A lot of things in life worry me, frighten me or make me anxious, and they are usually irrational things that 'normal' people would never find worrying, frightening or anxiety provoking. For someone like me who suffers with anxiety and panic disorder, a normal day can be difficult in that my body can be feeling threatened and will be in fight/flight mode all day. Hours of being tensed up, being on edge, tired, worried, emotional and scared can really wear you out and so I thought I would write a blog post on my techniques to keep myself as calm and anxiety free as possible to lessen these effects of my disorders.
TV and Movies
I watch a lot of TV and movies on my laptop from either catch up TV, Sky Go or Netflix. Even if I'm doing uni or placement work, I will still have something on my laptop in the background. (Even right now I have Dexter playing in the background while writing this!). TV allows me to focus on something other than the thoughts in my head. For me, shows I have to use my brain in like criminal, psychological shows and films like Dexter, House, How To Get Away With Murder and Pretty Little Liars are my favorite for this very reason. Documentaries are also a good distraction for me, or insight TV shows such as 24 Hours in A&E or The Secret Life of 4 Year Olds are also great for this reason too. Films that remind me of my childhood such as Disney films or Harry Potter also keep me calm as they remind me of happiness, family and safety.
Music
I listen to music everywhere I can. I used to download music onto my phone but now I have Spotify Premium, I can listen to any song, at any time, which really helps when I do feel anxious and need a specific song to relax me or cheer me up. Music really does help in particularly anxiety provoking situation such as train journeys, as I can listen to the words of the song and enjoy it. I made my own relaxing playlists for those times when I come home and really just need a kick up the bum to relax and wind down, and also have an uplifting playlist to distract myself from anxiety.
Blogging
I started this blog as a way for me to release my thoughts on my disorders and be able to turn it into something positive for other people to come to and learn about or be able to relate to and feel less alone. Before I started blogging, I kept a diary full of writing and memories, drawings and photos to help my release the thoughts in my brain. Knowing that I help people by blogging so open and honestly also helps me more than I thought it would as it allows me open up my nurse side and do what I do best and what makes me happy - help others.
Project Life and Scrapbooking
I collect memories....No, I hoard memories. Receipts, restaurant napkins, tickets, wristbands, anything that reminds me of happy times, I keep. I also take way too many photos. This year, I started Project Life which involves a mixture between scrapbooking and storing photos in photo albums. It allows me to be creative, display my memories or happy times and look back on them. I started Project Life during my period of sickness and it was amazing therapy for me to look at happy memories and realise I can be happy again. Now I love it. Every time I go home, I will add to my scrapbook, as it also relaxes me and is something I really enjoy.
Keeping Organised
Anyone who knows me knows that my obsession in life is organisation. I colour-code, make endless lists, write down EVERYTHING and set myself deadlines. I have a diary that never leaves my bag with everything in it. If I lost that, I'd be lost myself, but staying on top of my life keeps me calm and relaxed. If I know what I'm doing and it's written down, it is something I don't have to worry about. Wish exams and assignments, I set myself mini deadlines within the main deadline so I don't bombard myself the dread of 'I have 3000 words to do in 4 months'. Instead I will tell myself to do say 200 words a week. That way I reach my targets and can feel proud of myself throughout it, rather than worried.
Obviously the main thing I do is surround myself with happy people and things that make me happy. I talk to my boyfriend, mum and dad every day and they keep me happy. I have posters up in my room with quotes reminding me to keep happy. I give myself 'me' time and let myself do nothing sometimes. I hope this post has given you an insight into how I keep myself calm and happy and have reinforced the importance of doing things your way as often as you can to be calm, relaxed and happy.
Love Luce xo
I will first of all apologise in advance at the length of this post, but I do feel it is very important for others to read about, learn and understand.
As I spoke about in this post, you don't always have to go through a life changing experience, or have a rough upbringing or a tough life to suffer with anxiety or panic disorder, however, there is almost always a trigger that causes you to think and act differently in life. After researching the common causes of anxiety there were 4 repeated causes: environmental factors such as marital breakdown or loss of a loved one, medical factors such as being diagnosed or living with an illness, substance abuse or simply genetics. Other than suffering from patellofemoral syndrome, which I do not believe adds to my anxiety at all, I do not suffer from any other 'medical conditions' and I do not consider myself to misuse substances. Mental health did affect one of my grandparents, however this was arguably a steroid induced mental illness from his treatment for a lung condition so unlikely to be in his genes and passed down to me. This leaves experiencing an environmental factor, which is arguably the most common cause of mental health conditions. I had a loving upbringing, my parents are still happy and in love and I didn't lose a loved one until 3 years ago despite suffering from anxiety for the majority of my life. So you may be wondering, then what Lucy? I thought that too.
