Wellbeing – Positive, Yet Cynical

I have never been secretive about the fact that I suffer from Anxiety disorder. Nor am I oblivious to the fact that the older I get, and the more life experiences (and traumas) I face, the deeper and heavier the anxiety goes.

I found myself in a position where I was having major anxiety attacks more regularly. Over everything. It’s important to note that the ‘everything’ was also a series of nothing’s. And it got to a point where I had to stop myself and acknowledge that the damage I’m doing to my own health is becoming a problem. It was time I started to try out new things to start to eliminate the anxiety.

So, here are a few practices I’ve started doing which have actually started to produce much less anxiety outbursts (I just have to stick to them now).

The No Vaping Continues

If you read one of my recent posts, you’ll know I am currently in the early stages of eliminating nicotine from my life for good. I know addicts and fellow vapers hate the fact people keep saying it’s a real difference to your mental health when you stop but honestly, for me, it is. Am I still having moments where I pine for some flavoured air because I think it’ll soothe something? Sure. But every day that I don’t cave and go longer without I notice my mind become clearer and clearer. My asthmatic lungs are taking a while to heal, but I can’t magically solve everything at once can I?

I am focusing heavily on self-love.

I know there’ll probably be eye rolls at this. But it is true what they say, you become a magnet for all the energy you give out, if you don’t fall in love with yourself and be happy with who you are then how is anything going to be good enough for you? I am leaving this paragraph brief because I’m still ironing out some stuff and research on this which I will do a separate post in detail on. But what I will say is, self-love is always an ongoing journey. Whether you’re with someone or not. Read books that inspire you to love yourself, it will make a big difference to how you think about things.

Affirmations

Yeah, I know, I’m becoming that guy. I know there is a lot of judgement on manifesting and affirmations. But I have found that having those little talks with myself when I’m feeling a certain way and need to rewire myself to remember who the fuck I am. These have made a big difference. Especially if I start doing them when I feel a little shift in my emotion or like my anxiety is being triggered. It really helps bring you back in.

I am distancing myself from actively messaging

I think I may have touched on this before. But one thing that always made me heavily upset and anxious, was how I am always a person who messages quickly, replies and reassures heavily, but I have never had the same from other people. That’s okay, I’m not taking this opportunity to dig at others. But what I learned is, the only person who is feeling awkward about this is me. I am a people-pleaser. I shouldn’t be, but I am. I have recently decided to put myself first and have hours of screen time locks and on some days, I will remove notifications for a day. Sometimes, I’ll leave my phone at home or work for a day/night. I learned from doing all this that nothing disastrous happened. Breaking myself from the consistent need to be active on my phone has really worked wonders for my brain and made me a lot more relaxed in conversations.

(Obviously, I will still stress that communication is important and you should always express boundaries and meet people halfway if you can).

I’m doing things that are good for my mind and body

I’ve recently booked to have a massage. Which doesn’t sound like much, but I never have those. My body is tense AF and I made a decision that it is probably something my body really needs to have to feel better as a whole. It’s something I’m considering doing as a regular thing to take care of my body. I am also spending more time taking ‘mindful walks’. I don’t have headphones or any distractions, I just take a walk alone and acknowledge what’s present and around me. It does so many wonders for me and it also helps me think about events and situations more clearly when the algorithm isn’t manipulating me. Also, walking is good for your body too 😉

And lastly – I am slowly working on not caring about numbers of likes or attention. This is a work in progress, which I am sure I will blog about at some point .

There you have it. There’s a lil update on personal improvements I’m making. They might not work for everyone, but it’s definitely making a solid difference in my brain wiring. Anxiety doesn’t disappear, but it can be controlled.

In July, I made a decision that due to extreme over-stimulation, I was going to spend my holiday completely off of all social media app’s, including Whatsapp.

It may sound like a bizarre decision to make but it was something I thought I really needed to focus on. The last few months have been a complete whirlwind for me, I’m still struggling with certain things but I’ve been extremely active regularly on my social media pages with my reading updates and writing (even though, I struggle a lot with the latter lately).

It was brought to my attention that I was overstimulated, working 40(+) hours a week and then trying to keep up to date with being relevant online plus organising your own living space, trying to find the time to write anything etc. my phone was stitched to my hand pretty much. And I was doing that annoying thing I think most of us do with our phones – the looking at an app, coming out of it, only to jump back in 2 seconds later (honestly, what do we think is new at that point?).

My detox was from the Friday evening, right through to the following Saturday evening. I put screen limits on my phone so that all my apps were not accessible while I was away. As I was going on a family holiday I had to leave texts/calls open but other than that I restricted everything.

The initial goal I had was: have time away from the apps, use it to clear my head, spend some free time writing and doing some self-development work.

One of the bizarre things I felt when I started this was guilt. As someone who struggles a lot with anxiety, I can be the first to understand how much silence from another person can trigger someone. However, I am a bit on the fence with some areas of this, I think as a human race, we have become very dependent on immediacy, especially from others. We need to learn to slow down (I know, I am not one to talk on this) and also appreciate that not everyone is available 24/7. No-one should be.

I did respect others in my decision though by sending messages to the people I am likely to hear from to advise them I would be off grid for just over a week. So nobody panics. So once that good deed was done, I shut it all off and went ahead with my plan.

Did it all go to plan? Almost.

I did manage to go the whole time without opening any of the app’s. It was hard at first, but I never caved. The things that didn’t go to plan was the other bits. Turns out, when you’re holidaying with family and having to share a room with a younger family member, your personal plans and requirements go out the window a little bit.

It was also a difficult process because I also decided to quit vaping cold turkey at the same time (a separate post on nicotine withdrawal to come later), and still coming to terms with my thyroid medication being a bit all over the place and the nonstop heat. So there were times I could have done with distracting myself on social media, but I still was determined and didn’t cave 🙂

(I would also like to randomly push in here that in case you weren’t aware… you can get sunburn on your feet. It’s not comfortable. Cream up).

But all my little obstacles and dilemmas aside, here are the positive things I have taken away from my detox:

A change of plan with some writing – Although I got zero writing done due to distractions, I did have a lot of time to think about why I was struggling a bit with my novel I’m trying to write. It occurred to me that there was an underlying issue with my general idea, so I am now taking it on from a whole new plot point, but I feel more confident about where this one is going now. It also gave me time to come up with some other novel draft ideas. (Yes, this does mean I am starting my novel again a little bit. But I am still going with the wing it plan and am hoping to get a massive chunk of it done by September).

I had fresher ideas and perspectives without social media influence – I cannot begin to tell you how much clearer my brain felt after being completely ignorant to social media for a while. There was no algorithm suggestions making me rethink things or influencing my ideas. I just had time to adjust to and think the way I wanted to.

I now know that although it’s a necessity these days, I don’t have to be on it all the time – Spoiler alert – the detox and not using apps for a week did not kill me. I didn’t miss anything life threatening or critical. The world carried on without me, and I caught up in my own time. I think this is an important factor for me to focus on, especially now that I’m back online and trying to regularly post again.

Yes, it’s good to stay in the know and updated on everyone and everything, but we let FOMO hit us way too much I think. After doing this detox, I am now trying to be a bit more disciplined with my usage… I have screen time locks at night now, I put it on dnd whenever I am out or about to work or do something that needs my attention, I turned my notifications off – so I only go into the apps when I want to.

I am hoping I can stick to these routines now (it would really help my writing motivation if I could) but I am not only proud of myself for managing that whole time without it, but I’m confident that I am another big step closer to not letting my anxiety overcome me when it comes to phones and communication, and maybe I will be able to achieve my 2026 goals after all?