Being Comfortable with Being Uncomfortable Tortor Smith

In this episode I discuss health anxiety: is anxiety a symptom of a health issues or is your health as a whole causing you anxiety? Sometimes it can be tricky to distinguish. I use my own personal experience to illustrate as an example.

Aches and pains and funny symptoms are normally nothing to worry about... especially if they clear up within a couple of weeks… we all know this, yet I am sure that you, like I, have at least one time had that moment of dread where you panic that something might be more serious. Entering into this mindset is a vicious cycle of consulting with doctor google and spiralling into a whirlwind of possible illnesses that you might have. At this point you might wonder if your health concern is making you anxious or could it just be that you are anxious about your health? Or both? Feeling ill and not knowing why is so frustrating.

We all have those visions of how life might be in the future, we often imagine where we might be at different milestones… what we think we will likely have achieved in our lives by 25, 30… or maybe 35. The classic things most of us aspire for and hope to achieve are: having children, getting married, home ownership and acquiring wealth. They are the generic box ticks that many of us strive for.

In this episode I talk about where I thought I might be at by now... and more where I'm actually at. How the vision of our future changes. How we shouldn't worry as much as we do. How every day is special. 

Spiders: probably one of the most common fears around... 

Even if you are okay with spiders I am pretty sure you will have had at least one bothersome experience. Perhaps in the shower? Or on your body? Or maybe even in your bed? In this episode I talk a little about my arachnophobia and how I've now learnt to cope better and am even able to catch them... if a pot and some paper is to hand. 

As a young adult, at age 19, I received my dyslexia diagnosis and my assessment team also believed I might be a high functioning austic person as well. I knew very little about autism back then… in my mind I just thought I wouldn’t be coping as well if I had something like that going on (spoiler, I wasn’t actually coping that well, not really, not at all). 

So am I actually autistic? Could that be possible? I talk you through many observations I have made about myself retrospectively and all the weird and wonderful things I have done over the years so far. 

Why do I bare all in this way... in case it helps someone else mainly. Like with all the episodes in this podcast so far my aim is to address things that can be uncomfortable, and that sometimes are for me, in the hope that it will provide comfort to someone else.

I have made this episode for LGBT+ Pride month. In this episode I discuss identity and more specifically gender identity.

Identity encompasses how we express ourselves outwardly, but also how we feel internally too… about all things. Who we are is as unique as our fingerprint, and no two identities are exactly the same.

I can only talk about what I know... so we're going deep on non-binary genders and non-binary issues. I talk through my experience so that if you find this sort of thing confusing, or uncomfortable, you will (hopefully) be more comfortable in the future. 

Phone calls. They’re like Marmite, you either love them or you hate them. 

In this episode I unpack my own experience with phone calls and how I have overcome a debilitating phobia of them.