What’s the rush?

18th Jul 202318th Jul 2023 by elizabethmdouglas ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

A few weeks ago, I don’t know what it was, but it seemed like everyone around me was just having a sh*t time of it. The sun had started to come out and we were all looking to plans of traveling, but in those lucid moments in between work days and going to sleep, so many of my friends were telling me that they felt completely lost.

For me, I was struggling with feeling really lonely romantically: I’d seen two of my closest friends starting to develop feelings for lads, causing me to look at where I was with that kind of thing, only to see a tumbleweed go across my phone screen. And as I’ve explained before, when I’m feeling lonely I do tend to feel it quite strongly; listening to sad songs whilst I drive from one job to the next. But then, I’ve also not grown up being allowed to wallow for too long – this does sometimes mean I’m not great at allowing myself to sit in my sadness, which isn’t always healthy, but then it also leads me to find solutions – so I decided that if I was going to feel lonely because I’m not texting anyone, then I should probably reply to somebody on Hinge…Since, you know, you’ve kind of got to talk to someone to have someone talk to you.

Then I dated a fit man for a month, so go figure. Obviously, given that I’m still single, it didn’t end in the preferred way but hey, everything’s a learning curve.

My friends and I weren’t just feeling like sh*t because the dating scene is a mess though. It seemed like all of us were re-evaluating every aspect of our lives – especially our careers – and each of us was just totally overwhelmed by the amount we felt we had to do and the fear that we weren’t where we were ‘supposed’ to be. Even though, this notion of ‘supposed’ never makes much sense if you deep it anyway, because who’s this big eye in the sky deciding what position my life should’ve reached by June 2023? And why’s it so bothered?

There is no correct way to do life, and not one of us will have the same life or career trajectory as the other, but we’re putting so much pressure on ourselves to reach a version of success that we couldn’t even describe if somebody asked us. This goes back to those booklets we had to fill out at school though, where we decided where we’d be at every age until we retired. Except, those booklets always failed to include the idea that that’s not how life works – for example, I don’t remember seeing ‘global pandemic’ in bold across 2019-2021 – or the fact that there’s actually no need for you to decide everything all at once. Therefore, I’m trying my best to remind myself of this every time I feel like I’m drowning in to-do lists and self-criticism.

I asked my housemate what she does when she’s in a rut and she said that she calls her parents. I do the same. So I’d like to take a moment to say that just because you’re an independent adult in most aspects of your life, if you feel like you need your Mum or Dad, then your age doesn’t matter. Sometimes their advice, or the act of having a conversation with them, is what you need. It doesn’t mean that you can’t function at all as an adult. That being said, if you still don’t know how to do your own laundry or how to cook a meal…then you should probably give that some immediate attention…just saying.

When I feel naff, I try to make time for the things I know will make me happy, like going to see some live music with a friend, or sitting next to a river in the middle of nowhere for an hour to read a book, or sparking a silly conversation on the family group chat. Anything to give me the dopamine boost I need to regroup and work the bigger things out in a calmer mindset. So, without meaning to sound like a guru here, if you’re feeling like how I described my own mindset last month as you read this, then try to think of what might get you back on track.

Because sometimes it feels like we’re all rushing around, and there’s no need to be so frantic.

City living hurts my head

20th Jun 2023 by elizabethmdouglas ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

Since I moved to London last August I’ve had to adjust to lots of things. At first, the most pressing life problem was being able to financially support myself in one of the most expensive cities in the world, whilst also leaving myself enough time in between jobs to pursue the career which brought me here in the first place. Not easy to do. Then I had the added pressure of moving all my hospitals down here and making sure that I could receive the treatment I need even though none of the doctors here knew me. Again, not ideal and I’m still waiting for the pair of shoes I ordered back in October. But I want to give the disability talk a rest today – imagine ! – and chat about what’s going on in my brain instead.

Something I’ve realised about myself as I’ve become total self-sufficient is that I have a tendency to want to run away from things when I get overwhelmed. I’ll pack a million things into my days, tell myself I can handle it, struggle with the concept of being bored, eventually crash, and then feel this desperate need for space and quiet. So in those moments I get in my car and I run to the seaside, or to a secluded lake or field, or to my parents’ living room; all places where I feel like I can be truly quiet and not allow my brain to run at a hundred miles an hour. Just for a minute.

