What Sophie Said

I didn’t intend to take such a long break from posting here, or any break at all, really. I’ve been writing but not publishing. Writing as a way to try and process thoughts I don’t understand myself yet. There’s been a lot going on over the last few months. I’ve written on here about my journey with anxiety over a number of years, and about the fact that in June this year I completely crashed with my anxiety and depression. There’s been a lot of rebuilding going on. A lot of pulling thoughts apart to their very roots and learning how to change them so they’re no longer damaging. Finally, I acknowledged that I needed to face everything properly, rather than continuing to wear a mask and pretending I was ok. It’s been going well. I found a counsellor who understands me. He knows what I’m describing before I finish describing it. He doesn’t let me get away with taking the easy route, and he challenges beliefs I’ve been leaning on for years. About a month ago, I realised t...

Yesterday marked exactly a year since I moved to London. I didn’t think it would ever be a move I would make, but it has led to one of the busiest years of my life and probably the one in which I have changed and learned the most. The move was about breaking out of my comfort zone, and throwing off the comfort blankets I’d surrounded myself with. Without challenging myself, I was never going to overcome a lot of the fears I had built up and learned to live with. The timings suddenly clicked. I was really unhappy in my job, living alone with the flexibility to move, and there was nothing tying me to stay in the same place. When the job hunt began, I was offered a role at a company I’ve admired for years, which sealed the deal and to London I came. It’s been a year of extreme highs and some very real lows, and one year on I can say it’s been one of the biggest learning experiences I’ve had. I’m in a new city, facing ‘fears’ like the tube, living with stranger...

Last year, I made a simple and broad New Year’s resolution, inspired by a blogger I follow who had used it the year before. The resolution was to ‘do more of what makes me happy, and less of what doesn’t’. What I loved about this was that it gave me the power to decide what to do, and how to conduct myself. It made me think before accepting things I was unsure about. It made me value the times I loved, and arrange more of them. And it’s not a resolution you can ‘fail’. If you say you’ll go to the gym a certain number of times a week, for example, and then one week you don’t, you’ve ‘failed’. With my resolution, it was ok to have a bad day, or week, or even period of weeks. You could still get back on track. Because life isn’t always plain sailing, and a year is a long time. But I think this resolution was the perfect continuation of what I had started the year before: starting to make decisions with my happiness and wellbeing in mind. It’s n...

Time for my next challenge update! January’s goals were focused on beginning to take control of my panicking, and trying to take positive steps forward, and I’ve had mixed success. Point number one was to go to the doctors, chat about what’s going on, and discuss some kind of talking therapy. I did that, and was lucky to get a great doctor, who immediately made me feel so calm. He referred me to a local place for some CBT (cognitive behavioural therapy). I’ve had one session so far, but may write about it in a little more depth once I’m really starting to learn any techniques, or can see it making a difference. This was definitely a massive step to take, so I’m really pleased about that. Point two was yoga, and that one has just not happened. I do have a tendency, whilst I’m worrying so much, to put off certain things. It’s something I’m trying to sort out, but this was something that fell by the wayside. I got as far as emailing to confirm the times of a local class, but on h...