night out incidents

This is just a really quick follow up to my blog from last week. I went out last night and two things happened that really demonstrate what I was talking about.

1)      Our taxi driver (male, maybe 45+) after a conversation about sexuality said to me, about being around girls, ‘you must have been drizzling through your knickers.’ Not cool. Especially since he had just been making homophobic remarks about a man who once tried to kiss him in his taxi. It was homophobia when in relation to a man, but when talking about lesbians he was vile and sexist.

2)      A boy said to my friend ‘I have a massive willy, do you want to touch it?’

I’m probably going to hibernate because I’m sick of trying to go out and have a good time and be harassed by tossers.

Gropey Blighty

Now isn’t really a good time to write this because I’m super grumpy from being grilled by a grandparent about the state of my life. I’ll try and keep my signature elegant and humorous style (see, funny joke).

                I watched Sun, Sea and Suspicious Parents last night and I’m generally disgusted at the general state of ‘dating’ in my generation’s time. Once again I feel like writing a disclaimer stating… actually fuck it I’m going to write a disclaimer.

I don’t dislike men, women, dating, clubbing, house music, grinding, crop tops, Sambuca (although I can’t forgive the paint- stripping effect of Vodka), parties, lip- nibbling, casual sex, kissing in clubs.

 I am aware that everybody is different and that going on holiday to Malaga/ Ibiza/ Magaluf/ Amsterdam might be great fun for most people and one day I might pack up my grocery trolley and visit one of said places. Not all club holidays are bad.

Not all men grope women in clubs and vice versa.

I try to avoid generalisations. Apart from if you wear white trousers and/ or socks and sandals you are probably a pillock.

My main qualm with above programme is how it highlights the self- respect reducing culture of pulling on nights out. One bloke was so mortified when his parents revealed that they had seen all of his antics over the week that he had a full blown meltdown and said ‘f- you’ to his parents a lot… which is a clear sign of shit going down. I was watching and thinking his behaviour wasn’t that bad, he didn’t throw up in a shoe or anything, he didn’t get his balls out in public… so what did he do?

                The programme showed a compilation of highlights from his week- long bender with his pals (I can’t remember where they holidayed but it had a lot of neon lights and sunshine) and the main thing that was terrible was his treatment of women. Every time he had gone out he had grabbed women and started necking them. At the end of one night he was literally staggering around the strip (is that what hip people call a row of clubs?), going up to women and asking them to sleep with him. One girl told him that she and her friend would be up for a threesome, at which point he returned to the friends/ the camera and bragged like he has just founded masturbation or something. I know the women involved were just as bad but this is an example of what I find really disturbing about modern day club culture.

                I’m about to finish my third year of university, so I’ve been on many a night out and I have my own experiences (bad ones) that I could recall from falling for flattery from boys in clubs. My step dad always points out that it isn’t just the men who are up for the old one night stand, but I can only talk about it from a female POV (for the time being, you never know what the future holds). Student clubbing seems to have become its own sub- culture that breeds a deep loss of self- respect. It’s probably always been like this but it just makes me so angry. I’ve had a man in a club move me out the way by grabbing my lady garden, a bloke tell me that I was up my own arse because I wouldn’t kiss him and- on several occasions- I’ve had the surprising revelation that I’ve grown an extra pair of arms, because when I’ve looked down there has been a man Koala- bearing me from behind.

                Alcohol is a lot to blame, it’s not exactly a taboo subject that students binge- drink to dangerous amounts. I try not to be guilty of this, but I like getting tipsy so sadly I occasionally veer in to the realm of ‘oops I’ve dropped my bag… I’ve got it now… oops I’ve dropped my bag!’ and repeat. Sometimes this state leads to excessive P.O.A in a club with a stranger. I feel like I am a sensible enough drunk to say I have my self- respect intact, but sometimes I’ve woken up and feared for how close I was to doing something sober Bryony would have hated.

I’ve been upset twice when I’ve asked a boy I’ve met on a night out if they want to meet the next week and they’ve never texted me again. Do they think this means I want to marry them? Why can’t we get to know people before we see them in the nuddy? I feel like I am really old fashioned and boring but I know I’m not. I’m a feminist, women and men can do what they want as long as it makes them happy; if you have flings/ one night stands and it makes you feel gr8 then groove on. My worry is that this club culture is accumulating a really bad attitude. If you give someone everything on the first night, what else is there to do after? I know- because I have friends who have said it countless times- that temporary flings can lead to horrifying, misplaced self- questioning. We don’t normally think ‘they’ve had a good night and they don’t want anything more’ but ‘what is wrong with me, why haven’t they texted?’.

