Even though I've been blogging a lot more about beauty lately, I still want to share some lifestyle/personal posts with you too. I know some people only like beauty related posts and don't enjoy reading some of my more personal stories, and that's totally okay (understandable, even), but this still my blog, my happy place and safe place, and sometimes I just want to have a little ramble about some more serious, personal things. So, before we go any further, this is going to be a long chatty post with no pictures about something very important and personal to me, that I know a lot of people might be able to relate to. Continue at your own risk.

When I was 9 my grandma passed away under some very dramatic and traumatising circumstances, and ever since then somethings been a bit off. At first I was heavily traumatised and had to see a shrink for some months to try and get me back to normal as I suffered from a form of PTSD. Luckily this therapy really helped and I managed to become a pretty normal person without any serious mental damages caused my my trauma. As a matter of fact I never really realised  something was still off with me until a few years ago when I watched Zoella speak about her anxiety. 

I've always been a very shy child that was scared of a lot of things. As a teen I didn't have a huge amount of friends (although I was quite happy with my small squad) and was never really part of the 'cool kids'. I was really shy and terrified of meeting new people, and even now when I think back to my first day of high school I feel a bit sick when I remember my nerves. I have always been this nervous, stressy and 'socially anxious' so I always thought it was just part of being a shy kid. Even though I wished I was more outgoing I had a happy life, and even though I did suffer from being nervous and stressed a lot, it never got so bad that I felt like it was really affecting my life.

When I was 16 I decided I wanted to go to university in America, and the next two years I spent planning and preparing for this adventure. These two years were some of the scariest and most stressful years of my life, and I started suffering more from anxiety. This was also around the time I learnt about the term anxiety and things started to make sense. One defining moment was when I would start breathing funny, not like a panic attack but for weeks my breathing would just be slightly off and I felt like I couldn't take deep breaths or breathe through properly. It got so bad one day that my mom took me to the hospital. We were relieved when we found out it wasn't anything serious at all, but I was a bit confused when the doctor told me it was a form of hyperventilation that was caused by stress. It was summertime so I didn't have any tests or any direct stress, but this was the first time I realised that I have never been completely stress free and am constantly worried about something. Even when my life is amazing, I'm worried. I can never shake this feeling of negativity that's just always there, not always loud but always present.

Watching Zoella speak about her anxiety helped a lot because it explained why I always felt like this, and showed me that I'm not the only person. Her anxiety videos were some of her most popular ones, which showed me there were so many people with the same problem as me! This was great, but it also made me think it was too normal, and I never once thought about getting help or doing anything to fix this problem.

Three more years went by and in these years of travelling and being away from home I changed A LOT. I became independent, grown up, and had forced myself out of my comfort zone so many times that most of my social anxiety and shyness were gone. I became this mouthy, confident woman who didn't let anyone walk over me, so why was I still letting anxiety rule such a big part of my life? Sometimes I cried if I was by myself for too long and started thinking I had no friends and wasn't living my life the way a 20 year old is supposed to- even though I had been hanging out with my wonderful group of friends the day before. This dark cloud of anxiety was still constantly over my head, but being this new person meant I was finally brave enough to properly talk about it and address it as an issue, rather than pretend it's just part of me I couldn't do anything about.

I know most people who have anxiety don't necessarily have a major trauma, and I don't think this has directly caused my anxiety, but there is another big part of why my anxiety gets so bad sometimes that I would like to address.

Aside from my general, every day 'life' anxiety ('oh my god what am I doing with my life') I also had this other really weird fear, which I will be referring to as 'death' anxiety. 

