TW: Mental Health, Grief, Anxiety, Panic, OCD, Self Harm, Claustrophobia, Depression
Hello all,
As promised, here is a not so little post all about my mental health for Mental Health Awareness Week (18th – 24th May). I haven’t been all scientific and given you definitions and statistics and all that. I've just been very honest with you all. I found this quite difficult to write, reliving some of the things that brought me great pain in the past, but I also found it really rewarding! I am very proud of how far I have come. My journey isn’t over, it never will be, caring for my mental health will always be something I’ll be doing. I don’t pretend to know anything, I am not a professional of any kind, I just know what I felt when I felt it and how I have come to understand and experience it now.
If you need help then seek it, the stigma around mental health is ridiculous and makes me very angry. There are many charities and organisations out there whose sole purpose is to hear your worries and keep you safe. I also know that some people could find this quite a difficult read, I am not offended in the slightest if you skip straight past this blog, but if my story and my ramblings can help anyone out then it’s here!
If you are feeling vulnerable, then here are some of the aforementioned charities and organisations;
Samaritans offer a 24hr service – call 116 123
Shout is a 24/7 crisis text line – text SHOUT to 85258
Papyrus has HopelineUK, Mind has an Infoline and legal line, CALM also has a helpline and webchat service
There are many other organisations which you can find online.
You are never alone if you don’t want to be.
Right then, lets get into this. Thank you in advance for reading this, I trust you with my story.
As mentioned in the last post, I believe that a lot of my mental health issues stem from the sudden death of my grandad in 2014, during my time at Guildford School of Acting (GSA), and the consequent shock and grief. A lot of my anxieties are rooted in that grief, that I couldn’t (or wouldn’t) process. It took me many years to realise this.
That early anxiety, that time of my life, is a bit of a blur now, not just because my memory is terrible, but I think my brain is trying to protect me. I remember waking up and Mum calling and telling me what had happened overnight. She said I had to make sure Tim went into school, but I could make my own choice as to whether I wanted to go into GSA. I told Tim, I still remember his face and hearing his little gasp of ‘no’. I went into GSA, we had some sort of informal assessment in our final class of the day and I didn’t want to miss it (I told myself at least, really I just didn’t want to be alone, I couldn’t bear the thought of sitting in the house alone). I remember I cried right before the assessment, but that’s it, I remember nothing more of that day and very little from the following weeks. I remember the funeral. My Nan asked me to sing – Bill from the musical Show Boat. My grandads name was William (or Bill), and it’s one of my Nans favourite songs. This was one of the hardest things I have ever done. As I sang, that was the first time I saw her cry. I can’t hear the song to this day without welling up.
I was already experiencing some self-doubt whilst at GSA and it only got worse and more crippling after he died. I didn’t think I was good enough or that I could ever work hard enough to get good enough. I was massively self-conscious, especially during improvisations – I wanted to say the right thing, to appear intelligent, to be understood, etc. I remember a class at GSA where I went into a hysterical panic attack because I was asked to contribute more to an improvisation. I owe Darren, one of my wonderful wonderful teachers at GSA, a lot for the way he handled and supported me through those improvisation classes and generally through my grief. Darren if you are reading this, thank you for everything. Looking back, my reaction there seems ridiculous, but I remember at the time the paralysing fear I felt of getting it wrong. This is something that still troubles me to this day, not so much the improvisation (though this still terrifies me, I’ve done a lot of work on becoming more comfortable with it and I can do it without panicking now), but ‘getting things wrong’. I have improved over the years, but for a time, if I was misunderstood or corrected or asked a question I did not know the answer to, I would shut down completely – silence, my face would go dead and I would cease to be Ellie, while internally I was screaming at myself. It was never about the other persons judgement of me, it was always my own judgement of myself. As a child, I was so free! I would skip into rooms and steal the attention by doing whatever came to my mind in that moment, but everything changed, and my life was entirely ruled by my self-doubt and self-consciousness. Over the years I have learnt that it is ok to not have all the answers or know all the things, life is about learning, and my self-consciousness was stopping me learning. I didn’t realise how badly until after I was graduating from my degree course at the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire in 2018. Regret is something that gets me now. I regret ‘wasting my time’ at drama schools, for letting my insecurities and self-judgement impact my life and my learning. I cannot change how I was back then, I can only move forward – this is something that I have only realised this year as I left certain baggage behind me. I am slowly moving back towards the freedom that precocious, attention stealing little girl had.