A couple of months ago, I was getting to that point again after my most recent stint of hard graft, and I met up with a friend who I hadn’t seen in years. We sat and summarised our lives since the last time we’d spoken – not a simple feat when you’ve had whole university degrees and countless life changes since your last chat, but we gave it a go. Once we got onto asking each other how we’d both found moving to the capital, my friend managed to capture exactly how I was feeling in a way that I just hadn’t been able to for months. I’d told her that sometimes I feel so claustrophobic in this massive city, that even having to go at 20 miles per hour everywhere can make me feel like I can’t breathe and I don’t know why; it’s not like there aren’t a million places or go or people to see all the time. At which point she came back with, ‘it’s because there’s no horizon anywhere’. And for me, that simple sentence managed to summarise everything I’d been feeling so beautifully.

She’s going to love that blog feature as well, so happy Tuesday to you mate.

This idea that every day I go to work or out to meet friends or just to wander around, but there’s no end to the city skyline everywhere I look leaves me feeling like I’m boxed in. It’s wonderful and vibrant, and there’s always so much going on, but there’s no space, so the northern country girl in me ends up feeling periodically trapped in a corner by the constant light and sound. Thus I wake up some days and all I want to do is look at something expansive like a field or the sea, or drive at 60 miles per hour on a road to feel like I’m actually going somewhere.

Don’t get me wrong, I love everything that the city has to offer as far as opportunity and creativity are concerned, but most people here work themselves to the bone, so that, mixed with the constant sensory stimulation, tires (!) me (!) out every now and then. In my core, I’ll always be the Yorkshire gal, and with that comes the love for a field. Somewhere quiet where all you can hear are the sheep and the river. In those spaces I breathe better and I don’t feel quite so tense. But the radio stations aren’t in the fields and I’ve got things to do, so if keeping a life in the city means that I’ve got to run away for a bit every month or so then so be it. There are worse coping mechanisms to have.

Trust me, I know how tedious I can be

6th Jun 2023 by elizabethmdouglas ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

The other week I was talking to my housemates in our kitchen about some silly romantic situation I’d gotten myself into, asking them for advice, and then in a lull in the conversation, I said ‘if you’re ever listening to me tell my tales, and you start thinking that I’m tedious, just know that I’m fully aware that I am’.

We laughed.

For all my confidence in myself and security in many aspects of my personality, I know that I can really over-egg a point. I can talk for England once you’ve got me going and even though I try my very utmost to ensure that everything I say is of interest to the listener, I acknowledge that sometimes my energy levels can be too much even for some of the people closest to me. I try to monitor it and often I think that I give myself a much harder time about it than necessary, because I know that a lot of those close to me would describe me as a good listener as well as a good talker. But one thing I’ll always appreciate about my closest friends is that they know that sometimes I just need to go off on a monologue because if I don’t say my thoughts out loud, then they’ll spiral in my head and it’ll end in tears. Ugly tears.

But I don’t ever want to feel like a burden to other people – physically or emotionally – so in those moments when I do just feel like emotionally puking, I need to know that the person I speak to won’t judge me for it.

The type of ‘tedious’ monologues I’m talking about here is when you need to workshop your stresses about work, your PMS-induced intrusive thoughts, your anxiety about thinking you’re starting to like someone and not knowing how to play it, or when you just want to sit and reminisce about that time when you were 16 and your science lesson was hilarious. Basically, the times when you’re bored of sitting in your own mind, hearing your thoughts whizz around, and you need a human connection without conditions. However, trusting someone with this very personal and vulnerable part of yourself takes a lot because you can never really tell if they’re going to think less of you for showing them it.

For example, most of the people in my life who I’m closest to now are, and have always been, very different from me; bar maybe three, they’re all introverts who’d much prefer sitting on their own reading a book than having to engage in conversation with anyone. So I know that my (occasionally) highly strung expression of emotion can be exhausting for them and there have been times when I’ve felt guilty for that part of myself. But I do believe that supposedly ‘negative’ aspects of someone’s personality can have positive implications and my tendency to sometimes get myself overly worked up about things only happens because I care so deeply. Therefore, my most trusted friends and family members have never made me feel like I can’t open up to them when I need to – even though they miiiight have sometimes preferred the conversation to last 20 minutes less.