                I genuinely think that if I got asked out for drinks before necking a boy in a club I would cry happy tears in a way reminiscent of when Rylan got snot on Nicole Scherzinger on the X- Factor. There has barely been a night out where my arse hasn’t been groped; it’s like being in a club removes all social etiquette that you would exercise in the street.

                The boy on Sun, Sea and Suspicious parents knew that his behaviour to girls had been pretty sleazy. As I say, I know that there are women who are a bit grabby in clubs, but how am I supposed to defend some of the men in clubs when I’ve been molested about 50 times in three years. I cannot be flattered by a man that I have just met feeling my downstairs! At least shake my hand first. I know you aren’t all like this men. I love you, trouser- snake owning people but hell, there are some knob-heads letting you down.

                Last week I peeled a girl off the floor (she was wasted) in a bar in Leeds that generally attracts over 20- year- olds. She looked at me in panic and said ‘I’m 17!’. She walked out of the toilet cubicle without buttoning up her jumpsuit, her bra out. I fastened it up and wanted to ship her home in a taxi. She then attached her face to the nearest bloke and I face-palmed… hard. An acquaintance of mine came up to me once and said, about a girl he was taking home, ‘I know she is fat but I want to get laid’. I was once told that I couldn’t ‘dress like that’ (crop top and skirt) and expect not to be touched up or hit on. I am sick of hearing boys talking about me and going ‘go for it… she’s a 10/ an 8/ a 9’ (although god bless the bloke who thought me a 10!).

                Boys and girls, all I want to know is that this binge culture is not going to make self- respect become extinct.  

Why Childhood is bad for your Self Perception

I don’t remember laughing at myself much as a child… but I have laughed a lot since. My childhood was great and full of cutting off Barbie’s hair, making miniature everything’s (my career in craft hasn’t since taken off….why?), making bands with my siblings (‘The Four Donnays’) and my school friends (‘Fender’), disliking peas, not understanding why an 8-year-old had such a huge arse, wonky fringes, beating up my sister and developing a cat obsession. Little Bry was pretty hilaire. I’ve remembered and reflected that until the age of thirteen I was occasionally a massive liar and for someone who was top set for everything, really lacking in common sense. As my first blog post in a very long time, I’m going to share some great childhood truths with you.  I’m 21 in four days, so maybe some soul searching will help me to not freak out.

1)      I wrote a fan letter to Cliff Richard.

Anyone who knows me really well knows that I have a really bad dislike for this dude.  I didn’t even like him as a child, but when ‘Fender’ formed (a really successful group… bahaha) when I was 10, I decided to drop him some words. I told him that he was the ‘inspiration for my year 6 band’ and that Summer Holiday ‘changed my life in ways he could not understand’.  He didn’t reply because I realised a few months later that the website I had written to was a fan site, and in fact was run by an old fella who probably owns every one of Cliff’s successful calendar’s from the beginning of time. Because Cliff Richard was born with the Earth, and every cave man owned one of his calendars because that’s how famous he is.

2)      I broke a slide

I’ve reduced grown men and women to tears with this story. I had a bit of a whale-y few years when I was about 8 or 9. It was a glittery summer day and the toddler’s pool was out, I was in a swimming costume with frills on the sleeves (my introduction to fashion, obviously), there was a slide. It was one of those that is compulsory for any family with a garden to own: red and yellow. You definitely know the one, you monkeys. My cousin was behind me on the slide, and he gave me a little helpful push to send me down into the pool at the bottom… I bounced a little as I went, my round, unfathomably prematurely large thighs and backside springing off the plastic. The thing split in two; clean down the middle. I was horrified at the time but now I feel like it was a defining moment in my life and I can only use it to my advantage. HAVE YOU BROKEN A SLIDE?!