I know this sounds like I had a horrendous time at GSA, but I didn’t, not in the slightest. When I wasn’t falling apart, I was forming friendships that would last years (one of my best friends, also coincidentally called Ellie, I met at GSA), I was creating moments of joy that I can remember when looking back at pictures, I was growing as an actor, I was discovering my independence. I was finding out things about myself, yes, I was clouded by the fear and self-judgement, but I was, for the most part, happy. I had a year out of training (because I didn’t get a place anywhere) and that year passed quite calmly from what I remember. I worked as an actor, I worked as a barista, I worked as an assistant in youth theatre classes, and when I auditioned again, I took a place at the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire. My anxiety stepped up again when I got to Birmingham. I spent the majority of my first year in a state of panic.
When I was still at GSA, I recall seeing a friend of mine having a panic attack for the first time, as I experience them, and suddenly realising what was happening to me. Once I realised what my panic attacks were, they started to get worse and more frequent. My panic started to take over my life at Birmingham, mainly because I had reached a point in my anxiety where having a panic attack, not fighting it off, was a relief and momentary pause from the constant anxiety I was feeling. If you're a performer and you understand Laban, then you’ll know what I mean when I say that I was the physical embodiment of wringing. It has now been almost 3 years since my last ‘proper’ panic attack. A lot of my progress with them isn’t through learning how to ‘stop’ them, but my other anxieties lessening and giving me more brain space to understand them. I can feel panic coming on now, I can make it worse or I can make it better if I want to, or I can just experience it at a low level without it overtaking me and wait for it to pass. Whilst at Birmingham, I was probably experiencing, on average, a panic attack a week during my first year. I would run from classrooms hyperventilating until I couldn’t run any more or I collapsed. I was always running away from wherever it started, like it would help. I remember a particular voice class, where we were playing with different breaths: big deep breaths, normal sighs and panting. Because my panic manifests in hyperventilating and the emotional nature of the class, the panting tipped me into an attack. I headed for the door, but my lovely tutor Simon (who can see into your soul), caught me and wouldn’t let me leave, he knew my tendencies. In that class I learnt that I didn’t have to run from my panic, in fact, finding stillness calmed me quicker than ending up fainting (funny that). However, he did lock the door which triggered my claustrophobia – can’t win them all. In further classes through the years, thanks to breath techniques and other things, I learnt a bit of control when it came to my panic. Thank you Simon.
My self-consciousness didn’t take a holiday either, it would take me minutes to form a response to anyone as I was self-editing and rephrasing in my head to make sure my response was ‘right’. I barely contributed in classes because by the time I had my ‘correct opinion’ worked out, the class had moved on. All this was affecting my studies and my head of course, Danièle, called me in for a meeting to discuss it. She told me she thought that I should defer a year, take some time, and come back next year and try again. I really didn’t want to do that, mainly because at that point I wasn’t sure if I would have made it back, so I decided I wasn’t going to let it get in the way anymore (obviously it still did) and for a time I was ‘better’, I was still almost entirely crippled by my anxiety but I could hide it better and I could pretend to be more present in the classes. ‘Fake it till you make it’, and over the next 2 years, I did start to ‘make it’. My anxieties lessened, I was more engaged, I contributed more, I really enjoyed myself! Looking back on it all, maybe I should have deferred a year, but who knows where I’d be with my mental health now if I hadn’t been through those years at drama school, experiencing, understanding and learning from my anxieties. Another tutor of mine, Potter, wrote me some feedback from my first assessment in first year which I’ve had pinned on my desk since he gave it to me,
‘According to Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy has the legend ‘DON’T PANIC!’ emblazoned upon its cover in big, friendly green letters. I suggest you get hold of a copy, Ellie, and try sleeping with it under your pillow.’
He also included an Emma Rice quote,
‘One of our most used phrases in the process is ‘hold your nerve’. There is no room for neurosis or doubt, these will only undermine the process; hold your nerve, stay open and delight in the privilege of making theatre.’
