It’s 11am. I’ve been sitting at my desk since 7.30 (with a brief respite for breakfast and a shower and getting dressed) yet I have written nothing. Oh, I tell a lie, I’ve written two-thirds of a page in my journal. I have also read the news, spoken to a friend, made plans for my birthday and poured myself a coffee. So around two and a half hours actually sat at my desk with nothing bar a few sentences scribbled in my notebook to show for it.
To say I am annoying myself is an understatement.
But I have anxiety. Well, actually I don’t have it any more as I’ve sought help, but it has left me feeling battered and bruised and with a void in my head where creative ideas used to come from. The anxiety was due to the events of this year plus the sudden death of a family friend during a period when England was nationally ’locked down’. My anxiety and depression came about then but it was just bubbling below the surface so I thought I could manage it through coming off social media, not reading the news and taking more care of myself. Which worked for a while. Until August which, funnily enough, was when we as a nation were coming out of lockdown. It should have been a time of joy but for me I started sinking.
My thoughts became all consuming. Every time someone mentioned the virus or something related to it my tummy would flipflop and I’d get that raw, almost savage-like anxious feeling inside. It wasn’t, however, a fear of the virus. I believe my husband and I have already had it. I was anxious as we were given back our freedoms, that they’d be swiftly taken away again. If I was talking to someone I wasn’t fully paying attention because I was playing out all of the ‘what-if’ questions in my head. Specifically my anxieties focused on education. I don’t know why but I think the anxiety needed something to latch onto and this was it. My son is in his final year of A-levels (he’s 17 going on 18 for those of you not in the UK). All I could think about was if schools don’t go back then what will happen to his exams next year. Will they cancel them? Will he not get a decent education over the next ten or so months? Rationally I knew things would be okay but at the same time I couldn’t see that it would be okay. I couldn’t imagine them back at school. I couldn’t picture them in their uniform or playing sport and things being back to normal. I couldn’t see an end in sight.
In fact, the future looked bleak with nothing to look forward to. It was incredibly distressing.
My news ban came to an end as I scrolled through the papers looking for hints of good news. Which meant I was susceptible to all the bad news the media loves to highlight. So I sought out different perspectives and on and on it would go. I was at a low point, I knew what I was doing, but couldn’t stop myself. I felt I had to keep reading because if I didn’t it would all go out of control. If I read I could control the narrative. My teeth became incredibly sensitive as I clenched them during the day and night.
The final straw came during August when I spoke to an acquaintance and they painted a bleak picture of what was going to happen with regards to schooling and exams. They were angry and distressed themselves and I came away from that conversation feeling utterly wretched and bleak. My soul had been sucked. A dark cloud was raining onto my head. My anxiety was sky high and I could feel it every time I took a breath in. I went home and did a ‘fact check’ on everything they’d told me. It was all wrong. But the anxieties stayed with me (what if!) despite this knowledge.
The next morning I woke up and with beating heart rang the doctors. Thank God. It was the best thing I ever did. The doctor called me back within a couple of hours and her understanding and empathetic voice calmed me down. Nearly two months of treatment later I am feeling good. I can read the news without anxiety. I can talk to people and be fully immersed in the conversation without going through all the dire ‘what if’ scenarios in my mind. I can go to sleep at night without thinking about it all. My teeth occasionally still clench but it isn’t as bad as it was.
But I still can’t write.
I don’t feel I have anything to write about. Yes, I have my projects I could work on and in the last week I’ve made an attempt to push forward with my planning workbook. But most of the time I am simply sat here, scrolling, and wasting my life.
I know I need to pull myself together and get back into my writing routine. Normally I am incredibly productive. I plan my months, weeks and days in my planning journal. I diligently work through my tasks and tick them off in a little square I’ve drawn. I have a Post It Task Board and take great delight in moving the post it tasks from the ‘to be done’ side to the ‘done’ side. In the past this has enabled me to work towards monetising my YouTube account, I’ve changed course with my writing and have a clear path I’d like to take in order to make my writing a proper business and not a hobby.
The not being able to write though is so bad that for the first time I’m questioning whether I can carry on with my writing and business. I wonder if life would be easier if I simply closed my laptop for good and went out there to do a proper job. It’s so tempting.
Despite this I still come up to my desk every morning. I open my laptop and most days I plan out what I’d like to achieve that day. This had changed over time as I significantly reduced my expectations of how much I could achieve. So somewhere in me I still want to do this. I still persevere. And today I have hope. Because, as I mentioned right at the beginning, I’ve written two-thirds of page in my journal. I know this doesn’t sound like a lot. But it is two-thirds of writing about my writing and business. Something I haven’t been able to bring myself to do for two months. Two months! And even though it is just a couple of paragraphs and I begin with the sentence “I don’t know where to start” I have started. I wrote that page. And now I’ve written over one thousand words of a blog post. It’s now 11.54am. So this morning hasn’t been a complete write-off after all.
I’m hopeful that in the near future once my head has recovered from the exhausting anxious thoughts it’ll start being creative again.
If you’re currently feeling like this then this is what helped me:
Seek professional help. My doctor was incredibly understanding and said lots of people are struggling right now. You are not alone.
Be gentle with yourself. Watch TV, read a book, clean the bathroom, bake, garden, walk - whatever is calling you.
Don’t beat yourself up about doing any of those things.
Be patient. You will get better. It will get easier.
Limit your time reading the news or on social media.
Take time to meet (positive) friends.
Reach out and send a text or ring someone up. I’m so lucky I have a few friends who pull me out of myself. I was honest with them, though. I told them how I was feeling and they’ve been incredibly understanding. We don’t talk about feelings we just have a coffee and cake and talk about other things. It’s refreshing and helps put ‘what if’ scenarios into perspective.
Be active. I walk the dogs and have started rowing (50km in September!) Exercise really does make a difference.
If you can then get out and about. Seeing people go about their daily business was unexpectedly calming and softened some of the ‘what ifs’ in my head.
Pull out your journal. Force yourself to write something even if it’s “I don’t know where to start” like I did. I felt this morning like I was one magnet and my journal was another. We pushed hard against each other. I really didn’t want to open it. When I did finally succumb I sighed loudly feeling nothing but “I can’t do this”. But I did do it. And then it led to this post. It was, hopefully, the start of a snowball effect.
You can also journal your feelings. Be honest in those pages (you can always destroy them after writing your feelings down). But taking them out of your head it’s like putting a small puncture in a tyre. Slowly the pressure starts to deflate and the worries stop churning around and around in your head with such viciousness.
Alternatively…Journaling can really help but it can be difficult to pick up that journal. The hardest bit is taking that first step (like ringing the doctor, too. I found that so hard but once I’d done it things started to get better.) I didn’t want to keep re-living the anxiety in my journal, I got fed up of saying I’m despairing about X. What I should’ve done was tell myself I didn’t have to write about my anxieties. And, in fact, when I finally did open my journal I wrote about my business which helped.
If you enjoyed this blog post post you might also enjoy my essays about writing, confidence, creativity and being online on Patreon.
I also write tiny essays in my newsletter which I send out about three times a month.
If you’re interested in my journaling and my Post It Task Board I have a workbook coming out soon (as soon as my creativity springs back into action!) To find out more and to pre-order the book at a specially discounted price then click here.
