Anxiety is REAL , so sometimes you need to step away.

Note to readers: For the avoidance of any doubt, every character in this blog is Baggy! No Baggy was harmed in its writing, although some of them get pretty confused!

Depression: Hanging around.
Anxiety: Omnipresent.
Tears: Some.
Laughs: Yep.

Social media is constantly criticised for lots of reasons, one of the main ones being that it can cause people with mental health issues to be triggered, or suffer more, because their life doesn't match up to what their 'friends' are doing:

• The gorgeous selfies;
• the glamorous holidays;
• the beautiful homes;
• the perfect children;
• the supportive partners;
• the loving family;
• the wide group of best friends;
• the stunning gardens;
• the amazing hobbies;
• the immaculately behaved pets;
• the brilliant exam results
• the incredible jobs etc etc.

And yes, Clever Bird knows that all of those things are real - they're not made up - people post those things because they're happy and proud of them, and why shouldn't they be? Often times that is all they post, because the rest of the time they feel that their life is ordinary, and not worth sharing. Clever Bird gets it. Why would you want a photo of yourself looking ghastly, forever on the world stage? Or statuses admitting that your life is unravelling? Or that you've just failed at consecutive job interviews?

Then there's the 'fishing' status - ones where people hint at something, without actually saying what is wrong - purportedly just fishing for sympathy. These can be worrying and annoying for friends and family reading them, but Clever Bird gets those ones too! At least people are trying to be honest, even if they can't quite bring themselves to put it into the ether in words of one syllable! And they probably do need support, they just daren't actually ask for it directly.

And frankly, is it any surprise that social media is like this? Clever Bird thinks not!

Creative Clara and the rest of the gang put themselves out there for the world to see, warts-and-all! Why? Well, truthfully Baggees, Freda Fretter regularly asks herself that very question. The original reason was because people encouraged her to write a blog, because they liked her social media statuses that first introduced the gang, and her writing style. Then when Baggy was told that she probably had advanced ovarian cancer, the first blog, ( www.baggybodys.blogspot.com ) became a description of her recovery, with the hope that it might just help someone else going through the same surgery. The blog developed from there and has become, what it has become - a description of Baggy's life.

Or has it?

That first blog was, and still is, 'blocked', as an 'unsafe site' with 'offensive' content! To this day, Baggy has no idea why, and zero way of finding out or defending it and herself. So Freda Fretter is constantly trying to second-guess what Creative Clara is able to write without 'offending' someone.

For a person who suffers from anxiety, this is a nightmare! But there's much more to it than that.

There are reasons why Baggy's blogs have gone from being written every day, to only appearing once a week, or less. And this is where Hormonal Hannah is going to try really hard to be totally honest.

Freda Fretter tells people who ask, that it's because most of Baggy's days are pretty much the same, and there are only so many times that Clara can write that Furry Mama has been to the beach with Pepper Pooch; that The Domestic goddess has done a bit of cleaning etc. Yet, this is only a tiny part of the whole story - like most people's media statuses.

The truth is that Baggy is falling into the social media trap - because frankly she just cannot win!

Firstly, this is not a 'fishing' blog (very far from it in fact), and Baggy is the first to tell the world, that she is a very lucky and fortunate woman. Clara is not going to list why - she just is!

However, facts:

• she comes from an extremely dysfunctional family background
• she suffers from bouts of mild depression
• she lives with fairly constant anxiety.

None of which has stopped her from living a full and amazing life and achieving a great deal; and these things are not who she is, they do not define her, but they are a very big part of her personality. As this blog is written with the hope that it helps others who suffer from the same mental health issues, or helps inform people who don't, just what it's like to live with them, it is time for some home truths.

It's not rocket science, that everyone's experience is unique, as every person is unique. Hormonal Hannah's anxiety is hers, and hers alone. It makes her:

• exceptionally over sensitive
• extremely concerned about what other people think of her
• terrified of saying or doing the wrong thing
• constantly worried about offending people
• always feeling that she has failed (even when the facts say the opposite)
• needing reassurance all the time
• feeling inadequate and unworthy

Just typing that list has made Baggy feel physically sick, her heart is racing and her hands are shaking, and Freda Fretter and Hormonal Hannah are both screaming at Creative Clara to delete it all immediately. Why? Because Clever Bird knows what will now happen - people will be sympathetic, or worse, critical. And that is not the point. In fact it's so far from the point as to be inexplicable. She is not fishing for reassurance; she does not want a pat on the back for getting through the day; or for being honest; and she certainly doesn't want to be told that she has a lovely life and needs to stop worrying.

How can anyone seriously believe that people worry about things because they choose to?

So perhaps Clara is failing in her writing, because she's tried, and apparently failed, to explain on quite a few occasions just what anxiety does to Hannah's thought processes. And she's totally fallen into the trap of attempting to write 'to please', rather than completely honestly.

When Hannah is 'praised' for being positive, her anxiety immediately tells her that 'everyone must think she's usually really negative'.

When Hannah is told 'not to worry', it's a fine line between her bursting into tears, or snapping the speaker's head off.

When Hannah is told 'not to dwell on the bad things', she falls into the social media trap of only blogging about the good things.

When Hannah is told 'that everything is sounding good', she feels as if her eight-year-old self has just been patted on the head for once in her life, and is desperate for that praise - but her adult-self feels patronised and embarrassed that people feel the need to say that to her.

When Hannah is told, 'well, so-and-so person had the same thing, and they didn't have that problem - or that wasn't their experience,' she is hurt and angry that someone is basically saying that her experience is therefore ridiculous/wrong/invalid/pathetic/exaggerated/or just not real.

The truth is that it is extremely difficult to be honest about your weaknesses in a world that seems to require perfection in everything that you do; and sometimes you have to say 'enough is enough'. For the sake of your own mental health, if seeing 'perfect' lives on social media is a problem, try to resist following social media.

If you fall into the trap that Baggy has fallen into, of not being true to yourself, because the world 'needs' to see you coping/doing well/being positive/loving every second of life, so you start to 'spin' things to sound more positive - then maybe it's time to step away from social media. Pretending to the world that that is the case, makes it even harder to accept the reality, that just maybe, life isn't perfect all of the time; and actually that's okay - it's called living.

But whatever Clara writes in Baggy's blogs, it regularly feels to Hannah as though it's impossible for her to 'get it right'.
 
Baggy can explain no better, and no more, but the mere fact that this blog has taken nearly three hours to write, and has left Hannah mentally drained, for the sake of her emotional well-being, Baggy is going to take heed of her own intuition, and with considerable regret (and much guilt), for now at least, she is stepping away to protect Hannah from what is becoming a negative spiral.....