OCD is associated with anxiety disorders. My anxieties have calmed a lot in recent years, of course they were bleeding me dry during my time at Birmingham, but I can look at some of my OCD tendencies and tics and chuckle now. Such as, I convinced myself in my first year that if I forgot to brush my teeth in the morning it would be a horrendous day, so much so that I kept a toothbrush and toothpaste in my locker just in case. When this got really bad and morphed into a tic, I would just brush my teeth whenever I felt anxious, like clean minty breath was the answer to all of life’s problems. Spoiler alert - it’s not. Some less funny tics were also present, I used to have to fight myself from cutting off my hair when I was very anxious. There were also tics which would cause me physical pain, I won’t go into them. I have improved greatly in terms of tics, the only thing that seems to tic now are body spasms when I'm trying to fall asleep with an anxious mind. I started to find comfort in cleaning when I was anxious, it was a distraction and I could turn my brain off for a while. I had to, and still do, be careful with this though. If the OCD part of my brain took over the calming whilst cleaning, I could find myself at 2am scrubbing the oven whilst in a cold sweat with a locked jaw and red raw hands. I can tell when behaviours are becoming obsessive now and can normally nip them in the bud.
I mentioned the claustrophobia. This is still quite a big thing for me, I haven’t worked out how to manage this yet. I can feel claustrophobic in a giant empty hall or if I get stuck in a t-shirt or jumper. In life, it generally isn’t all consuming. However, when it does happen, it comes on incredibly quickly and is debilitating. I always have to know where my exits are, and I need to know if there are locks on doors and how they work. I can be, and relax, in a locked room, as long as I have the power to exit it. I have a wonderful talent for getting locked in toilets, especially in airports, panicking and then vomiting. When I was working front of house at a theatre a friend of mine thought it would be funny to lock me in the ice cream cupboard. Management had to send me home before the interval.
I'm an overthinker and a catastrophiser. It’s not as bad as it used to be and I can generally calm myself before I spiral, but I will still stand at the top of a set of stairs and calmly daydream that I’ll fall down them with no evidence to back it up. These daydreams don’t bother me, they’re just an intrusive thought. It’s a bit like the panic, in that, I can dwell on them and let them consume me, or I can let it sweep through my brain and out of my ears and not become self-conscious of the destructive thought.
I suffer from ‘low moods’. These come on more when I’m feeling anxious etc as my mind is working double time on overthinking and catastrophising every tiny little thing. They tend to manifest in anger; I become short tempered, I close myself off, I can be destructive. It takes me a while to realise it’s happening honestly; I tend to just think I'm lonely. I’ve never been very good at being alone, this is something I’m currently working on, finding safety on my own. It’s slow work, but I’m starting to find joy there. However, feeling lonely is a massive thing for me. I can very easily feel lonely in a room full of my closest friends. I don’t really know where it springs from and it’s harder to deal with when my mood is low. I think it could be rooted in dependency issues. I haven’t quite worked my dependency stuff out yet either, but I’m much, much more aware of it since this year and I have a feeling (and hope) that now I will be more in control of myself in future relationships. Just to clarify, I don’t feel I've been manipulated, I have edited and changed myself so that partners couldn’t find fault, therefore losing my personality, my spark, myself simply. I think it all swings back to the self-consciousness and my fear of being ‘wrong’.
My anxiety is a big wiggly circle that I'm trying to make sense of.
So how have things changed for me? How have things improved? What have I learnt?
Well, my life is a lot better. I’m not ruled by my brain so much anymore, but it has taken me 6 years to get to this point. Nothing was an overnight fix and it took a lot of work.
My anxieties can still get in the way. My self-doubt tends to manifest as unproductiveness now – I get very overwhelmed at the idea of starting a new project or even just going through a full inbox of emails. I had the plan for this blog rolling around my head for about 3 months before I acted on it. I’m scared of failure and loneliness. I fear the ‘old me’ returning, and I find it anxiety inducing to revisit unhappy times – I can’t scroll any further back in my camera roll than October 2019 right now. However, I can look at these anxieties subjectively now, they don’t tend to become all consuming anymore.
