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Text of the page (random words):
d i m crafting which is where these cards come into the story while taking some time off work i gave myself a few weeks to rest ok you got me i find that very hard to do so maybe i tidied the loft and all the dining room cupboards and made shop kits and put all the christmas decorations up and you know how it is so yeah maybe i wasn t exactly resting my body so much but i did make an effort to rest my mind a remedy that involved things like a good dose of guilt free netflixing it s the guilt free part that s the hardest to achieve but that does the most good and also a spot of purpose free card making it began at my monthly crafty get together with friends where i started making greetings cards for no reason whatsoever which i hadn t done in i couldn t tell you how long yes i make cards for magazine commissions but as nice as that is it s still work so to just sit with no brief no end goal no recipient in mind to just enjoy sifting through papery products for fun for the pleasure of mixing and matching colours and shapes and prints was just what i needed these cards and those but it kick started my crafty brain hands again and i just kept going only with more festive slant on things and yes my striped friends even make it into my festive crafts because zebras are for christmas not just for life so with anne with an e running in the background on netflix highly recommended i surrounded myself with all kinds of supplies traditionally christmassy ones and regular non festive year round stuff too and pulled out a mix of zebra images and stamps to use as my focal point and made a start and just kept going i gave the various zebras noses fit to guide a sleigh and typed out the greetings on kraft labels and i coloured clustered and layered to my heart s content now i m not saying crafting with zebras has cured me although my stripey friends do have previous experience of helping me out in these situations but they did allow me several welcome hours of using a different part of my brain to the one trying to work out where and why my brain had taken a detour and that s what you need isn t it a brief distraction not so much that you re ignoring the problem and not for so long that you become unwilling to return to reality but for just long enough to let your brain to take a break put up its feet drift away for a while and really i could do worse that a distraction that involves zebras washi tape coloured staples patterned papers and shiny bits remind me to try it again sometime soon merry christmas may it bring you some gem like delights and distractions of your own julie p s don t forget to find me withjuliekirk on instagram if you d like to hear from me more often i even do instagram stories short videos over there so you literally will hear from me and my tiny north eastern accented voice which james says is posher than my real voice so it s worth a visit purely for that posted by julie kirk at 15 26 8 comments labels christmas cards craft therapy zebra christmas crafting paper crafts cardmaking cards festive anxiety email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest thursday 19 october 2017 an anxious person does stuff like climbing to the top of a tower hey you this is a post i ve been wanting to write for months but be warned that doesn t mean i m very clear on what i want to say there may be rambling there will be in general about doing things while you re feeling anxious and it may be the start of some sort of manifesto i ll develop ananxiouspersondoesstuff or it may come to nothing and it doesn t have satisfyingly transformative ending and hey who knows it might just depress someone including me am i selling this to you yet oh and the story itself isn t a particularly interesting exciting or dramatic one it doesn t really go anywhere and some people may think i wrote it to fish for nice people to say nice things sounds great doesn t it you ll have to read it to be the judge so what is it about it s a poke around the idea of conquering your anxieties a narrative we often hear in relation to mental health which is great in theory i mean who wouldn t want to get over all their fears and worries and live a fulfilling life yet in practice in daily minute by minute life it s not always so straightforward last month i wrote a post about how anxiety can feel like having a funfair goldfish in a plastic bag unexpectedly handed to you which makes the rest of your day just that bit harder to deal with if you missed it catch up here in that post i mentioned that something over the summer had caused me to start thinking more deeply about anxiety and hello this is that something after it happened or maybe even while it was still happening i realised there were two distinct ways i could present the events as an entirely true but slightly selective internet version of event in which i wouldn t have lied about what happened or if i did it would only be a lie of omission and it would have ended with a glossy punchy neat instagrammable philosophy or as a messy and complete version where i do reach some sort of happy ending but then sail straight past it to the more realistic place that lurks just over the horizon you know i decided on the latter don t you if i d gone with the first version we may all come out of it with a little sugar rush of good feeling but it wouldn t have lasted it would ve perpetuated the lie that you need to be bold and confident to get anything done in this world when i d rather say anxious people can do stuff too even if we feel conflicted and crappy while we re doing it so for your reading pleasure or not here it is content notice this post contains detailed descriptions of an anxiety attack which may be triggering also there s swearing because well because apparently that s what comes out of me when i write naturally imagine the disappointment i must be to my catholic school english teachers a story of an anxious person doing stuff including a guided tour up a bell tower so what have you been worrying about now kirk well thanks for asking over the summer james and i booked to go on a guided tour of the highest tower of lincoln cathedral which initially wasn t a cause for concern we d been on several other roof tours there without a problem i m not especially claustrophobic or scared of heights they d provided some great photo opportunities in past years and it seemed like a good solid part of our holiday itinerary it never occurred to me to worry about it and then and then when we went to book tickets in advance they made us read a list of all the things that we could expect during the tour regarding the steepness of the 300 steps the narrowness of the stone staircase and passageways the heights plus the level of fitness and the sensible footwear required and we had to sign to say we were ok with all of that which i was and then and then we had to wait several days for the event itself to come around oh the sweet irony of our room name before the anxiety or if you re familiar with the analogy before the funfair goldfish arrived if i d read that list ten minutes before beginning the tour i might not have been quite so alert to the possibilities for concern but there s nothing like the luxury of all that time to think to reall y set anxiety in motion is there it s probably the same list they ve shown us all the other times said james sensibly and nothing ever happened then he went on trying to reassure me and maybe it was maybe