Then again, perhaps that last bit of the sentence was unnecessary self-deprecation. Knowing my lot, if they read this then I’m about to get some messages in capslock telling me to never think like that, because if I’ve gotta talk then they’re there to listen. I’d do the same for them, only everyone’s preferred type of support isn’t the same, so whilst my therapy is nattering, I know that some of my closest friends might just need me to sit next to them and be silly whilst we watch a movie. Regardless of the actions though, it’s about showing up for people in the way that they need and making it very clear that this is a no ! judgement ! zone ! because nobody should feel ashamed of venting when they need to vent.

I just don’t feel good enough

16th May 2023 by elizabethmdouglas ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

One of the first things that they tell you when you say you want to be a radio presenter is that when the microphone light turns red, you just need to relax and be entirely yourself. Just be yourself! Except, after three years at university, I wasn’t exactly sure how to do that anymore.

I know that the trope for going to university is that you ‘find’ yourself, come out of your shell, and settle into the person that you’re going to be for most of your 20s. But whenever people have asked me how I found my degree, I tend to come back to them with a conflicted answer: on one hand, I insist that I had some really good times with some fabulous people because that’s true and I hate being negative, but frankly, overall my time at university left me with a tendency to retreat into my insecurities.

I want to say that it happened all of a sudden, but I didn’t wake up one morning and decide that I was going to wear outfits to cover my callipers, start to speak less in social situations, or suddenly feel the need for constant validation from my friends; it was a much more gradual process of feeling like I wasn’t enough for the people and situations I found myself surrounded by.

In some cases, it was specific things that individuals did which made me feel this way – both intentionally and unintentionally – but it was more the general vibe that didn’t suit me. For example, I went to a very normal state school in Bradford, but an aspect of that school that I’d never considered as being integral to how I thought about myself, was that it shared its premises and resources with a special needs school. So every day my fellow students and I walked past, spoke to, and sometimes shared classrooms with severely disabled children and therefore, became accustomed to seeing disability. Consequently, I might’ve had my shoes stared at every day, but subconsciously I didn’t feel unusual because I was never the only disabled kid around. I never thought about the importance of this at the time, but then when I went to a university where I struggled to access disabled parking spaces outside of the colleges or faculties, and where I only remember ever seeing two other visibly disabled students, the impact of that mixed secondary school environment on disabled and able-bodied people alike became startling.

Another area where I didn’t feel like I was enough was in my romantic relationship attempts and sometimes my friendships. To be honest, the theme of my romantic relationships has always been that either I’m not interested when they are or they’re not when I am, they’re in a relationship with someone else already and are just putting loads of tedium or confusion on me, or doing the classically non-committal ‘I like you, but let’s just sleep together’ thing – or we met on holiday and thus continuing anything is pointless. I have been known to shoot myself in the foot by prolonging pointless situations because of boredom or stubbornness as well. So a great combo all around then! But the not thinking I was enough for lads was definitely at its height at university; I knew I didn’t feel good about it, but I hadn’t realised the extent of the toll on my self-esteem until I went to a radio placement 15 minutes up the road in Newcastle and I was surprised to experience someone openly and unapologetically flirting with me. I remember walking away from that situation thinking ‘wow, I’m not actually unattractive then’.

But of all the types of insecurity I’ve felt in the last few years, it was the insecurity in friendships that cut me the deepest.

Honestly, it’s taken me months to come to terms with how beaten down I felt at university and how that had made me into someone who rarely ever felt secure in their relationships with anyone. I’ve always been a person who cares about others very deeply and intensely, I’m reliable and I try my best to be everything those close to me need. But no matter how hard you try, you can’t be everything all at once and it can be difficult to deal with the times when you fall short of that standard you’ve set for yourself. So there were many times over the last few years when I didn’t know what I was doing wrong or why I wasn’t enough for my friends, and this just pushed me further into myself.

