 Hello welcome back Today is going to be a bit more of a video about my personal journey So if you are here for kind of info advice tips and stuff Maybe head back to my channel and click into another video. It's a yeah bit of a personal one a little self-indulgent Maybe but actually this is a video. I think it's really important to make I wanted to talk a little bit about My personal recovery journey and where I am with it at the moment Now the reason for this is because people who've been following my journey so very briefly for the last two or three years I've struggled hugely with anorexia depression anxiety self-harm Some smatterings of suicidal intent And these are all symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, which I am finally really getting on top of and I am healthy weight I'm managing the PTSD symptoms and I am beginning to kind of look forward and actually have a future which is really exciting But what I found is that increasingly people have been Really kind to me and praising me for being open and honest about my mental health journey or how we want to phrase it and I've just begun to feel Increasingly a little bit uncomfortable that people think I'm being open and honest and actually I'm really only telling part of the story and what I don't want is for people to look at me and To think that if they are not managing as well as I appear to be managing if they've gone through something similar that They're not doing well enough because definitely I've been guilty of doing that I've been really guilty of following other people's journeys or reading inspirational recovery stories and thinking I'm not doing recovery well enough And that might sound like an odd thing to say and if it sounds like an odd thing to you then that's great But for those of us with low self-esteem who struggle with anxiety who doubt our every thought It's the kind of thought that comes quite naturally to us. So I guess Yeah, honestly, how am I? Things are pretty good. So my weight is stable It is healthy for the first time in my life and has been now for some months But I find that really hard. I recently Finally got the courage to do something that my therapist has been gently encouraging me to do for many months which was to try on every single item of clothing I own and To discard everything that was either below a certain size. So we had a cut off I'm not allowed to have unhealthy sizes in my wardrobe, even if those clothes feel comfortable So yeah, if they're below a certain size they went Or if I just didn't feel good in them I had to draw the line a little bit there because again when you have a very very Yeah, head full of self-doubt and self-loathing. It's quite hard to feel good in stuff, but you know worked on the scale It was a really hard thing to do. It made me recognize quite how much my body had changed So yeah, I'm still struggling a bit with that Climbing which those of you who follow me on Twitter or Instagram or see me in real life Will know is become a real passion of mine over the last few months. Climbing has helped so I watch videos of myself climbing I don't take videos just to share them Obsessively on Instagram part of the reason I do it is a really important part of my recovery Which is that watching myself climb helps me to view my body a lot more objectively And as I'm seeing myself get stronger and my technique get better and that kind of thing I'm able to look at my body and go. Yeah, that's a body that functions well and is strong And it makes me want to feed it and want to keep it well But it's it's not easy, and I'm not sure that it ever will be I have blips. I have bad days Friday was a bad day Friday was a day where Following dental abscess and a few days of being really sick and not being able to eat I had inadvertently completely inadvertently lost weight And it made me suddenly, you know, the anorexic voice was there And I could feel myself being sucked under. The good thing is that I have a great network of people around me My husband really helped my friend really helped to went out climbing With another friend although it was too weak to really climb And I got through that day and I managed to get back on the wagon and Eat and I'm putting the weight back on and it's all good But it was hard So there are hard days other things so I Have to make some pretty big compromises in order just to manage day to day at the moment So one of the biggest ones is that I drive everywhere So I drive everywhere including up into central London. I love driving in London. I know that's unusual. I love it But so I was presenting evidence to select committee at the House of Commons yesterday and I drove there That doesn't make any sense at all. Most people will get on a train Most people however would not have extreme anxiety around getting on a train and they wouldn't have intrusive thoughts about jumping under the train And so for me avoiding trains is still a really important part of keeping myself safe in exactly the same way that I do not keep Any medication that I might overdose onto hand. I do not keep anything that I have previously harmed myself with To hand in the house. It's just another safeguard that I put in place just in case I have a moment when things become more difficult or an impulse Overtakes me and you know those sorts of measures. They're not the sorts of things that people see They don't notice every day people might be aware that I drive and I like driving in London But they maybe don't know the reasons why The other things that I guess I do each day that people wouldn't be aware of are So again with food, there's still a lot of stuff around food So I am managing to maintain a healthy weight I can now go out and enjoy meals out with friends But I can enjoy these meals out as long as they don't involve any one of a massive great long list of foods And yeah, this is a way to do this to tackle at some point and it is Really inconvenient because most of those foods they're not I mean they're not terrifying because of calories. It's just kind of phobia at this point So it's nothing to do calories I can eat chocolate quite happily, but you know present me with potatoes Yeah So yeah, and the other big thing I guess that is a big compromise I make at the moment is that I Think really carefully about what I do with my time And I have to plan carefully about how to ensure that I'm in a good enough place to manage those things and that I give myself space and time afterwards so an example here would be on Monday We had a really fantastic meeting for the children and young people's mental health coalition and another couple of coalitions that we're working with loads of our members came together and I was Helping to facilitate the discussion amongst all these different members So there's about 40 or 50 people in the room from a whole range of organizations And I was basically trying to work out what our whole viewpoint where we agreed was so that I could present it to the select committee and That was a great day. It was really fantastic that everybody came I really enjoyed being part of it, but I was able to do a good job, but It has meant that you know today That evening I have to really take steps back and have a really quiet time just to recover I guess for me social interaction and kind of big social situations like that are just something I find really difficult My anxiety is through the roof. I appear Completely fine and calm and I appear quite extroverted And most of the time no one would ever know, but I guess that's what I think is really important to explain that Yeah, how I seem especially how I look on stage, which is my happy place and you know, you're over there And I'm over here and it's okay Yes, I seem fine, but actually there's a lot going on there so I guess the long and the short of this basically is that It's not like I feel like it's a plea for sympathy or something It's nothing like that. It's actually just that I just want to be a bit honest and say Yeah, I've taken a massive steps forward in my recovery still working really hard with my therapist on my PTSD I feel in control right now of that anorexia, but I think that is battle. I will fight every day Medication and lifestyle changes have really helped with depression and anxiety And yeah, we're getting to the root of the PTSD And I do feel like all these other symptoms will lessen over time and I feel for the first time in my life able to really plan for the future and really begin to enjoy life and my family and hobbies and all these things are fantastic, but it's something I'm really actively working on and so I guess As much as anything if you or someone, you know, it's struggling With your mental health. It's kind of just to give you permission to not be okay all the time Recovery isn't a straight line. It is for me certainly a battle And it's one where I'm hugely grateful for the massive support of the people around me For the understanding of them and for the various kind of therapeutic medicinal input that I have in order to help me But appearances can be deceptive. So look beyond the mask I guess and if we are talking about mental health, let's really talk about it Let's really be honest and let's not be ashamed because a lot of what I've said in this video is the kind of thing that I would have hidden in the past Take it or leave it. I guess that's me Okay, now I'm gonna go away and think endlessly about whether to actually post this or not So if you're actually watching it, then I've been brave and I've posted it Please be Thank you See you next time if you want to see my other videos, then please subscribe and Generally, they're less personal than this They're normally me with my professional hat on giving ideas and advice and tips, but every now and then we'll get one like this So yeah, please subscribe and please like or leave a comment down below. Okay. Thank you