Mind Matters

You wake up. For the briefest moment, everything is fine. Then it crashes into you like a massive wave. Plunged into a vortex of fear and dread, your heart races. You sweat. Negative thoughts spiral catastrophically out of control until you're overcome by panic. It's petrifying and all-consuming. Anxiety really is a bitch. Despite having gone through a traumatic event as a child, I never suffered with my mental health. This was certainly because of a failure to confront issues rather than the absence of them. As I mentioned in a previous post, warning signs developed in my late twenties, but it was in 2017 that I experienced my first bout of anxiety. Several personal setbacks had brought my life into sharp focus. I was 32 years old, single and without my own home or a fulfilling job. My friends were all married, and most had children, while I felt completely unequipped to deal with adulthood. It suddenly dawned on me that I was nowhere near where I had expected to be at this po...

A common question asked by job interviewers goes along the lines of ‘what’s your biggest weakness?’ I always had a ready-made answer to this - that I’m a perfectionist. I thought it was a clever reply because I could argue that the positive aspects of it, such as striving to be a better version of myself, far outweighed the negatives. As a concept though, perfectionism is deeply flawed. When I was young, I struggled with my appearance. My adolescence was not an easy time for many reasons, coming so soon after the death of my brother. Furthermore, I had also gone from being very popular at primary school to feeling completely out of my depth at secondary school. I was suddenly a very small fish in a very big pond. I needed braces to fix my wonky teeth. Many of my classmates towered over me and puberty arrived late. I’ve always looked young for my age. Even now I could pass for someone several years younger than I am. During my teenage years this left me very self-consci...

My name’s Rob. I’m 35 years old and I’m messed up. Except, I’m not. Well, not really. But that doesn’t stop me thinking it. Let’s face it, we all do. And that’s perfectly normal. There are periods in all our lives when we feel empty and hopeless; like we’re searching for answers in a world full of questions. I’ve found that life is not easy. It’s not the fairy-tale we imagined it to be as children. The big, bad world is an unforgiving place, particularly for delicate souls. In this blog I’m going to document the demons I’ve faced on this journey we call life and how I have (or haven’t) dealt with them. I hope this will be a cathartic exercise for me, written at a point in my life where I stand at a crossroads, unsure of which direction to head. It will be personal and honest. At times it might sound brutal. But it'll be me, completely unfiltered, unveiling my innermost thoughts and hopefully providing reassurance to others. Coping with bereavement Losing ...