After getting questions like "you have nothing to be worried about" and "you have a wonderful life and always have done", I started feeling guilty for feeling the emotions that I did. With the advice from my Mum, I decided to start seeing a psychotherapist who helped me dig deep and find the point that my anxiety began. I saw her a few times but for the purpose of this post, I will just talk about the session when we discovered my triggering 'environmental factor'.
She asked me if I had any idea of when it may have started, and I did but it seemed too silly and so long ago to have made me the person I am today, but I told her. "My brother went missing in Queensgate when I was 4 or 5". (Queensgate is a shopping centre in a city near where I live.) From this, she put me into an almost hypnotised state where I had my eyes closed, and I was to talk in present tense as my 5 year old self about what happened that day in chronological order. She asked questions like "what do you see/hear/smell?" and shockingly, I could record what I was wearing, what my brother was wearing even what part of Queensgate we were. She asked me to speak about when my brother went missing. I told her we were in the seating area under the escalators running in circles, taking it in turns to chase each other while Mum and Dad sat and talked (He was around 3 years old), when suddenly my Dad came over, grabbed my shoulders and quite loudly said "where is Bradley?". I remember not saying anything and my dad staring at me,with scared eyes, as if it's a question I should have been able to answer. But I couldn't because he was chasing me, I didn't realise he'd gone. Then he ran to Mum who then came over to me and repeated the same question to me. "Where is Bradley?" "Where did he go?". I don't actually remember saying that I didn't know, I just remember being confused as to why Mum and Dad were mad and running around and were asking me questions I didn't know the answer to. I could see my dad running into the shop to the right of where I was stood and then come back over to me and Mum. My Mum then picked me up and sat me next to an old couple and said "Stay here" then turned to the couple and said "We've lost our son, please can you watch our daughter" and then turned and ran off to where dad was. I remember looking at this man I was sat next to, then looking into the direction of my Mum and Dad over and over again. I remember thinking that they were leaving me with this couple and they were never coming back. I sat and watched my them walk further and further away from me until I ran to my Mum and Dad. They weren't too happy about it at all as they were obviously panicking and crying and shouting and understandably didn't want to have to watch me. But I stayed with them until we found him.
That's it. No death, no marital breakdown, no tough upbringing. Just my 3 year old brother running off to play on the bikes in the window of John Lewis, and me being left with strangers. I was very emotional when we finished the session as I didn't realise how much memory my brain had stored from that day. I went home and asked my Mum questions about that day, just to see if I had made it up in my head or whether I really had remembered it. My parents were shocked at how much I could remember, especially given I was 4 or 5 at the time it happened, and as many of you know, child brains that young don't usually retain information to store as memories.
My psychotherapist talked to me in the next session about how the feelings I had felt being that small child could have triggered my social and attachment anxiety. The feeling of not being able to give my parents the answer they were looking for, not understanding what was happening, being left with strangers (who in hindsight, my Mum promised they looked nice and friendly!) and ultimately thinking my parents were walking away and would never come back for me completely triggered my brain to think like that every time something like that happened to me again. That's why I never left peoples sides up to the age of 16, it's why I still hold onto peoples clothes in crowded spaces so I don't get lost, it's why I find it hard to be left alone anywhere where I don't know people, it's also why I find it hard not being able to please people or make them happy, because my 5 year old self couldn't on that day. In a way, it's sad that something so seemingly insignificant compared to what other children and adults go through could trigger me to be the way that I am, but I wanted to write this post to prove that if you have had a good life and don't understand why you are anxious or suffer with a condition like mine, do not feel guilty. Do not feel embarrassed, as the brain is an amazing yet annoying thing, especially childrens brains.It is no ones fault that my brain decided to change my thought processes and develop and evolve over time. It is important to know that I do not in any way blame my parents or my disappearing brother for that matter. I never have and I never will.
I hope you enjoyed reading my personal experience, especially if you have a similar feeling of shame and guilt towards your 'trigger story'. I hope it's helped others understand how seemingly small life experiences that you don't even know you could remember can cause anxiety and panic disorder, and no one should ever be made to feel guilty or embarrassed by who they are, or more importantly, why they are who they are.
Love Luce xo
So as a third year student nurse who will be hopefully qualifying in approximately 11 months (eeeee!) I thought it would be a good idea to hand down my advice from my 2 full years of studying for a nursing degree to those in the first year or those who are thinking about choosing to study a degree in nursing. I write this post as if I was telling my first year self this advice as I would have loved to read or for someone to tell me something like this.