Unfortunately, feeling like you’re not good enough is something all of us will experience at more than one point in our lives, no matter how hard we hit the self-care routines, and so the best treatment appears to be recognising when the nasty voice in your head is becoming way louder than it ever was before and doing things to shut it up again. Don’t get me wrong, I’m no guru when it comes to this kind of thing, but I think that I knew that my radgy internal voice had become too loud when I went travelling with one of my best friends and thanked her for being so considerate about my feet. She looked at me, surprised and offended that those words had even come out of my mouth, but it was a clear example of how I’d begun to feel like I had to apologise for everything that I am to try and appease my environment. Something you should never feel the need to do.

Since then, I graduated, so obviously I removed myself from the situation physically but it’s been more about rewiring my brain to trust my instincts, stop overthinking everything going on around me, and actively practise confidence again. And now, with the very normal occasional few blips of insecurity, I’m glad to say that I feel more myself than I have for years. I still have wonderful friends from university, and I wouldn’t want you to think that I never had any great times whilst I was there because that just wouldn’t be true, but I didn’t lose any sleep about my degree ending, put it that way.

You might think that that’s a shame and I suppose that it is, but sometimes life just doesn’t go the way you expect it to. That doesn’t make the change a failure or lack, it just is what it is. There’s plenty of fun still to be had in environments that won’t make me feel quite so self-conscious 80% of the time. And that sounds like a much stronger vibe to me.

It’s the most wonderful time of the year?

21st Nov 2022 by elizabethmdouglas ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

When I graduated from university in the summer of this year, there were so many ‘next steps’ to complete that I never felt like I took a second to sit down and think about what I want from this part of my life. I’d already spent months juggling problems with my feet and writing essays, a dissertation, completing exams, and feeling totally disenfranchised with my university environment, so once it finished, to be honest I was relieved. Instead of taking a break from planning the next thing though, I just redirected my brain to going on holiday with my friend, spending time with my family, and the logistics of moving to a city to pursue a career.

I know that my ability to be super organised, focused, and to work like an absolute pack horse often gives people the impression that I have everything figured out, and honestly, sometimes I trick myself into thinking the same thing. It’s only really been since I’ve moved into this part of my life – away from the safety and structure of family and educational institutions – that I’ve realised there are so many parts of life where I’ve got absolutely no clue.

But you know what I’m going to say here, right?…That it’s totally okay to have no idea what you’re doing! In fact, it’s part of the fun.

I’ll level with you here though, and say that ‘living in the moment’ and not fixating on the million and one things I need to do next are not ways of living that come naturally to me. I’m a hard worker, and I’m a cup-half-full kind of a gal, but I’m also potentially one of the most impatient people you’ll ever meet. As in, I can experience a huge success on Monday and by Thursday, I’m texting my friends saying that I’m bored. But this is a habit that I’m really trying to get out of, because I’ve been given enough pep talks by drunken middle-aged women in the smoking area of pubs, to know that if I keep being this way, then one day I’ll wake up with wrinkles and greying hair, wondering where half of my life went.

(Shout-out to that brand of Yorkshire woman by the way; long may you ladies bring the flavour to the night-out.)

Unfortunately, so many of us spend a hefty amount of our time getting worked up over feeling like we don’t have every aspect of our lives figured out. I’ve had countless conversations with people of all ages stressing because they think that they’re not at the point they ‘should’ be at, but what does ‘should’ even mean anyway? Who decides what each of us ‘should’ be doing? Surely, that’s just us getting lost in social conventions and comparisons, before asking ourselves what it is we want to be doing right now and whether there’s anything we need to change to get there.

Maybe what I’ve written this week doesn’t feel relatable to you right now, but this is the time of the year when we’ve got to be extra aware of how those around us are feeling. I won’t lie to you, I love Autumn into Winter, but as much as I love watching the leaves change colour and hearing firework displays in the distance, this is also the season when many of us start to feel cold, tired, and fed up. I also know that a large proportion of my readers are British, so it’s likely that you suffer from our nation’s inability to talk about these types of feelings without aggressively cringing, and I get you; this blog isn’t that deep or existential, and still, I found it difficult to write what I wanted to say. But the momentary cringing or the incoherent sentences are better than the middle-of-the-night solo breakdown. So, if you’re feeling some type of way right now, then swallow your pride and just call your friend to talk about whatever’s on your mind; you might not share everything whilst you chat, but odds are, at some point in the conversation you’ll have a laugh. And when has that not helped to calm you down or cheer you up?

