Those who know me well will know that I like to make an effort to do my best for people and in a situation. I also find comfort in having either little or no regrets.  As I talked about in previous instalments, it is important to build both our own and other people’s mental health in big and small ways. However I realise that this can only go so far before it becomes unhealthy.

Some people have asked me more about my social anxiety and if I enjoy social occasions and the answer I say is yes. I see how the word anxiety suggests distress and I have been working through where the roots of my anxieties are and how to overcome these fears over the last year or so. However, as the video that I shared a couple of weeks ago explains in much better words than I could ever come up with, it is not necessarily all dislike of the situation itself. Instead, introverts like me don’t often get their energy from socialising and need more time to process their thoughts on their own. I would say in my case in particular that anxiety is also about the expectations that I put on myself for the person that I want to be at that time, which means I think more about how I appear, what I say and what I do.

I’m trying to find a balance between the two where I am proud of myself but also not judging myself too harshly and being able to forgive myself when I make mistakes. This isn’t a quick process and takes a lot of trial and error and learning how I can adjust my thoughts and actions to more healthy ones but I am proud of how much I have grown from the girl who was scared to say hi to people she didn’t know less than ten years ago to the person I am today!

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/comments, I always love to hear it. Much to my surprise, I’m about to start receiving support for my mental health on the NHS in the next couple of weeks so I will probably be focusing on that rather than posting publicly for a while so it might be a while before I post again but stay tuned for that.

Until next time

Kathryn