Anxiety can effect anyone

Anxiety comes with so much unknown and stigma.  For those who have never experienced a panic attack or debilitating anxiety often find it difficult to comprehend and I have heard many times, ‘just get over it’ Anxiety is real and the individual experiencing anxiety only wishes, they could ‘just get over it’.

Low levels of anxiety can be healthy.  It can increase adrenaline and assist to engage in activities that fit outside of our comfort zone.  It’s when the anxiety starts to show symptoms such as breathlessness, insomnia, loss of concentration, easily irritated or becoming angry that it begins to ‘take over’. Other physical symptoms may include sweating, feeling numb, nauseous, feelings of dying or losing your mind.

These symptoms will easily inhibit your day to day lifestyle and that may cause further anxiety and feeling of hopelessness.

Anxiety can effect anyone and does.  I have had episodes throughout my life first beginning in my teenage years.  I have never been able to pin point the exact reason for my anxiety which is why anxiety can be such a mystery and often difficult to diagnose.

There does not need to be a recent significant event or upcoming event.  There does not need to be a real fear or phobia.  It may be the pressures of life, the expectation we place on ourselves, or expectation society places on us.

In recent weeks I have heard of 4 mums in my circle of friends who have and are experiencing anxiety.  Is it because I have been more aware?  Is it becoming more prevalent or is anxiety slowly becoming demystified.  I really hope it’s the later. 

A recent post on facebook about anxiety received many comments that talking about anxiety enabled recovery.  Please help me to demystify anxiety by encouraging your friends and loved ones to chat about their anxiety.  If you experience anxiety, tell people around you.  You don’t have to go through this alone.  I can only hope that you will be pleasantly surprised about the support you will get.

If your anxiety is dominant in your life please contact your GP.  You may benefit from medication (may only need to be short term) Other great strategies are exercise.  I have found Pilates to work really well. Yoga, or going for a brisk daily walk.  Practice different breathing techniques.  We should not take breathing for granted and learning to breathe properly will benefit greatly.  Professional counselling may also benefit you.  Cognitive behavioural therapy can be great for anxiety.  And most importantly share and accept support.   

If you would like further information and referrals please do not hesitate to make contact.

Jo x             

          

coco&phoenix

A guest post by Nicole from Coco&phoenix providng us insight into the very challenging world of IVF and longing to fall pregnant.  She is very grateful for her precious baby girl who has inspired her small business Coco&phoenix.

Nicole will kindly give anyone a free tee if you spend $50 or more on her site www.facebook.com/cocoANDphoenix and let us know with a comment below what beautiful items you purchased.

Enjoy Nicole's story.

I have a pretty great life.  In all honesty, I have to say that I am really happy, and that I am truly lucky and blessed.  I think any of us who are born in Australia are one step closer to having a pretty excellent existence than many others.

I am fit, healthy, smart, and financially secure.  So to then not be able to have the one thing that I wanted most in life, a child, it was hard.  And not just a little bit hard. It was bloody hard.  In most things in my life, if I want something, I am able to buy it, or I can work really hard towards making it happen.  In a business sense, I am usually able to see the results of this – there’s a positive P&L, or a new customer etc.  However, working hard to make a baby is another kettle of fish altogether.  I was never able to see the results of what I was working towards, and it just felt like my life became a state of denial and suffering.  Denial in that I cut out that which I enjoyed, namely coffee, wine and running long distances.  Suffering if that every month I still hadn’t fallen pregnant even though I had given up on the things that I enjoyed and I was forever in my head “positive thoughts, positive thoughts, positive thoughts”.

Outsiders forever tell someone in my situation to “stop thinking about it”.  Try telling that to someone going through the hormones of IVF, injecting in the belly, sniffing hormones and all the other palaver that goes along with fertility treatment, and I can guarantee you will alienate yourself from that person very quickly.

You cannot “stop thinking about it” when you can physically see the bruises on your belly from the injections; when you feel your hormones running wild, beyond your control, due to the different foreign substances running through you system.

I personally went through nine IVF transfers (three stimulated cycles), without even one positive implantation.  That’s a bitter pill to swallow, considering I was young (I was 27when I started), healthy, and had never really been denied anything that I really wanted (and worked hard at) in my life.

I reached a point where I think I really then decided to just be kind to myself.  I invoked all my yogic thoughts and just thought I’d let the universe take care of it.  That’s not to say I ever stopped thinking about it – I thought about it all the time.  But I reached that point where I realised that I needed to stop focusing on it not happening, and start focusing on it happening.  Sounds simple, but it’s a really hard shift to make when you’re pretty beaten down.

Not long after that shift (seriously not very long at all – about a month), I fell pregnant naturally with my daughter Coco.  At the time I fell pregnant, I was running long distances again, drinking coffee, and the night I think we conceived her, I was on another planet kind of trashed!  Not just a little bit trashed – the crazy, kind of trashed – not sure, but maybe this is why she loves house music so much!

Goes without saying that she is the centre of my universe.  I was at the point where I was swaying through the breeze of thinking I would never have a child, but still wanting one so badly it hurt.

When she was six weeks old I started working again in my husband’s family’s business.  Coco was immobile and so placid that this was easy enough.  We took her overseas for work when she was four months, which was a struggle for me, as I was in meetings all through the day and late into the night, then up sometimes four times during the night to feed and settle her.  At five months I was working six days a week, and she was with my mother-in-law all that time.  At seven months she started day care (just one day a week).  I missed her first tooth poking through.  I missed her taking her first steps.  Me!  The person who since I was in grade four only ever wanted to be a mother!  I honestly had to then take a good hard look at myself and wonder what the hell I was doing.  And even more crazy about all this – I didn’t even want to be doing the work I was doing.  I didn’t want to be working in my husband’s family’s business, and be sandwiched between all their family battles.  All I wanted was to be with my daughter. 

However, I knew my husband wouldn’t appreciate me not working in the grown up’s world – he was raised to work yourself to the bone, and for the kids to just slot in with that, being raised by their grandmother.  So to break that mould was another tough, tough battle.

After many discussions, most of them not very pleasant, I removed myself from the family business and started my own business, working from home.  The only way I was able to do this to keep everyone happy was to make my business be an arm of the family’s business.  I didn’t care what it was, so long as I had control of my own life again, and it gave me the flexibility to be able to be the primary carer of my daughter.  Sure, it means that if I can’t get all my work done during the day I then have to work through the night to achieve everything I intended, but it is now me who is watching my daughter grow and having those first milestones. 

Through gaining control back of my life I have also been able to create another business, solely for me.  It is a business that nourishes my creative flow, and nourishes my very soul.

coco&phoenix is my boutique shoe business for little people.  As the obvious states, Coco is my creative muse.  Phoenix is her sibling that she will hopefully one day have.  In that regard, I am being kind and gentle on myself.  If Coco has a sibling, I will feel like Queen of the world.  If she doesn’t, I am blessed just to have her.  She is healthy, considerate, funny, and grounded.  She’s all good things rolled into one.

Having a business that truly makes you happy is one of the greatest achievements one can make in their lifetime.  “Working” feels more like playing, and speaking with others around you that transcend business relationships to become your friends.

For all the years I was working in a business that didn’t bring me any joy, it still taught me everything I now know about business, to then be able to use those skills to start the business that I honestly feel was my calling; my destiny.