Maybe don’t answer EVERY question…

31st Oct 202231st Oct 2022 by elizabethmdouglas ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

I realised the other day that in the five years since I left school, I’ve spent a hefty amount of my time meeting and developing new relationships with people. I’ve travelled to lots of different places – both abroad and in Britain – and everywhere I’ve been I’ve come across people who I didn’t like, but more often than not, every new place brought me loads of new friends. In some cases, I even did a complete 180 in my opinion of someone as I acknowledged that your first impression of a person might not always be the best representation of what they’re actually like.

I’ve always been somebody who actively enjoys spending time with other people, however, even with this love for a ‘getting to know you’ conversation, I’ve noticed that in the past couple of years I’ve become far more cagey with a new group of people than I ever have been before. But to ensure that we’re all on the same page here, when I say ‘cagey’ I don’t mean that I’m rude or standoffish with people, it’s just that I’ve learned that it’s not always the best move to go into social situations as an entirely open book because by doing that, you don’t leave very much room to protect yourself.

When I was at school, I was the type of person who would tell anyone whatever they wanted to know about me: they could ask about my disability, my family, my fears, my aspirations, who I fancied, or literally anything else they could think of and I’d probably tell them the tale. In fact, I’d love telling the tale. This tendency towards openness and honesty isn’t something that I want to completely get rid of because without it we’d have no blog, and I also wouldn’t be myself, but there have been moments over the past few years when I realised just how exhausting it is to meet new people and answer all of these questions, only for many of those relationships to fizzle at some point. After all, once we’re out of school or university, most of us don’t have the time to maintain loads of friendships in between working and general living. So sometimes, it’s better to conserve your energy and not offload everything about yourself to whatever stranger you get along with for twenty minutes at a party, because repeatedly doing that in environments such as school, university, or a new job, really does take it out of you.

However, this newfound cageyness I’m talking about doesn’t just stem from the fact that it’s tired me out to be so honest, it’s also because I’ve sometimes been a little naive about who I can trust with the more vulnerable aspects of my personality. The fact is, that in order for any relationship to be fulfilling – be it platonic or romantic – there’s got to be an equal amount of effort put in by both sides, but if you’re like me then you might have had a few situations where you’ve realised that you’ve gotten upset because somebody hasn’t given you the same energy you were giving them, and even though that can be painful, were you maybe giving a little too much too quickly?..Then on the other side of this, have you potentially been the person in romantic relationships or friendships who has had somebody open up to you, and you haven’t respected their choice to do that in the way you should’ve?

I’ve probably done both, to be honest: I’ve definitely overshared and then been burnt by someone not caring as much as I thought they would, and I’m human, so I’ve undoubtedly been thought of as not being there for a person in the way they wanted me to be. Therefore, I’m not writing this blog because I think that there’s a perfect level of openness when forming relationships with new people – obvs, it’d be ideal for each of us to look into a crystal ball and know how much we can trust or rely on a person before we invest time into them, but that’d also take all the fun out of meeting and getting to know new people. So, I guess it’s about realising what works well for you in these situations.

For me, I was doing and giving way too much too quickly because I like knowing people really well (because I’m a freak and I find people very interesting), and I kind of figured that if I open up to someone then they’ll open up to me too, without respecting myself enough to acknowledge how exhausting it is to be that way. So, we’re not going to be a totally closed book, because human connection is one of the joys of everyone’s lives, we’re just going to be a liiiittle more selective about it to conserve energy and emotions. It’s all about give and take, and you’ve got to keep an eye on how much you’re letting people take versus how much they’re giving you.

Quick! Someone get the stress ball!

4th Oct 2022 by elizabethmdouglas ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

As a member of the most stressed and depressed generation ever studied by science, I thought that I would take this week’s blog as an opportunity to explain how I deal with stress in my everyday life. The short answer: not very well.

