Anxiety

Okay, so this first post is me introducing myself. I decided to write a blog to get my thoughts and feelings out and to not hold them in anymore, I’ve never tried this and wanted to see if it made me feel any better having some form of outlet. So here goes...

My name is Ryan Lloyd, I’m currently 19 years old and I work in London at a Law Firm as a Legal Secretary. I know, it sounds like a girls job, and it is a very women dominated job but I love law and I love computers/ admin so I thought why not, and I love my job so it’s all worked out pretty well for me.

I’m gonna take it waaaaay back to when I was just in primary school and go from there. (If you haven’t guessed already what the blog post is about, go check out the title just two paragraphs up!).  When I was in primary school I never really had many friends, I was one of those people who is shy around new people but once you knew me I was confident and if anything a little bit annoying, but that’s just me! My cousin also went to my primary school which was helpful as I had someone to hang around with at break times, but as the months went on when you start a new school you start to find new friends and find out who you get along with in your class. Well my cousin starting to find out not quite me. So the months went by and every now and again she would hang around with new people and she used to say to me “come on just come and play with us”, being the shy person I was I would always say “No its fine you go I’ll wait here and eat my crisps”. So then I would go onto eating my quavers (omg who remembers those, amazing!) out of my little plastic box  that mum used to put them in and continue throughout my break.

So after the months went past my cousin used to hang out with her new friends more and more and I was never going to stop her it wasn’t fair. We all know what’s coming, in the end I used to sit on my own every break. That’s when I used to become a people watcher (mainly because I had no one to play with lol). So as the years went by in primary school I dipped in an out of random friendships for a few days at a time then fade back into being on my own again. Then the big change came (not puberty) but secondary school! You know that period in year 6 when you really don’t have a bloody clue what’s going on, you’re in the middle of doing your SATs and your Mum is at home applying for all the schools that you went and visited previously. It never really sunk in with me that I was actually going to be moving into a different school until like the day before. I never actually thought that I would be at a different school and start to, grow up.

So the 6 weeks summer holiday is here and I’m loving life with my cousin (who was like a sister to me as I’m an only child) and we play games every single day until the day before the first day of school. It’s here, the first day at “big school”. So I arrive on my first day they sort you out into your form groups give you your timetable and you start to get into the flow of things. So the weeks went by, again you start finding your friends and you’re that little bit older so you’re better at judging characters and you almost start to suss people out. I would say by the third or fourth month into school I was nice and settled with my little group of friends and I finally felt like I belong. 

So time is moving forward everything has started to becoming the normality, but somehow and for some reason most of the people  (other than my friends) in my class thought they ‘sussed’ me out and started to pick on me. I was like, well isn’t this brilliant I’ve finally found some friends and now I’m being bullied. It wasn’t a pleasant time in school and as the weeks went on and seasons turned around it just seem to get worse and worse. Everyone in the whole school has now jumped on this bandwagon and who ever would see me in the school would have to shout something at me, throw something at me or just be a total asshole.  I learnt to deal with it and my friends were really supportive and always used to fight my battles and stand up for me, it was nice to feel like people had my back.

So, time went on and as I said I just learnt to deal with it. It came to a holiday in the year where you have a week off school (I can’t exactly remember when it was) and my family decided to go on a little break up to Norfolk to visit my Granddad.  Me, Mum, Dad and my other Cousin all drove up there and stayed in a Hotel. So I’m enjoying my holiday, loving life in the hotel and having great days out with the whole family! Then... I get a phone call from my best friend saying “have you seen what’s on facebook, have you seen it Ry look at it”. So I logged onto facebook on my blackberry (everyone was on the blackberry life at the time) and saw that some boys had made a facebook group about me where people were liking the page and posting nasty comments all over the time line about me. My aunt back at home had already clocked the page and had printed off all the evidence for my mum, my cousin (who was like a sister) was going crazy and commenting back to all the trolls, it was a horrible time but again, nice to feel like people had my back. My friends were also having a pop at anyone that liked the page or commented on it. But that didn’t change the fact that people were physically writing stuff about me for no good reason, just for a cheap laugh.