1. Be confident. I suffer with anxiety and I found it took me a while to adjust to walking onto a ward and suddenly, people the age of my Mum and Grandma were asking me for help. Me! You are training to help others, whether you're a childrens nurse, adult nurse, mental health nurse or learning disability nurse, people will need you and you have to be confident in yourself that you can do that. This is your degree, no one elses and you really do get out what you put in. You wont always get everything right, especially to start with, but don't panic. You are there to learn, and learning new skills brings confidence. You will get the hang of it no matter how much you tell yourself you wont. Which brings me onto my next piece of advice...
2. Don't be afraid to ask for help. You are not going to be expected to know everything as a first year student nurse. As you develop and grow, nurses expectations will begin to grow too and by that I mean by your 10th week of placement, your mentor will probably expect you to not still be following her around asking "what shall I do now?". You are given placements to learn and develop the skills you will need when you qualify and you are given mentors to help teach you these, so asking for help is never a bad thing. In a job like nursing, if you guess things you are not sure on, it could be detrimental to the health of your patient. Don't quite know which dressing to redress Bay 2 Bed 4's diabetic foot ulcer with? Ask. Don't know why Side Room 3's urine output is being measured every hour? Ask. The more you ask, the more you learn. My advice is for typical nursing knowledge such as dressings, size of catheters or length of NG tubes, ask your mentor how you know which one would be best and make a note of it in a notebook. Then you can always look back on 'How to measure an NG tube' for example.
3. Grab all opportunities. On placement, you will have so many opportunities to experience other members of staffs roles, such as physios, dietitians, OT's etc and this helps you as a student nurse develop your knowledge of the multi-disciplinary team. You may also get opportunities to work in other departments such as theaters under your specialty and I would highly recommend you take these experiences with open arms. It not only gives you experience of the patient journey but you also get to see things normal people never get to see - inside an operating theater! Even if a nurse is doing a basic skill such as changing a dressing or maybe a more advanced skills such as inserting an NG tube, ask if you can watch. In my experience, most nurses let you get hands on after 1 or two observations which is always a confidence booster!
4. Keep on top of your work. You will get periods of time where you are on placement working long hours and you also have an assignment or project to complete too. It can become daunting to think that when you get home after a 12 hour shift, you have to sit and write some more assignment. My advice for this would be to structure your time. If it's possible, try and get some of your theory work done before your practical starts, this way you wont have as much to do while you're tired, emotional and worn out from placement. If you have to complete theory work during a placement block, do this on your days off or if you work half days, do it on the other half of your day. This way, you're not exhausting yourself. If you try and do too much at once, your brain will fry and your work wont be the best you could have done, but if you leave it too long, you'll end up rushing it and your work will again be affected. Structure your time properly. Give yourself mini deadlines.For example, do 200 words by the end of the week. Doesn't seem as daunting like that, does it?
5. They're there to help. Lecturers, tutors, programme leaders, mentors and support staff are all employed to help you. It is their job, so you should never be scared to go to them for advice and support, especially if you are struggling in either theory or practice. They will be able to help. The best bit about being a student nurse in university is that all of your academic staff within the nursing department are nurses - they have been in your shoes! They're also usually caring, understanding and empathetic people. I would advise you to meet up with your personal tutor at least once a semester to update him/her with how you're getting on, and this gives you an opportunity to ask any questions or ask for help or support on anything. In my experience, if they can't help directly, they will always signpost you to someone who can.
That's my 5 main pieces of advice for new student nurses from the experience that i've had. It's okay to need help, it's okay to be in touch with your emotions, it's okay to have down days and feel stressed out but always remember that you are studying to be somebody who will change so many peoples lives. Even as a student nurse, you will find this. It will be so worth it in the end. Drop me a comment or email me if you have any further questions regarding this topic - i'm always happy to help.
Love Luce xo
I feel like I have been looking for so long for a place to empty my thought-filled mind into. I'm always full to the brim with creative ideas, new projects I want to get stuck into, my university assignments and my organisation and planning. I am an avid project life-er, I collect and store my memories and I love DIY and crafty things. I am a hardworking third year student nurse too so work long hours at times, learning and developing new skills ready for when I qualify, and reflecting on my experiences.
Alongside all the 'good' stuff buzzing around in my mind, I suffer from social and attachment anxiety and panic disorder as well as terrible homesickness, so my thoughts are not always rational and bubbly. Despite it draining me emotionally and occasionally physically, I generally cope with it all quite well and my creativity and strive to keep busy balances my bad thoughts and panicky moments.
In my eyes, it's not healthy to live life with a mind full to the brim of thoughts, good or bad, and so this blog is really a way to express myself for others to read, learn about, inspire and hopefully maybe even understand and relate to.
I am new to all of this, so anyone who is reading this, go easy on me! I am more than happy to take ideas or requested topics for blog posts and have set a target of at least one blog post a week!
Please feel free to leave me a comment, I will reply.
Love Luce xo
