes me and I’m left uttering random words like ‘help’ or ‘want to go home’.)
The men smiled at me, not in the ‘crazy-woman-let’s-give-her-a-wide-berth’ way I had become accustomed to over the years, but in an encouraging, almost paternal way. Somewhere in my sub conscious I felt Panic take a stumble. This was a surprise move it wasn’t expecting. I wasn’t expecting it either. The mouse never fights back.
‘We all feel like that inside,’ said the panama-hatted man.
‘Yes, look, we’re all flashing,’ said the anoraked angel.
Panic fell back, not floored completely but definitely fazed by the newcomers who had entered the ring.
I looked around and they were right. We were all flashing. Every single self-checkout till was lit up by a red flashing bulb. If anyone should have been panicking it was the poor shop assistant who was running between us like a wasp at a barbeque trying to get the tills to cooperate.
I smiled. I think I might even have chuckled. The two men distracted me and Panic just hovered around completely uncertain of its next move.
It took an age. I still felt panicky and frightened, and frightfully embarrassed, but the kindness of strangers held my sanity together long enough to finish the shopping and pay for my goods.
Finally, an eternity later, I got back to the car carrying my groceries as though they were the spoils of war. I had achieved something! No big deal to purchase a bag of groceries. Huge deal to stick two fingers up to Panic, who had scuttled off with its tail between its legs.
I didn’t know when it would be back. I never know when