Mental Health Awareness 2026 - An Update

Update 24 March 2026:

Wow! Thank you so much for your comments, sharing struggles, words of encouragement and general loveliness - I appreciate you all and feel very grateful for your encouragement.

I have now emailed everyone who asked for a pin requesting postal addresses - if you have not received an email please check your spam folders. To those who simply commented and didn't ask for a pin but would like one, get in touch - hello@chiswickgiftco.co.uk

I haven't managed to respond to all who have commented because even though your kind words have made my heart sing, my lungs are filled with virus and my stomach is filled with lemon and honey and I ran out of time to respond to everyone individually before giving up on the day to return to bed. But I am genuinely so very gateful. Thank you!

This is not an email collecting exercise - you're not registering by commenting/entering, you're simply commenting - your email address is only attached to your blogpost comment behind the scenes and not added to any list. So if you would like your name to be anonymous, just make up a name... perhaps one you'd have preferred in life 😀

I'd be Maude Mathers (just saying). That's my 'on the run' cover name which I've now blown. Will have to find another now.

So! Mental Health - what a lot of it there is!

Firstly, links to my previous blogs:

Being a Vacuum of Joy (Bi-Polar Disorder)

Anxiety & Panic Attacks

There are other posts of random facts on the site (oversharing)... if you've read them all, you probably know more about me than most! 

I have been working very hard these past few years on living a life that I'd like. Expanding that comfort zone... reporting on social media on the adventures; getting on the London Underground, going on planes, on trains and just generally being mindful of how restricting anxiety can be and beginning to believe that a comfort zone may just be me, my bodily form and it can move around this planet without fear (haha, if only it were so simple but I'm working on it).

I've been situationally using a very strong tranquilliser for the past three or four years and I've found I can do most things I'd like to - reducing the dose has been cathartic and there are now situations in which I've found myself entirely anxiety free which is honestly utterly joyous. 

I've had panic attacks during this comfort zone expanding period but I no longer spend months, weeks, days and hours before doing something scary being hyper-focused and anxious about it. And this is the biggest progress I've made. The debilitation of a panic attack is more about everything around it than the actual 30 second pulses of terror.  I feel that my life of fear has meant that I have missed out on so much that most take for granted.  Anxiety sucks so hard and it's insidious hold is underestimated by anyone who can just get on with life.

If you've never had a panic attack please do not underestimate the atomic bomb kinda  power it has - just because the terrifying incident isn't evident to you doesn't mean my mind and body aren't reacting to it.

And through a lifetime of them, the comfort zone shrank.

A few years ago I realised that it was time to try and break free of it.... which is a hell of alot easier to say than do!!

My periodic return to psychiatric cover happened late last year, checking up on everything bi-polariness and to see if there had been any further developments in the treatment of panic disorder... turns out not really.

There have, however, been strides in other aspects of psychiatry in the last year or so and much labelling has been issued.  As I've said before, I'm not enormously comfortable with labels but have now collected so many abbreviated 'conditions' that should they be placed after my name on a letterhead I'd look more qualified than a NASA physicist (although I suspect most of them would just be able to add these letters to their own names and still have the academic qualifications).

The big take-out has been sensory processing issues and cPTSD which, I feel explains much.  None of these diagnoses have made me feel any better. But EMDR was highly recommended for the cPTSD which I figured would be worth a go.

So in the past couple of months I have worked with an amazing therapist who has been using "Blast Therapy." Which has got to be the worst, most cod [not authentic/fake] sounding treatment ever devised for a therapy.  Seriously, you may as well call it something like 'join this expensive cult now' and have done with it.  If you are wondering, it is a form of EMDR which is... here's the link to the MIND page about it.  They're much more succinct 😁.

Still...

It's been transformative.

Four exhausting snot-filled breathtaking sessions later and I'm ready for more of life.  I can only describe it as 'taking the sting out of the tail of a poisonous past.'  It's not taken the memories but it has taken the entrenched emotional responses, the coping strategies of a five, seven, 10, 14 year old child that are no longer relevant to the life of a perfectly capable mother of three. 

It isn't cheap but I understand that EMDR is available on the NHS so do ask your GP about it.  

I'm not 'cured' but I do have a new sense of adventure - a freedom that I've not felt for a very long time, if ever. Watch this space (or, more likely, my socials) for future adventuring... I want a panic free life.  But if living a fuller life involves the odd hellish panic attack, then I'm starting to believe it might be a small price to pay.  #FuckFear

There, I said it. 

And I want to celebrate this new found freedom!  And I want other sufferers to take some comfort from knowing there's a way out. Even after decades of avoidance. This is a perfect example of 'if I can do it... so can you!'

So I thought sending some pins out to folk who might just need it to remind them it's possible to walk to the postbox alone, to get on a bus, to walk into a room of people, to do any one of a million things that panic disorder has robbed from them might be a good start. 

Depending on how many responses I get, I'll cap at 10 - I have no idea if anyone will ever read this! And if you'd like a pin anyway, just use code Brave for £3 off - you can purchase as many as you like and the code will work for them all.

Link to the pin is here

Would you like me to send you this pin? For you or for someone else? What would expanding your comfort zone look like?  It takes tiny steps...

Sitting in the car in some traffic the other day I remembered that only five years ago I'd have been having a panic attack as I wasn't able to do a U-Turn and get away. I just smiled and turned the radio on.

What would you like to do as the first step? The Second Step? The complete freedom step? Confide as little or as much as you'd like in the comment below.

Sarah 🖤