every other time i d just skim read those potentially troubling phrases dismissed them signed it and gone straight on the tour without a second thought but ahh this time time was the enemy seeds of anxiety time plus the manure dumped from an over thinking brain quite the strong and anxious seedling growing in my chest or to use the goldfish analogy at this point someone was surrounded by the smell of diesel powered generators and boiling hot dogs wasting all their spare change on trying to hook a duck and win a fish no one had yet thrust a goldfish at me but the moment was growing ever closer on the day itself sitting waiting for the guides to arrive my breathing had already begun to speed up i began to feel slightly dizzy a bit nauseous and maybe like my digestive system might play me up i want to repeat here that there doesn t need to be a specific cause for the anxiety i was not sitting there thinking i was going to get trapped in the narrow corridors or fall from the height rather like a scaly little fish in liquid in a thin bulging plastic bag anxiety is often far more slippery than that i was just anxious not of or about anything in particular i just was and then the tour began during the anxiety goldfish so there we were a group of around 15 heading straight up the first set of stone stairs where several things conspired together to make me uncomfortable it was warm it wa s july in a narrow staircase packed with bodies exerting themselves travelling upwards just like the heat it was narrow like not much wider than some people s shoulders narrow which i could probably have coped with except it was a spiral the tightly coiling twist meant that the steps tapered away into nothing at the centre so while you could easily set down your left foot the right foot had to be careful it actually made contact with a flat surface or you d slip and all that spiralling became dizzy making the women in my family are not blessed with the strongest of necks and looking up to grab the hand rope there was no rail and look down to check where my feet were going tightened my neck muscles making me dizzier still it was steep and speedy the guides were setting such a fast pace it would ve put even the most overly achieving personal trainer to shame there was literally no time to stop to catch your breath and finally to quote tom petty there ain t no easy way out at times i couldn t keep up and tried to slow down but the guide at the bottom was setting the pace for the people behind me leaving no way to drop back and let people overtake the staircase was only wide enough for one person so there was absolutely no way down without making the entire party back up all the way down too and who wants to be that person oh hi there social anxiety fancy meeting you here have you come along to take photos of the view too none of this on its own would be insurmountable but all of it slung together and did i mention it was warm and like a work out and relentless and verrry verrrry swirrrrrllllllyyyyyy spinnnnnnnnnnnnnnnyyyyyyyy james was ahead of me i often glimpsed the soles of his shoes dip out of sight around the spiral while i tried to slow my pace meanwhile behind me or rather below me a stranger had their head at my feet or worse and boom there i was wonkily storming up an ancient spiral staircase filled strangers while trying to carry a funfair goldfish seriously if you still don t know what this means you need to read my other post by the time we reached the first stopping point i was struggling emotionally more than physically but hey physically too let s not leave out that particular treat i had the whole party going on so we already know i m a bit head spinny and my legs are heavy and my lungs are asking why julie whyyyy but now the hollow of my spine was slick with sweat my forehead a curtain of droplets to be swept away by a tissue and there was a tightening in my guts and anxious readers you know the kind of tightening i mean the kind where you re not 100 sure how it all might pan out like maybe you might just burp or your stomach will grumble and then you ll feel some relief or maybe it ll be vomit or a fart or worse who knows and when you know where a stranger s head is going to be in a few minutes once you re back on that staircase well it doesn t bear thinking about by now we were in an open space where we could pause to breathe and recuperate while the tour guides told us something about the automated bell ringing system and used their laser pointers to indicate areas of architectural interest but my body was demanding more of my attention and you know how in tom and jerry when the humans talk and all you hear is that wah wah wah sound well that so ignoring the tour altogether i began stripping off off came my jacket rolled up my sleeves and let me tell you if there d been a dignified way to whip off the leggings from under my skirt while trying to juggle these immediate physical needs get cool breathe with the overarching emotional goal of calming the fuck down there was a constant battle rumbling in my mind how much of this discomfort is due to the anxiety and how much to the sheer exertion it was probably a filthy mix of both but if i focused on the idea it was most likely just the exercise i could prevent the anxiety from escalating far better to attribute the wobbly legs to all those bloody steps than to some inexplicable fear and then despite all the attempts at rationalisation i started planning my exit strategy what would i say when would i say it so yes hi yes so yes lovely brickwork up there and h those ancient beams but i can t do this any longer i can t go further up i can t go at that pace something might come out of me who knows from where don t make me you re not the boss of me let me out let me ooooooouuuuuutttttt or words to that effect but on second thoughts ffs it s supposed to be a nice day out you wanted to do this it s a normal thing it shouldn t be this overblown you ll spoil the day for james you re a hundred or more steps up in a room with some sort of machinery if i d been listening properly i d have known more and there s no way they ll leave you to wait here until they all come back down no you ll have to be escorted out all the way you ll look feeble a failure a criminal and i reckon it was this the idea of the social embarrassment that made me decide to stay the course in the end not the positive self talk not the focusing not the 1reathing but the horror of something worse than feeling like this i e feeling like this while other people spectate so i kept calm and carried on ok ok ok no that was just a little joke let me re phrase that i carried on we can say that much if nothing else after the initial anxiety began to subside in short w e climbed further up we squeezed through a corridor that was almost too narrow for me i sat opposite the bell as it bonged 12 times alas it s a level of distraction not yet readily available on the nhs as a treatment we climbed up more swirling steps to the roof where we looked out for miles across the countryside and saw the resident peregrine falcons swooping and sweeping below us i was fine with the height and thoroughly welcomed the cooling blustery breeze and then then we went down the way we came only this time non stop with more open space in front of my face if you think that going up my face was close to the steep stone steps rising directly in front and also without my bum in anyone s face always a bonus b...
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