Sorry for the leave of absence!

Hi, I hope that anyone reading this didn't think that I'd upped and died after my last post being months ago! (probably the wrong turn of phrase but it's late and I'm tired!) I didn't die, and I did manage to get through my exam. In fact I managed to get through my end of year exams as well and ended up with a solid 2:1 :) Very exciting.

I'm now at home for the summer holidays, and a few things have made my anxiety flare up again:

1) My doctor is in Scotland, and whilst I can have phone appointments, it is somehow not the same! I don't trust other doctors to diagnose me properly either :(

2) My boyfriend is also in Scotland and I can only sleep properly if someone else is sleeping next to me, because otherwise I worry I will stop breathing in the night or someone will murder me. And I can only wake my mum and sister up in the night so many times!

So, this has led to numerous nights following the same rough pattern as tonight. Can't sleep...go on internet to keep busy....look at news article/take a health test/watch a hospital programme...convince self of symptoms...google...panic....CAN'T SLEEP.

Fun times or what! Tonight I'm worried about my heart rate. Apparently my heart rate is low (according to a test I just did) at just 54 beats per minute when resting. And I'm also always tired and feeling faint...two symptoms that occur when a low heart rate can suggest a deeper medical problem. So tomorrow morning I will be phoning my local surgery to get a doctors appointment and then getting a phone appointment with my normal doctor to double check.

*sigh* and I so wanted to go shopping....

All Nighter...

I have been awake all night in case I went to sleep and didn't wake up.

This is how I feel at the moment. How Depressing.

Bad Times...

So I took 2mg of Diazepam earlier and totally forgot and had three quarters of a can of cider at dinner. I then made the fatal error of googling and found out you can die or go into a coma. So now I'm paranoid that I'm going to die.

I want to drop out of uni and live at home :(

Feeling Sedated...

So I have an exam coming up this Wednesday, one of the ones I deferred when I had my mental breakdown in January, and I'm already feeling the stress. Obviously I couldn't fixate on HIV this time, instead I woke up at 4am the other day convinced that my ex boyfriend is going to kill me. Despite the fact that we haven't spoken in three years, and we live in different countries for most of the year. So I was up until around 5-6am googling murder rates in the UK and stories of women who had been killed by their exes.

I had an appointment with the doctor today and - quelle surprise - this sort of thought is not normal. Sooo I have been put on Diazepam until my exam is over in an attempt to stop me going completely loopy. I started taking them today and boy, you can tell its a sedative! I had one 2mg tablet and after half an hour or so I was feeling floppy and woozy! It definitely calmed my anxious fidgeting though! I'm going to take another one before bed and see if I sleep through the night :)

I will update on how the exam goes on Wednesday night...hopefully it won't go horrifyingly bad.

...Pull yourself together!

So as I mentioned, I suffer from an anxiety disorder. This is something of an umbrella term, as I suffer from many sub-types of anxiety within this. By anxiety disorder, I mean that I suffer from abnormal amounts of panic and anxiety which causes distress and physical symptoms such as panic attacks. Here are some of the sub-types I suffer from:

1) Generalised Anxiety: I tend to operate on a higher than average level of panic on a daily basis. In fact when I went to my first therapy appointment I was informed that I was actually hyperventilating as I talked, and I hadn't even noticed! 

2) Social Anxiety: This can take many forms, including agoraphobia. For me, I get anxious if I am in a large crowd, or if I am meeting new people or going to new places. A new aspect of this is that I am now terrified of terrorism or being murdered. This has resulted in me changing carriages on trains, walking three hours through London so I don't need to get the tube, and hiding from cars in case there will be a drive by shooting.

3) Toilet Anxiety: This one may sound funny, but its really nothing but. This is one of the types of anxiety I have suffered with since I was in primary school but never actually named. For years and years I was convinced I was the only person to suffer with it. Basically I get very anxious about needing the toilet and not being able to go, or being judged on my toilet habits. This means I don't like going to places where I don't know if there is toilet access, I don't like long journeys, I don't like being places where I might not be able to get to the toilet in time, I don't like going to the toilet when there are people around and if I absolutely have to I need to have the hand dryer or tap running! Let me tell you, this one can be a real pain, I still have never managed to go to a music festival *sad face*.

4) Health Anxiety: This is one I find particularly troubling. In fact in January I was put on anti depressants because I became totally convinced that I was dying of HIV. I tend to only worry about terminal illnesses, and particularly ones that would perhaps not be diagnosed easily. Some of my most common are: Ovarian cancer, Bowel cancer, Skin cancer, Brain tumour, Toxic Shock Syndrome, Meningitis, Early Onset Alzheimers, HIV, and even once...Mad Cow Disease.

These are my main issues. Are you wondering how I manage to live my life on a day to day basis? Join the club! So do I and so does my doctor and my therapist! 

Welcome to my mind

I am a student in my penultimate year at University in Scotland, and I would guess I'm something like your average student. I drink with my friends, leave essays longer than I should and spend ridiculous amounts of money on frivolous things and then live on toast and baked beans for a week. The only way in which I'm different from your average, is that I suffer from a chronic anxiety disorder. I have had it for around a decade, although I was only really diagnosed sometime last year, in my second year of university. Unfortunately for me, a lot of things about being a student are also things that make me particularly anxious. Exams and assessed work is usually an issue, being in lectures and seminars and any university events can be difficult for me. Then there is the social side-I don't like being in nightclubs, I don't like drinking so much that I don't have complete control and I don't like leaving my very small university town unless its with my family or my boyfriend. 

Luckily for me, or perhaps not depending on how you look at it, I have been living with my anxiety for so long that I have become very good at hiding it. On a night out and feeling anxious? I forgot I had an early class the next day so I simply must go home. Going shopping out of town with friends? I will be in the area anyway so I don't need to get public transport with them, I will meet them there. Fielding questions about why I have missed so many lectures? Oh you know, I'm just lazy, can't be bothered with going to the things!

I suppose the reason I have started this blog is to record the general musings of a student...but with the added twist of living with my anxiety. There will be posts about essay writing and socials, but also about my therapy appointments, or how I am coping with my medication. (30mg of Citalopram, if you're interested.) Most of all I guess I just want to prove that having a mental illness doesn't stop me from being a normal student. A normal girl.