On the facebook page there were over 60 people from my year at school that had liked the page, so instantly I know that those 60 people didn’t like me for no reason. Although I was used to the feeling of people not being friends with me, it never felt any better. Once again, I just dealt with it and tried as hard as I could to let it go... but this is where my anxiety started. A few days after getting home from holiday it was time to go back to school. Obviously I didn’t want to go but it’s something in life that you have to do and even though I didn’t realise it at the time, it made me a better person and shaped me into the man that I am today. The night before school, I remember I was laying in bed and I couldn’t stop thinking about school the next day and seeing all the people that made that facebook page about me. My heart started to race and I had NO idea what was going on. I ran to the bathroom, splashed cold water over my face and tried to calm myself down. I didn’t quite put two and two together to realise I was panicking over going to school. I suddenly felt so hot and extremely sick so I shouted for my mum and she instantly knew what was going on. She told me that I was having a panic attack and that I need to calm myself down so she tried to help me breathe but it just wasn’t working. I worked myself up so much that I was sick and that caused me to just be extremely tired.  After falling to sleep, waking up and suffering school I came home and it all repeated that same night. This happened for a good few weeks where I would just be worried sick, literally.

As time went on it started to happen less frequently and if it did happen my Mum used to be able to talk me out of it in time so that I wouldn’t be ill. I only ever used to get panic attacks whilst at home, usually at night. One day at school I was in class (can’t remember which subject) and I suddenly had the same feeling, I was having another panic attack. I knew what they were at this point but my mum wasn’t there to calm me down so what the hell was I to do. I ran out of class and went to the medical room (the hallway near the reception lol) where I said to them that I felt sick. I said down and tried to calm myself down but it wasn’t working, then along walked one of my teaching assistants Mrs Barry. She came over to me and said “what’s up darling” (she was the sweetest person ever!) and I just went on to explain that I felt sick and I was panicking. So she took my outside (it was rather cold out) and said to me I have anxiety let me show you a trick. I didn’t even know what she meant by anxiety at that time I just called them panic attacks. So she told me to breathe in through my nose as slow as possible, so about 6-8 seconds and do the same when breathing out but out my mouth. Within 2/3 minutes I was totally relaxed and the panic attack had completely disappeared.

So the whole way through senior school that was my little trick for every time that I had a panic attack and it worked 9 times out of 10 which was better than suffering all 10 lol! As I got older the bulling started to calm down and my anxiety did as well. I found my own little tricks on how to calm myself down and they all seemed to work for a while then would all of a sudden not work, so I would then find something else that would make me feel better or I would research anxiety and things that help you calm down. 

So moving on with life, I got through senior school and came out the other end a better person. Time for college, great. Long story short I got all the GCSE’s that I wanted, passed everything other than science (I was awful at that) and got into college into ‘Legal Secretarial and Law Studies’. In college I was pretty clued up about my own anxiety and was a little nervous about finding my feet and how I would survive. Turns out it was the best thing that could have happened. It was a fresh start with fresh people and my anxiety faded for a long time. I would say a good year. Then after the first year of college I went on the official last holiday that I would go on with my family to Tunisia. The morning of the flight my anxiety reached another level when it came to getting on the plane I panicked so much and severely contemplated not getting on the plane, but thanks to my mum she convinced me to do it and in the end I was there safe and sound and had a fantastic time. The second year of college rolled round and I turned 18 in the November and started to go clubbing with all my friends. At first I loved it and as I did it more and more my anxiety used to get worse and worse. I used to be in a bad mood or a quiet mood when I went out and didn’t want to do it anymore. I would cancel on my friends and they would get upset that I wasn’t coming out which used to put my stress on my shoulders as I felt like I let them down. It wasn’t their fault they really didn’t know what was going on. So I started to fade from my friends slightly and I drifted away from them as I never used to want to go out. Then I passed my driving test at the end of the second year of college which was great and made me feel a lot better as getting on the bus used to give me anxiety sometimes as I felt judged from people on the bus, or I used to get worried that I would have an anxiety attack and wouldn’t be able to get off.

So college finished and I already had a part time job at Topshop as a sales advisor. So when college finished I took on some more hours and started to earn a little bit more money, time went on and I wanted a new job as a Legal Secretary. After a long hard year of looking for a Job the right one finally came up in May 2016 and I haven’t been in a better place since. I went to Santorini in June and had the time of my life with the most insane person on this planet. My anxiety was bad in the morning of the flight but I had already been to the doctors prior to the flight and got myself some medicine to calm myself down, which worked! I still deal with it every day, I have my bad days and my even worse days. But I also have my good days and my excellent days, it’s times like those you just have to appreciate that you’re here on this planet and have a chance. You can over come it.

Anxiety is something that unfortunately cannot be cured, but it most definitely can be controlled. Everyone’s anxiety is different and is caused by many things. You have to find your own footings with it and learn to take a step back, breathe and deal with it. It cannot harm you, it cannot cause death and it certainly cannot contain you. I am better than Anxiety, and so are you.