3)      My first king prawn experience

This is also my first La Tasca experience, so like, one of the top ten most important days in my life, clearly. We ordered one of everything (not really, but I’m building a picture, guys), and I was enamoured by the sexy bearded Spanish waiters (who are probably from Wakefield). We had King Prawns and I dug in. They were so crunchy and I was like… dude I do not understand the hype around these things. Give me a skinny ass prawn any day! I was narrating my experience to my Mother and Step-Father, and my Mother laughed and totally joking said ‘haha you aren’t eating the shell are you?’ And I said…. ‘what shell?’ Mum just laughed again… so I repeated the question. What bloody shell!?

I literally ate the whole Prawn. Like face, eyes, crunchy rear… the whole crustacean.

4)      I lied to my first love.

I have only been ‘in love’ once and I wasn’t really. It was in the days where I wore walking boots and jumpers to birthday parties and my fringe was always greasy. And I was still in wire rimmed glasses; the early 2000’s weren’t a great year for the whole visual Bryony experience. Anyway, I told the guy I fancied that I was grade one at drums. I’m not. I literally had never touched a drum set in my life. But hey… nobody ever found out so when I did my drum demonstrations- the humble drum roll- I must have been pretty banging.

I feel like there are more stories to my childhood, but I’m going to with-hold them a bit longer because I’m at 800 words and I really want to go and source some food. 

An article about how the existence of Narwhals mean Unicorns could exist

For Kee Riley

                The magical existence of the Narwhal gives hope to many. Its singular horn, which is attached to its skull, is obviously extremely similar to that of the Unicorn.  I have been asked to explain how the existence of these sea creatures means that Unicorns could walk on our sweet Earth. I hear you say, is the Unicorn not a myth? Like the Cadbury Marble bar and the Yeti? Well I say, no, the Unicorn is real.

1.       Narwhals: The ‘Unicorn of the Sea’

Now, the BBC even calls Narwhals this. And the BBC is the factual centre of the world. I do English and I understand the way that sentences work. The above phrase ends with ‘of the sea’. Narwhals are not Unicorns; they are the sea’s equivalent. This implies that there are Unicorns on the land.

2.       They have a horn, for Pete's sake!

For the sake of all the brie in the world, the Narwhal has a horn. Not only is it a horn, it looks identical to the portraits of Unicorns that have lived (yes).

3.       Narwhals might well be Unicorns

Narwhals are grey and speckled with white. Unicorns were sometimes white with grey speckles. Maybe if you unzipped a Narwhal, a Unicorn would fall out?

Author’s note: Please don’t try to open up a Narwhal… if we are wrong we may be arrested.

4.       Narwhals are magical

Like Unicorns.

                

Things I Suggest You Avoid Saying to University Students.

1)      So, what can you do with that? (about degree)

I am sorry if I read too much into being asked what my intentions are post university. If you ask me ‘what do you want to do after university?’ I will: kiss you, hug you like a mother-chuffing bear, lick the top of your ear and then tell you exactly what I want to do. If you ask me ‘so what are you going to do with that?’ or ‘what can you do with that?’ I will: cry, question the past two years of my life, doubt my life choices, and then reach into your soul and insult all of your past pets and then scream. My decision to come to university was well thought out, and is stressful enough without the constant doubt- inducing questioning.

                I do what is classed as a joint honours degree, half of which is part of the ‘arts’. I read English and Classical Literature. I know it sounds funny that I read and write for a degree. When my grandparents try to understand what I do with my days they struggle to understand. I KNOW THAT IT SOUNDS FUNNY! But there is a bloody point to it. I can’t walk into a publishing house or a newspaper without a degree and go ‘I like books’ and just suddenly get a job. The University experience has lead me beyond academia. My CV is made up about 90% of things I have achieved whilst at university. Stephen Fry, Boris Johnson, Mary Beard, Oscar Wilde and Karl Marx all read Classics. Paul Simon, Renee Zellweger, Susan Sarandon, Mitt Romney, Steven Spielberg all read English.

                I feel like I sound really defensive whenever people ask me ‘what I can do’ with my degree, and I throw celebrity names at them in a similar style to the t-shirt cannon from the Simpsons. A common follow up conversation from the people who ask the above atrocity is to do with tuition fees. It must come across like students are really reckless and aren’t aware that they are spending thousands on something. We aren’t importing cocaine; we are buying an access route to our career. Could you give us a break?

