Labels seem to be coming along like buses. Having dodged them all my life in favour of 'I'm just a bit weird', I'm now asking for one label [big news: I've met the criteria to be accepted onto the waiting list for a first appointment with the integrated autism service. No idea how long the waiting list is, because I'd have to phone to ask. And I don't like phones] and I've also got one on my GP sick note: Anxiety.
Well, yes, I do get anxious. But I am also incredibly resilient, have good self-care and self-management skills and can ride it out when I get patches like this.
It takes a lot to break me.
And that's what's happened a month ago. I'm quite pleased with myself that I held out for a month, doing what I need so it would get better. Instead, it's become clear it isn't going to go away while I'm working and studying, so it's time for a month off to focus on self-care. [Offers of hot chocolate are welcome; making decisions about where or making plans in advance are not! Nor is unsolicited advice on how to improve my mental well-being]
You know what finally broke me?
A bureaucratic system, or a bureaucratic interpretation of a system, that said that because I did not have a label I would have to be treated 'just the same as anyone else'. The thought of being forced to do the activity 'just the same as anyone else' broke me. If everything else had been fine, I'd have ridden that like I've ridden other storms. But it came on the back of months of multiple uncertainties, shifting goalposts and life changes, and if there's one thing I don't do well it is uncertainty and unpredictable change.
And that's what lay behind my last blog. They needed a label. So I set events in motion to get one. And along the way I've picked up a second label, anxiety.
