Learning How To Live Elli Johnson

An episode about that moment when you seem to be getting better and then suddenly have a bad day, or bad week. Following my story of recovery from anxiety and in this case discussing my relapse a few years later and how I came to terms with it.

In this episode I look at the many varying ways I learnt to calm my anxiety. Some of these are small physical and practical changes, some were skills I learnt, others still were difficult relational choices I had to make. I hope this might help you if you have recognised you are struggling with anxiety and don't know what could help.

In this episode I look at the unhelpful mindsets I was stuck in during my 20s (and if I am not careful mindsets I can still slip into today). These deeply held, but never properly acknowledged beliefs created an environment for anxiety to flourish. It is only by re-examining and unpicking these ideas I have been able to recover and live well.

In this episode I discuss my mental health diagnosis (initially with Post-Natal Depression and then with Generalised Anxiety Disorder.) Being diagnosed with a strange experience, it changes nothing and every thing. Here I discuss my initial reactions to the diagnosis and what I then went and did about it with my usual level of skin-off honesty. 

A deep dive into why it can be so hard to realise you are struggling with your mental health. I talk about my 20s, the unrealistic expectations and circumstances that surrounded my eventual diagnosis of post natal depression and anxiety. This correlates strongly with what I see happening around me at the moment. The pandemic has pushed many of us to the brink of not-coping and many people are struggling with anxiety for the first time. Lets talk about why and how and what we can do about it now.

I can be my own worst and most harsh critic. 
My inner critic is loud and persistent, telling me all the ways I am not enough: not good enough, don't work hard enough, not consistent enough. 
I have done a lot of work to quieten and even silence my inner critic, but I still have days when by the time it gets to the evening  I realise - 'oh, I have been listening to that pesky voice again'.
In this episode I describe how my inner critic talks to me, what the persistent nonsense she spouts consists of and how it makes me feel, and... how I work to quieten her voice.