The Little Things

There has been a lot going on in my life lately. So much, in fact, that last Friday at work I more or less had a breakdown in the staff room. It was ugly and horrific and awkward. But it also made me realise that I was carrying around a lot of things that I need to deal with – and I promise to you now that I am dealing with those things. One problem at a time and all that good stuff.

But today I don’t want to write a sad post. Instead I want to bring up one of the things that due to everything else going on, slipped silently under the radar until I shone a light on it. It is a good thing and something that has me feeling proud of myself, happy and hopeful for the future.

And thus, as the title of the post suggests, I am going to talk about some little things. In this case, I am talking about little things that I have somehow overcome in the last few months without even realising. A while back, Jess wrote this post about celebrating small achievements and today I am doing just that.

If you’ve been following me from the start of this blog, you’ll know that one of the biggest issues I had with my mental health was food. You can read that post here. So here is a list of the things I have done in the past few months;

• Eaten finger food without washing my hands or using hand sanitizer beforehand
• Eaten food from a buffet
• Eaten food at a buffet after other people
• Eaten food that has been touched by other people (i.e. mum hands me a biscuit)
• Experimented with new dishes in restaurants
• Tried new places to eat
• Tried new foods
• Cooked (and eaten) food in the microwave
• Cooked food in the grill
• Cooked a cottage pie dish with my mum!!

All of the above seems pretty normal things to do, right? But for me it is surpassing a milestone. All of those things have happened and been survived without an anxiety or panic attack. They were tasks that I avoided due to anxiety and OCD and I cannot explain to you how over the moon I feel at having achieved these things.

There have been other achievements over the past few months, such as allowing animals to lick me without having a panic attack, but the food things have really made me very happy.

I know that I’m not cured and I know that things may go downhill again, but for right now I feel proud and strong.

I still have routines, I still have anxious and obsessive thoughts but I now have the skills to battle them headfirst. I will have bad days but I am positive that I can come out the other side because I already have. And thus, I say the same to you. It might be tough now, but I promise that you can beat this and see it through to the other side.