2)      ‘Ugh, you sound so studenty’/ ‘Oh stop being such a student’

Firstly, I totally understand that sometimes students can sound a bit ‘know-it-all’. But it is also not exclusive to students. I have come across people all of my life that are quite pedantic and have minds that tend to enjoy debating or wind people up (yes, I know that some people don’t do it to wind people up). It makes me want to cry blood when I could say something like ‘this is a nice, yellow flower, isn’t it?’ and I would receive a reply like ‘is it yellow, though? Or just what society wants you to think it is?’ I’m being facetious, yes, but you get my drift.

                University has made me a lot more opinionated. Not in a shove-it-down-your-throat-or-anus way; it is just that I spend a lot of time reading people’s opinions and views and am challenged to present my own. An English Literature essay is marked on original ideas. It can be hard to switch from this analytical mentality when it’s all you have done all term. I’m not on my ‘high horse’, and you can disagree with me. But don’t just call me a ‘student’ like it’s some naughty, malicious thing to be. Many, many people are opinionated beyond student-hood. I don’t understand why I’m so constantly made to question my ‘student identity’. I refuse to accept the mould that some people expect me to fit. 

Creepy Old Men/ stalkers

This week has had a slight theme re conversation topics. Well, apart from the Miley Cyrus debate. I started writing about that then I realised I am actually bored of reading about it so I won’t inflict pain on your pretty eyes. Anyway, this week I’ve had so many conversations about creepy old men and being approached by them.

1)      Iron Maiden Kilt guy

I was an Iron Maiden gig (don’t judge me, the ticket was free) and the shin dig had finished and I was stood at the end of a row waiting for the world to end or whatever. My family were talking at the other end of the row and this guy with an orange Mohican approached me. He had on a tartan kilt and nothing else. He was probably only about thirty and I don’t think he had underwear on (you could just tell by the way... you know... they hung... AH). When he got to me, he just put his hands around my arse and started talking to me like I’d known him for years. Just talking and kneading my ass like focaccia. I looked over to my sister to try and get her to come over, but she didn’t seem to feel like it was an urgent situation. I eventually battled him away in a really girly fashion and he walked off. I asked my sister why she didn’t help me, and I quote, she said ‘oh! I thought you knew him!’ Yeah, so now we’re married with six children, it worked out pretty well. JOKES.

2)     Carly Rae Jepson’s Dad

Train journeys are either really therapeutic or extremely stressful. This train journey was full of people who smelled like beer and lies or children. Thankfully the children weren’t with the beer-y people. And the children didn’t have beer. Anyway, I had only been sat down five minutes before I had a tap on my shoulder and this man WAY over the age of fifty slurred either the words ‘I like your spoon’ or- the one I think is more likely- ‘I like your boobs’. Because- as all of my friends will testify- I am eternally incapable of being rude to strangers, I replied ‘thank you!’ He left me alone for about ten minutes before prodding me again, this time just for prodding’s sake. I ignored and tried to shufty along my seat a bit. He behaved for about half an hour more, then his hand appeared around the side of my seat with a phone poised for me to see. He had written a text with no recipient, just for me: ‘hey, I just met you, and this is crazy! But here’s my number, so call me maybe.’ I just slapped his hand away. I genuinely do not mind you laughing about this now, but at the time I was mildly scared. But in hind sight, HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHA. If I didn’t laugh I would hysterically cry.

3)     The Comedian

I kind of don’t mind this one so much. A middle aged man came up to me a in a sport’s bar (it turns out that these bars are just the same as other bars and you don’t have to have stick legs or a six pack, they still serve you whiskey!). He said: ‘you are very refreshing to look at’. I asked, why, kind sir? He replied that he thought it was nice that I didn’t wear lots of make- up and I was very natural. The reason I find this hilarious is that I do actually wear make- up. It’s just not Dulux ‘mango melody’. My mother recently tried to take a guess at the colour of my make-up and tried ‘morbid pallor’ and ‘last breath’. He was a comedian at Mr. Ben’s Comedy Club in Leeds, so he might have just been having a laugh.