Lol

Actually, to be fair, that’s not entirely true…but I don’t want to kick this off by giving you the impression that I’m always on top of my own stress levels, and that I know exactly how to regulate my feelings in order to avoid having breakdowns because I’m not and I don’t. Generally speaking, I’m what some might call a ‘stress-head’, or ‘overthinker’. I don’t deal well when I can’t be in control of situations – be they relating to work or romantic relationships, or anything in between – and I’ve been known to take on too much all at the same time, overloading myself until eventually I get burnt out, have a (minor) meltdown, then wake up the next day to do it all over again.

Knowing this about myself though, I still don’t believe that stress is an entirely negative emotion – as long as you’re self-aware enough to recognise when it’s overwhelming you. For example, ever since moving to London last month, I’ve been so stressed that I’ve lost weight and my period was ten days late. (I realise that these don’t sound like very dramatic consequences of stress, nonetheless, they are clear examples of a tangibly physical reaction to something going on in my head.) But even though pretty much every day since I’ve lived here has been punctuated by to-do lists and an endless amount of unknowns, I actually feel pretty good; I don’t feel stressed in the negative sense of the word.

Don’t get me wrong, the first week or so of living in this city was purely bad stress, but as I mentioned in a blog a few weeks ago, my parents helped me get out of that panic by urging me to take everything one thing at a time. This advice sounds so obvious, but if you’re an overthinker like me, then you’ll know that it’s far easier to think about the million and one things you need to do, or what could go wrong, all at once than it is to focus on just one thing for today. Honestly, I’m still not fully there yet, but this month has definitely been an exercise in recognising when I’m about to wind myself up, taking a breath, and then just not letting myself stress about the thing I was going to stress about.

I’m in a good position, however, given that a lot of my stress at the minute is based on things that I love. For example, finding ways to squeeze in writing blogs or going to radio stations might take a toll on my energy at a given moment, but I love doing it, so I don’t end the day feeling bitter about how tired I am. Still, even if you adore what’s making you stressed, that doesn’t mean that the mental exhaustion won’t eventually catch up with you, so it’s important that even if you feel fine, you do little things to keep an eye on yourself. I’m going to sound like one of those American yoga teachers right now, but think about the little things that you could do which could help you to focus on what you really want to do in the day. For instance, if there’s a time when my stress is going to show itself in me getting angry, then it’s going to be if I see that my room or my kitchen is unclean or untidy. So I keep my room and my kitchen neat; tidy home, tidy mind n that.

It might seem silly to talk about these things, but judging from social media, we’re way better at listing all the problems with ourselves than we are at helping each other to find some solutions. So, I’d like to reiterate that this has not been me saying ‘ooo look at me, I’m so self-aware that I never have a breakdown because of stress’, because I wouldn’t have a blog if I wasn’t an over-thinker and stress-head. But I’m trying my best to be better at not letting my mind just run, and trying is all we can do really innit.

If you are feeling a little strung-out at the minute though, top tips are: deep breath, lots of water, plenty of sleep, read a book before bed, listen to music, keep your room tidy, have a cry if you need to, and speak to someone who makes you laugh.

Making London moves

29th Aug 20222nd Sep 2022 by elizabethmdouglas ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

I’ve never been a person who’s particularly scared of change, especially when that comes to living in a new place. In fact, once I finished secondary school I worked three jobs so I’d have enough money to go travelling before I started my university degree. Then when it came to moving to university, I definitely cried when saying goodbye to my parents but that’s just because they’re both so much fun to be around; I don’t think that I was actually that daunted by moving away from home. But last week, with the help of my parents, I moved all of my things to London and even though I’ve lived in a lot of new places over the past six years, this time the first couple of days in my new home didn’t fill me with excitement; all I could feel was terror.

When I’ve travelled to different countries, I’ve always only been there for a certain amount of time. Therefore, even if I was living in a massive metropolis like Seoul or New York City, I could square all the walking distances and activities in my head because I knew that once I got home I’d be able to go to the same doctor who’d been seeing me since the age of three, she could treat me, and if I had done too much walking then it’d be fine because I could stay at home and rest for a couple of weeks before I went onto the next country or back to university.

