Rachel Sarah XO

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The Bambi slippers were a present from my grandparents (well, kind of, my grandparents are getting on a bit and can't really go anywhere so they send my mum money for me and my sister and either mum gets us presents with that money or we pick some things out before Christmas) I found these in Primark for £8 and I was just madly in love, I had to get them. I always find a way to get slippers every year for Christmas, haha.

Hi guys,

I haven't posted since July, I have a good excuse, I swear! (Okay so maybe not.) I haven't fallen off the face of the planet, I swear. So I've been working for 5 months now and I've been panic attack free for 4 months, yeah I'll explain that in a little bit.

So I'm working for this amazing charity called Leeway, they support victims of domestic abuse and I'm really loving it. I'm doing it as an apprenticeship, so I'm supposed to go to college once a month (I don't go, college is still a huge no no for me but whatever) and I do my NVQ work in Business and Administration and I see an assessor, it's all fun and games. It's so nice to have a routine, I wake up at 6:15am every morning, get on the bus at 7:10am, get off the bus, walk a mile to work and I get to work at 8:45am. Yes, I'm getting the bus now and managing to stay on it for over and hour without having a panic attack. It's so weird.

My first day of work was so weird. I hadn't explained my anxiety at the interview so the first thing I needed to do was make my supervisor aware, she was super supportive and she gave me loads of options I could take if I felt panicky at work. So first day was over and not one panic attack. Second day came, I was meeting more people on my second day than on my first and it was a bit overwhelming and I was a panicky mess, they all turned out to be so nice and I knew I had nothing to worry about. Third, fourth and fifth day came around, and I still hadn't had a panic attack. The only one I can recall was one morning on the bus, there was a whole load of students sat around me and I just felt incredibly uncomfortable, I got off the bus in my town and my mum ended up driving me to work, that was the last time I had a panic attack. Most people at work are aware of my problem and they're all super nice about it and I wouldn't feel like such an idiot if I had a panic attack. I think because I'm so busy at work, I don't have time to be feeling anxious.
I work the reception desk at work, I have to greet people from external agencies, on my first week I was avoiding meeting external people like the plague. Now I'm much more confident with meeting new people (adults, still not cool with meeting people my own age) and now I can answer the phone wiithout panicking about who's on the other end of the line.

It's safe to say I'm pretty proud of myself. I'm probably never going to be totally okay around people my own age for the time being but because I'm working in a place where the majority of the women there are 30-50, they're obviously a lot more mature and that's totally fine.

As for blogging, since I'm working 5 days a week, I leave at 7am and get home at around 6pm-7pm, I'm not finding much time for blogging, bearing in mind I also have to fit in my NVQ work whenever I have time to myself, so evenings and weekends. On the plus side, I now have a working laptop. That was another factor of me not blogging, my laptop totally just crashed and didn't want to do anything, I'd load it up and everything would just crash, so I had nothing really to blog on, but now I have a lovely new bright pink HP laptop, it's hella fast and does everything I need it to, so I may be blogging more frequently now, we'll see.

So really, these last 5 months have been pretty flippin' cool. I'm a much happier, positive person and I'm super proud of myself for not letting my anxiety ruin this opportunity for me. Good job, brain.

I hope you're all doing fabulous, it'd be cool to hear what you've been up to these last 5 months. :)

That's all for now,
Rachel. xo

Hey guys!
It's been a couple of months since I last did a mental health post, but since it's mental health awareness week, I thought that now would be the perfect time, also the theme this year is anxiety, so I feel I can play a part in this year's awareness week. Although this post isn't about anxiety and I'm sure you're sick of me talking about it by now (you can see all my mental health related posts here and there's a fair few on anxiety) this post will be focused on how your illness doesn't define you.

So I've always thought, if there's one small good detail about having a mental illness, it's that yes, other people may be able to do stuff a lot easier than you, but they're never challenging themselves. When you have a mental illness and you have to do something that may seem completely super easy for someone else, you're always challenging yourself and helping yourself and that makes for one awesome person.

I know that right now I'm feeling very hypocritical writing this post as I'm currently looking for a job and when you're applying for jobs, it feels very much like your illness defines you. You have to make the decision of not mentioning your illness or mentioning it and not getting the job, which absolutely sucks and that shouldn't be the way things are. But it does make you begin to think "oh god, my illness does define me". But I can promise you, it absolutely doesn't.

If you're reading this now, it obviously means you haven't given up and I'm proud of you for that. We all have bad days, some worse than others.

If our illnesses defined us, we would be walking around with a things over our heads that say "ANXIETY: I get anxious a lot.", "DEPRESSION: I'm often feel empty." "BI-POLAR: I have intense mood-swings."
Imagine how judgey people would be? The good thing about that not existing, is that we can often choose who judges us. We don't have to make people aware we have an illness, because it's something that goes on inside our heads. No one else can hear it, see it or feel it except us. We have a choice of who we can tell our problems too, we have a choice of who we want to trust.

So I suppose what I'm trying to say is, trust who you want to trust, challenge yourself everyday, try to be the best person you can be. And do not let your illness define you.

I have a lot of pride and love towards people who are so open about their illnesses. I also have a lot of pride and love towards people who aren't quite ready to open up about it yet, a time will come when you've bottled it up so much that it will all come pouring out.

(Jeez, I feel like a rambly preacher. I'm not sure how rambly this post was, it was a spur of the moment post and I did no planning for this so it may be taken down within the next week but whatever.)

If you ever need to talk, go and add my personal facebook (here) and send me a message, or follow me on Twitter (here) and give me a dm. I'm never ever going to turn anybody away.

You too can join in the chat about mental health this week by going on twitter and using the hashtag #mentalhealthawarenessweek and let your tweets run wild.

That's all for now,
Rachel. xo