When my grandma passed away I was still quite young, and 9 is a pretty early age to be hit with the reality of death (I had people pass away before this but they were under different circumstances and therefor I was not as aware of them as my grandmas death). After that I had some more people close to me pass away, and the older I got the more I started thinking about death. I know everyone thinks about death because, well, it's unavoidable and something we all deal with, but for me it became my biggest fear and worst enemy. I started worrying about the people around me more, and constantly imagined that something might happen to them- even when there was no reason to believe that whatsoever. My mom is a smoker but is thankfully generally healthy, but I would cry and get panic attacks thinking she was going to die of lung cancer pretty much immediately. If my friend was supposed to be at my house at 10:00 am and was still not there at 10:15, I assumed she had been hit by a car and died. If my (other) grandma didn't answer her phone immediately, she was dead. It became yet another feeling I couldn't shake, a constant hyper awareness of death and in my mind there was a timer just counting down untill the next person died. I also became extremely scared of my own death (mind you, I am a healthy 20 year old) and the thought of eternity and the afterlife scared me so much that thinking about it gave me panic attacks. 

This has been going on for quite a few years and, because I had gotten so used to thinking these things and feeling this way, I never once thought it was a very last scar of my childhood trauma.

Now, I didn't want to write this story to be all like, 'oh deary me I had something bad happen to me and now I want everyone to pity me because I have anxiety and I am so sad'. No. What I am trying to say is that all of this sucked. And it still does. It sucks always being nervous and it sucks always being scared. It sucks to always assume the worst and to worry when there is no reason to. It sucks that I can't just tell my brain to SHUT UP and be happy when things are going well. And I know for a fact that I am not the only person who feels this way. Yeah, maybe I am a bit rare in my crazy obsession with death, but maybe there are people out there just like me who think they are the only one. And I know there are people like me, who struggle with anxiety but think there is nothing they can or need to do to fix themselves. 

Until about a month ago I thought the exact same thing. I hated my anxiety and fears but it's not like I could just get rid of them. 

My mom used to be petrified of flying, and when we went to visit my family in America she would have to take 4 sleeping pills to survive. Then she was  told to try a special kind of therapy called emdr, which gets rid of trauma based fears. She tried it, and it worked! Not saying she immediately wanted to become a stewardess, but she can now go on a flight without any kind of medication, which is a huge step in our book. So when I became more open about my fears and anxiety and told her more about them, she suggested I try EMDR to get rid of my trauma based fear. 

I suddenly realised that maybe I could get help. Maybe you can go see a therapist and tell them how you're feeling and give you a diagnosis and say here is your solution and it would all be perfect.

Well, the real world doesn't work like that unfortunately. But that doesn't mean that getting help doesn't, well, help. So last week I went to see a therapist for the first time since I was 9. I sat down and he said, 'well, go ahead' and I sat for an hour talking about all the things that depress me, scare me, make me nervous. Things that make me feel good and things that make me feel bad. For the first time I properly let it all out and it felt absolutely amazing. And the best part- he understood. I wasn't this crazy girl who felt sorry for herself and was just trying to be dramatic. I was actually a very common case (life anxiety) with some uncommon quirks (death anxiety), but I wasn't unsavable. He told me there were many ways I could be helped, and that even though emdr was a good option, regular therapy would also definitely help relieve my anxiety. I say relieve because I know that I can't just get rid of my problems instantly. But I can learn how to cope with them, what's going to relieve them or make them worse, and slowly but steadily lessen their grip on my life. I've only been to one session so far but I am so excited for what's to come.

The reason I've written this long and slightly intimate post is because I want to tell people that it's okay to ask for help! I know sometimes it's scary or awkward to talk about your mental health, and to be honest I still had a hard time explaining to my friends why I went to see a therapist because I thought they'd just find me dramatic- but sometimes it doesn't matter what other people think. Am I scared to post this for fear people think I'm being dramatic? Absolutely. But at the end of the day it really doesn't matter if they think that. What matters is that I feel relieved to finally tell people that sometimes I just don't feel so good but that's okay, and I'm getting help so that's even better. I hope that someone reads this and becomes inspired to take a step. It doesn't have to be a big step like going to see a therapist, it can even just be telling your mom, dad, or anyone close to you. What I'm trying to say is don't be embarrassed if you feel different, unhappy, or like there is something wrong. Talking about your issues is the first and best step you can take to recovery. And if you don't have someone to speak to, I'll listen, always.

Love,

Rowan