Some great things are, that I've chipped away at my self-consciousness a lot! I have a desperate need for connection and communication now, something I would run from before. I am much more spontaneous, I don’t really care what people think of me, I have a great collection of friends who know the ‘real me’ and they like her, if other people don’t, that’s ok. Like I said earlier, my panic hasn’t gone away, but I know what can bring it on and I can choose how I let it affect me. I almost can’t have a panic attack now. I'm a very emotional person, I will cry at literally anything, happy or sad, doesn’t matter. I wear my heart on my sleeve and you can see exactly what I'm thinking right on my face. I'm also very receptive to other peoples emotions. I’m now able to put my own anxieties aside if someone else needs me.
Like I said it was a long road to here, but I thought I’d tell you some of the things that helped me out.
It took me a long time to seek out help, but the minute I asked for it, I felt a weight lift off my shoulders – I had taken control of thing that was crippling me. Talking through everything with someone made it easier for me to order my thoughts, it’s also where I had a lot of my epiphanies regarding where my anxieties stemmed from. Unscrambling my thoughts made it easier for me to process and understand them. One thing a counsellor suggested for me to do, to help with my ‘low moods’, was to start noting down 5 good things that had happened each day. They could be as simple as ‘I got dressed’ or as elaborate as I wanted, this made me find good even in my darkest days. To begin with I really had to search for 5 things, but soon enough I had lots to choose from. To quote dear Professor Dumbledore, ‘Happiness can be found even in the darkest of times if one only remembers to turn on the light’. I don’t do this so much now as my ‘low moods’ aren’t as debilitating, but I keep a diary and every evening I right down what I did that day and how each thing or activity made me feel. I find this very rewarding. I also think it’s helping to improve my terrible memory.
In terms of overthinking and dealing with that, a great mate of mine Jess gave me a technique. If I have a thought that’s really bothering me, then I set a timer for 5 minutes, get on with my day and if when the timer is going off it’s still bothering me, then I can give myself the permission to act on and/or work though it. More often than not for me, that thought has gone, and I can’t remember what is was when the timer sounds. For Christmas this year, from my dear friend Charis, I was given a ‘Worry Relief Journal’. The idea of which is to write your worry down and let it go. I love it! It’s the same sort of deal as the timer and it really helps me to unscramble genuine concerns from passing fears.
I have started doing yoga daily, just a short 10 minute flow each day which energises and focuses my mind. Routine has helped me out greatly. I've also started practicing self-love, I have affirmations written on my mirror, I acknowledge negative thoughts about my body and encourage myself to turn them into positives, I try to admire my body for what it can do rather than how it looks. This self-love is really helping me with my loneliness and self-consciousness. This is much easier said than done of course, it has taken me many years to arrive here.
The main thing that works for me when I am feeling anxious is distraction. If I can feel anxiety coming on, I will do something that makes me happy, and distracts and clears my mind. Some things that make me happy are reading, baking, sewing – generally being creative, or physical things like, yoga, going for a run, putting on some old school 00s classics and having a dance and a sing, getting fresh air is great too. I try to keep my distractions as far away from my phone as possible. Some distance from my phone always improves my mentality. With regard to my phone, I have my notifications off on all social media and I have time limits on certain apps. On my Instagram I follow friends, activists, self-care, positive quotes, guinea pigs, cute cats and dogs, food trucks, artists, cafes, celebrities who preach acceptance and love, mental health advocates, feminists, the list goes on. But generally, things and people that make me smile and bring me joy! I've never been a person who feels jealousy whilst on Insta, but it certainly makes the hours I can spend scrolling less draining when the content I'm consuming is curated by me with my mental health in mind. Life is too short to follow individuals who bring you down, the same can be said of staying in friendships with people who drain you. I have got to a point in my life where I have accepted that my mental health is more important than worrying if someone will hate me because I don’t follow them on Instagram anymore.
Thank you again for reading. I know it was a long one, but I hope you enjoyed it. Like I said at the top of this, I found this difficult, but rewarding to write. I am very proud of where I am now, and I am very excited by what my future will bring!
I've linked the Worry Relief Journal (Amazon links are crazy long, why is that?!) and the yoga flow I follow most mornings below if you want to take a look at all. Also, you should follow @ginamartin on Instagram, she’s doing a thing she’s calling ‘Vitamin P’ where she is sharing loads of joyous things on her story for you to enjoy. Highlight of my day sometimes!
Thanks again gang. Keep pushing on, you are doing amazingly, I am proud of each and every one of you.
Ellie x
(please feel free to pass this blog on)
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