Still working but some days are hard !!!

[mezzaninedoor]

My head is often like a seething and noisy foreign bazaar, with countless vendors and buyers calling out about their wares and wants. Amid this tumult it can seem nigh impossible to bring the attention your mind needs to be robust and stable. It’s hard to find the sweet spot where mania, anxiety and mood can be ‘okay’ and ‘navigable’. ( c. after blinkist blog )

Today I’m delivering my first session in my secondment with the stabilisers off, indicating things that may help the team that I will call my home until the end of January. I’m nervous because though I have a lot of Agile experience I’m an outsider who has come into the team to offer this constructive appreciation of their challenges. I’m very much of the mindset that I will not ‘do to’ the Team and that the Team should choose any improvements that they want to try and bed in, the Team must commit to stuff not be put upon and I want to try and make sure they understand that.

I’m really anxious about this session and didn’t sleep last night, I’m tired and a little bit vulnerable, I’ve been told to be brave by my manager and he’s intimated that the team feel like they will be up for some of this. It’s just that my confidence into Xmas will hang on how today goes and I know my self critic is just waiting in the wings with self talk that can take my reasonable mood at the moment and undermine it. I need to try and remove it’s power before the session so that I don’t come away with a warped view of failure that may not be such.

Times like this are days when we need to try and remember the tools in our toolbox, I have a breathing exercise that I can try and also a visualisation exercise that should help me to navigate but at the moment it just feels like one of those huge things that I can’t possibly manage though I have done as much prep as I think I can. I hope the Team I’m facilitating the session for will find it of value …………..

[mezzaninedoor]

​I'm a bit nervous at the moment as my secondment is about to end and Im getting a lot of noise from my self critic again, even though I think i have been functioning better at work in recent times. haven't blogged for a while so I hope this makes sense ........

I've read many articles about the struggle we have as we have an invisible illness and that people often judge those with mental health challenges as 'less than' others because we have conditions that we are beholden to, as much as we try to remain robust and resilient by accessing tools we might have been exposed to such as CBT, mindfulness, NLP etc

It seems to be accepted by some that mentally ill people don't function in society as their judgement on us, I think we need to refute this, even though we might at times suffer with social anxiety, we need to try and fight this stigma as often people with mental health challenges can be high functioning but as we navigate our conditions we can'/don't always find that we are high functioning. We can act fine on the surface, that's cognitive.

I found with a recent episode ( early 2016 ) that I acted fine on the surface but I began to look like a tramp, though I could fake some things I couldn't get everything under control and it took my wife to intercede and point out that my self care was slipping significantly whilst I tried to remain at work and functioning.

We try so hard to beat our illnesses or disorders because we don't really want to be 'other' but we are part of diverse society, its said that 1 in 4 in their lifetime will have a mental health illness or episode of some sort. We I think need to embrace being part of diversity of society and manage our self expectation.

I'm hoping that being open about my illness is allowing me to take the pressure off me to some degree whilst I try and harness some sensible interventions like I've just dropped a grade at work in order to not overthink my contirbution at work, I sort of want my illness to be invisible but at the same time I'm actually convinced there is a benefit to work and myself being open and honest about it, that may not work for everyone but for now that works for me.

Hope above makes vague sense.

Tony

[AntsyVee]

I find that we are the hardest on ourselves. Often times it's not living up to others' standards that makes us anxious, but living up to our own. I know I struggle with this quite often.

I teach. Now I don't talk about my mental illness with those I work with a lot, but on occasion I have opened up to a student, a parent or colleague that I suffer from the same illness as they have. Many parents are greatful that I open up about my own struggles because they know I will understand what their son or daughter are experiencing. I do it as a way to empathize, but also to show that it makes us stronger. We are able to still do the same job as others despite the monkey on our backs. I prefer to see it as a strength.