I don’t know if I am the only one who feels like this but I often have times when I feel either I do not have the power to do anything particularly recently when I feel powerless to do anything to bring myself out of crippling anxiety and distress or feeling powerless to do anything to make someone else’s life better.

There is a concept that I have learned about through studying occupational therapy called internal locus of control which is the belief that your own actions contribute to your success or failure instead of other external factors and this is something that I believe. I was guilty of taking on too many projects at the start of this uni academic year perhaps because I have an OT mindset of wanting to have a productive, meaningful life but it soon came to a point where I would be sitting in on a discussion or meeting and I couldn’t give it my full attention and I would be thinking about my to-do list which kept getting added to. Although I enjoyed all the things I had signed up to do, I realised that narrowing down how much I was taking on would mean that I could do the job so much better.   

As I have mentioned in my second post, My Journey as a Giraffe, I have experienced and continue to experience social anxiety. My main issue can be the assumptions that I make about how people will think and respond to me but also getting into the mindset that I have to talk to as many people as I can as I feel bad when I haven’t been the nicest that I could have been. This might seem really obvious but the fact that the quality of friendships is more important than the quantity is something that I had forgotten. There was a time in my life where I felt like I was trying to keep up with so many people that I felt exhausted and I was saddened that I didn’t feel like I knew many people very well or that people knew me that well either. Although I know that I don’t have the capacity to be close with everyone I meet, recently I have been working on getting to know those around me better and I hope that I can be a better friend and better support myself because of this.

Thank you for taking the time to read this and I hope you find it helpful. As always, feel free to get in touch with any questions/feedback/thoughts, I always love to hear it. Stay tuned for the next instalment.

Until next time

Kathryn