My Mental Health

**WARNING**This is a long post even for me, so sorry about that, but felt that it needed to be said***

As some of you know I was having a bout of Social Anxiety last week, especially on Friday, where it mixed into other things made me quite low.

Now I have experienced this a few times and sometimes it can last a while and other times will only be 24 hours and I am back to myself again. It all depends on the circumstances.

I was very lucky on Friday to have someone, who completely understood, to talk to and chat things through. That in itself was difficult as I don't usually talk about mental health, well not in depths, because it really still isn't something that is completely understood and spoken publically about. If I have spoken about it I only scrape the surfaces on it but after talking to my new found friend I realised how good it was to speak openly and honestly.

However, I sat here at my laptop Saturday and tried to write about my anxiety and I couldn't, the words were not there and the ones that were came across very muddled. I tried again on Sunday and the same thing happened. Sunday evening approached and I was kindly invited around another friends house to have dinner, whilst I was there we were talking mental health, as both her and I have very similar problems, and it made me realise that I was discussing my problems in a backwards approach and subsequently that was why it was coming out wrong on here.

Once I realised what it was I decided to write this.

I have a Dependant Personality Disorder.

Dependent personality disorder is characterized by a long-standing need for the person to be taken care of and a fear of being abandoned or separated from important individuals in his or her life. This leads the person to engage in dependent and submissive behaviours that are designed to elicit care-giving behaviours in others. The dependent behaviour may be see as being “clingy” or “clinging on” to others, because the person fears they can’t live their lives without the help of others.

Individuals with Dependent Personality Disorder are often characterized by pessimism and self-doubt, tend to belittle their abilities and assets, and may constantly refer to themselves as “stupid.” They take criticism and disapproval as proof of their worthlessness and lose faith in themselves. They may seek overprotection and dominance from others. Social relations tend to be limited to those few people on whom the individual is dependent.

A personality disorder is an enduring pattern of inner experience and behaviour that deviates from the norm of the individual’s culture. The pattern is seen in two or more of the following areas: cognition; affect; interpersonal functioning; or impulse control. The enduring pattern is inflexible and pervasive across a broad range of personal and social situations. It typically leads to significant distress or impairment in social, work or other areas of functioning.

Although, for me, it has been shown that I developed it from a very young age due to a complicated start to life it didn't really show until my mid twenties. Between changing a stable job, my marriage breakdown and the, at the time, lack of contact with my children and finally the passing of my Mum it really started affecting my day to day life.

Now that I have explained that I think it easier to talk about my social anxiety and the subsequent panic attacks that I had on Friday.

I am so aware of the fact that the above description of my mental health has certain characteristics that I avoid a lot of situations. I only have 5 friends that I trust whole heartedly and although I have some very close people in my life I can only truly say that they are close acquaintances.

I don't tend to enter social situations because I become very anxious because I fear the social perception of myself and my low self esteem creates negativity that can trigger me being low. Due to the fact that I know these triggers it is best to try and avoid them, especially when it comes to aspects like dating or other interpersonal relationships.

The problem is that although I avoid them and try to keep myself protected that there are still the need and want for a relationship, which I believe drives a lot of us. So when I do date I choose wisely and wont just pick any or everyone. Yet this is also a negative factor as if I do embrace it and find someone nice I become more anxious as I realise step by step and date by date I am allowing my guard to come down. This makes me panic in all aspects of interactions, like holding hands or the first kiss, where my heart races, I feel nauseous and become very breathless. The problem comes that I often come across as not interested in a person even if I am and subsequently move from being a datable person to just a nice guy and mate material.

Recently this happened and during the discussion of it the person used transference of my anxiety as the reason why we didn't continue dating. At the time this was a blow, I had started to lower my guard and started to become more emotionally involved and to hear this made me once again fall into the cycle of negativity and anxiety.

It took my new found friend to rationalise aspects of it for and for me to realise that actually it wasn't my fault and that ultimately if I was the "right" person then I am worth the wait despite any issues. And despite my own thoughts that I am pretty amazing.

During these discussion I realised that communication and speaking about it massively helped, hence this blog post, but to regain my self control I distracted myself with different activities, focused on being a dad and a good teacher. Did activities that gave me self worth and found ways to push through it. Subsequently I snapped out of it quicker than I might have normally have done.

Mental health is a serious and real thing and should be acknowledge and not hidden yet sadly that isn't always the case. If more people spoke about it then there is a greater chance to gain support and reassurance, listen to the voice that you would suggest to help others and applying it to your current situations.

I hope that by reading this that it has helped explained why I might talk about my social anxiety and why I have it. And more importantly that it makes you see that it isn't something to be ashamed about and that we should all be openly talking about.