So my utter panic at now living in London was/is that this is now my every day and I don’t have an opportunity to overdo it and then rest for a few weeks if the condition of my feet does worsen, because if I get the blister then I can’t go to work and if I can’t go to work then I can’t make my rent. Not to mention the fact that I now have to rely on totally new doctors who don’t know the nature of my disability and thus, may not be able to help me in the way someone who’s seen me through all the operations and every type of blister could. Plus, I don’t have a job yet because working in the broadcasting and radio industry requires you to 1) be in the place where it all happens, 2) be able to network your way into the buildings and then 3) work from the bottom to the top, if the bosses judge that you have the ability to make it up there. So, I have to find a part-time job in order to make my bills and give me enough time to put my graft into radio and broadcasting – that part sounds easy though, doesn’t it? “Just pick up some shifts at a bar, restaurant, or cafe!” I hear you say! Only, I physically can’t be on my feet all day and the hundreds of other people also looking for part-time work can, so my chances of getting the work are slimmer and waaayyy more stressful than when living in a smaller city.

Thus, I’m not frightened of this move because I think that I can’t do it; I’ve always been a total grafter. Nor am I frightened because I’m scared to live in a new place, far away from my family. The overwhelming panic that I’m trying not to think about comes from a fear that this ridiculously inaccessible world will stop me from being everything I know I can be, just because I can’t walk far or stand for long.

But it’s not helpful for me to wallow in this fear, because if I did, then I never would’ve gone travelling or anywhere further than twenty minutes down the road. So you have to push it aside and focus on controlling what you can, rather than catastrophising all the ways the risk you’ve taken could end in disaster.

Once I’d moved a couple of things into my new room my parents asked me how I felt, and I tried my best not to let the nerves show because I didn’t want them to drive away feeling worried about me, but they, and my closest friends, all assured me that it’s totally fine to be frightened of this; being scared doesn’t make you weak or foolish. Living in this city with a physical disability is no small feat and I’m bound to have a bit of a moment every now and then, so the best thing to do is to quite literally take everything one step at a time. Then, once I know how to look after my feet in the big city, I can explore!!!

Get your kit off!

15th Aug 20222nd Sep 2022 by elizabethmdouglas ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

Last week I was sitting with one of my best friends and I asked her how often she looks at herself naked. (Bit of an intense way to start a blog, I know, but I didn’t know how else to kick this topic off lol). I asked her this because we’re all well aware of the level of scrutiny our bodies are under in regards to what size they should be, what shape, what colour, what texture, et cetera et cetera. So, I guess I was just curious about how often my friend stands in front of a mirror and has a look, to then compare it to how often I do the same, especially since the act of looking at your naked skin in broad daylight is one of the most vulnerable things you can do. After all, we might not always like what’s reflected back to us.

My friend’s a total queen though; her response was ‘all the time’ and I said the same – buuuut, I did go on to explain that I don’t spend too many seconds looking at my Spina Bifida lump or my legs in the mirror, so I’ve got room for improvement.

I think that in general, as women, we’re not encouraged to stand with ourselves and get familiar without being critical, so it can be quite unusual to see a woman who is totally comfortable with her naked body. However, I would like to clarify here that by ‘totally comfortable’, I’m not suggesting that there aren’t things you dislike, or would prefer to not look a certain way some days because we’re going for honesty here, not idealism.

One of the best things I ever did for getting comfortable with my own skin was starting to sleep naked every night. I wouldn’t say that before doing that I was ever particularly uncomfortable with my body, but sleeping naked just forces you to see and feel yourself exactly as you are: you get used to your boobs falling in every direction depending on how you’re sitting; you see all the stretch marks and ‘imperfections’ highlighted by the sun when you wake up, and you stop getting a little startled by the image of your naked body first thing in the morning. But overall, sleeping naked allows your skin to breathe and everything feels better after that.

Quick sidenote: I do realise that a lot of my words and descriptions here lean very close to the topic of masturbation, and whilst I’m not really going to go into that much today, I will say: for god’s sake, masturbate! Especially you ladies! It’s good for you! (Literally.) :)))

Many people (especially (British) women) would rather die than speak about topics such as this one, but after being lucky enough to have known women of all shapes and sizes who are so comfortable in their own bodies that they’ll take their kit off at any given opportunity, I’ve never underestimated the power of being proactive in loving your body. Every clothing campaign badgers on about it nowadays – some in a very live laugh love sort of a way (*puke*) – but the human body is truly a remarkably beautiful thing, and even though we’re never going to love ourselves entirely every single minute of every day, making sure that we at least accept ourselves every day does wonders.

Regardless of how we each feel about our own bodies though, we should be careful to never (!) shame another person for being confident in their body just because you wouldn’t do the same. I like to sit/hang around my house in a towel, or my underwear and I’ll put the bin out with ‘just’ a big t-shirt and knickers on; you not doing the same doesn’t mean you love your body any less than I love mine, but it also doesn’t leave room for my body to be sexualised or criticised when all I’m doing is watching TV or putting the recycling out. After all, if you can’t wear as much or as little as you want in your own house, then where can you?

Something’s wrong with my face today

3rd May 2022 by elizabethmdouglas ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

Do you ever have those days where for some reason none of your clothes seem to fit you the way they did the last time you tried them on? You’re getting ready for the day, or for a night out, and your face just doesn’t face the way it should, you’re clothes don’t look right, your hair won’t do what it’s told, and the time is starting to run away; you’re going to be late to whatever you’re supposed to get to, so you start to get a bit hysterical and self-critical until you just wish you could crawl back into bed, hit a reset button, and try again tomorrow when everything hopefully does what it’s supposed to.

Just me?..

I’ve written before about how people shouldn’t let their insecurities control them, and I wondered whether I should write about this topic again when I could just reshare an entry I’d written a couple of years ago. Except, my body, and a whole lot of other stuff, has changed since then and I don’t really see this as a problem that can be fixed by a few hundred words.

So I’m going to give you a few hundred more! Yay!

We each know the power which comes with feeling confident, but like many other feelings, confidence is unfortunately very brittle. Just the other day, I’d woken up feeling pretty good about myself but it only took a few silly things happening throughout the day to leave me with a mind full of self-criticism by the time I was getting into bed for the night. And the frustrating thing is, that the moments which chipped away at my confidence were so minor it was stupid: I saw my reflection in a full-length mirror and I didn’t like the way my legs in my callipers looked, then a friend took a photograph of me and another friend and I thought my arms looked fat, and finally, the hot weather made me tired and subsequently self-conscious about how obvious my Spina Bifida was whilst walking through town.

Not one of these things is important, nor are they anything anyone else would take any notice of, let alone care about. But that’s what insecurity is: getting stuck inside your head about silly things which in the grand scheme of things, do not matter. Only, they matter to you and sometimes they matter so much that you torture yourself over thinking about them.

I’m lucky enough to be able to keep my insecurities at bay most of the time. But the times when I can’t – which do tend to be either when I’m drunk drunk, or experiencing the boozer’s blues the day after drinking – in those moments, I can’t do much except let myself just sit in it. I eat loads of snacks, or I cry to my friend, or I watch a film, or I stare at the wall whilst listening to my sad playlist. And I know that if a psychologist were to read those coping mechanisms, they’d probably say that they’re all really unhealthy – disclaimer: I’m definitely not about to make a case for you to do exactly what I do. However, I do think that my generation tries to psycho-analyse themselves far too much and that we need to just feel whatever it is we’re feeling for a second, without self-diagnosing. Obviously, there are limits and lines where a person needs help but it’s also okay to feel naff for an afternoon. In fact, surely it’d be worrying if we didn’t feel like rubbish once in a while?

I’m not going to patronise you now by listing all the reasons why we should be kinder to ourselves because I’m not a motivational speaker (shocking, I know), but also because we all know this already and knowing that I shouldn’t criticise myself, unfortunately, doesn’t mean that I won’t from time to time. It’s about being able to strike that balance where you allow yourself to feel what you need to, whilst also making moves to pick yourself up out of any ruts you encounter – it’s not always easy, and I’m not a pro, but we do our best.

So if you do wake up and your face isn’t facing, or your body isn’t bodying, and although you know it’s just in your head you’re still feeling meh, then that’s alright! As our lord and saviour Hannah Montana once said: everybody has those days.

An Indelible Friend

Tag: mentalhealthawareness