4)     The Stalker I Accidently Encouraged

I’ve recently had a bit of a creepy stalker. He would ring me pretty much every day between the hours of 11:00pm and 5:00am. He rang me off his mobile, which I quickly learned to ignore. One night I was waiting for a friend to call me off a land line, and my mobile rang. I answered it and it turns out, just by the good lord hating me, that it was le stalker. Again, being totally inadequate in the art of telling people to bugger off, I had a conversation with him. My mother was stood in front of me going ‘don’t be nice. Stop it. What are you doing. Tell him to leave you alone’. Instead I opted for something along the lines of ‘hello!!! So nice to hear from you! Yes… I am just about to go to bed so how about you ring me tomorrow? I’m free all day. Speak to you then!’ I had effectively told my phone-stalker to call back the next day. Naturally, he called at 4:30am the next morning, and because I am not as personable in the middle of the night I told him to jog on.

5)     My Friend’s Experiences of Creeps

A few of my friends have told me their... favourites? That feels like the wrong word. One had an old man come up to her in a bar and simply say ‘ALRIGHT BITCH?’ Another had a man cup her bottom cheeks on the way off the bus. The last one I will mention is a bit sinister, but as I naturally make light of every situation I feel uncomfortable about I want to leave the blog post on the note that it is actually really eerie and scary. All of these things usually happen when you’re on your own.

‘I wasn't happy with a random bloke the same age as my dad taking a photo of me. He said ‘what, so you're telling me your dad has never crawled into your bed late at a night and given you one?’

I have also experienced really horrible comments off men well over twice my age. The reality is that if you are on your own and feeling unsafe, it is literally the worst feeling. It saddens me that a lot of the men seem to have alcohol problems, and probably need extensive help and support. They are probably lonely and would rather make disgusting remarks than try and have a proper conversation. It reminds of the reasons why trolls operate within the internet. It is easy communication for the isolated, but it is so, so scary when you are on the receiving end of it.

Author's note: I am eternally petrified of coming across as though I don't represent men. I have been informed of creepy women, too, so if any of you want to message me your experiences for a creepy old women post I'm totally up for it! I can just only talk about my experiences and those of my (mostly female) pals. #ILOVEMEN

I’m sorry this one isn’t funny but I will make up for it with more blogs about my arse if you read it

Anxiety is a bitch and everybody experiences it in some form in their life. I was diagnosed with GAD (general anxiety disorder) in 2011 just after I started University. It didn’t start with the symptoms of anxiety that you would be familiar with. I developed IBS (Irritable bowel syndrome) the day I began University, completely randomly and to my absolute horror. It is extremely common for the symptoms of IBS to begin around the time of extreme stress and change. I had never really experienced either of these things until I moved away from the family home.

It took a couple of GPs and a fair bit of time to figure out that the two were related, and my mental health got worse with the IBS. I think in a way my stomach problems were my body’s way of coping with everything and my brain chose to worry about this rather than the things that were making me feel nervous.

 I haven’t exactly widely advertised the problems I have had. My close friends know about my stomach problems because it does affect me quite often. Thankfully the bad symptoms have gone as my mental state has improved but I still get awful cramps in my abdomen and I don’t eat gluten as it makes my digestive system hurt like Jesus’ sandal blisters (but I’m not a coeliac). People are often surprised that I have had issues with my mental health and especially anxiety because I am an extremely social and chirpy person. I am generally really hilarious but I do use my humour as a coping mechanism. One friend, when she knew I was on antidepressants said ‘no you aren’t! Don’t be silly. You don’t need those!’ It really wound me up because it made me feel like people couldn’t understand that I could be myself but also have anxiety. It was like being told ‘stop it’ to something that had complete control over me.

I have never really got to the bottom of what it is that makes me nervous. I love meeting up with people but sometimes for no logical reason I will panic about it beforehand. I lie awake a lot at night because this is usually when my brain decides to panic; the other night I was so wound up my brain kept decorating rooms in my mind (not a metaphor, like brain style Changing Rooms.) They looked suave but I was so tired in the morning. I think I, personally, am prone to getting stuck in vicious circles. I feel nervous so I feel ill, and then I worry about being ill. Or I find myself daydreaming or imagining worst case scenarios in my head over and over, and then I feel so adamantly that they will happen that I panic.

The route my treatment took was antidepressants/ anti spasmodics- mental health referral- CBT (cognitive behavioural therapy)- sorting myself out. I never found antidepressants helpful. I was on them for four months (they take a few weeks to even begin to work anyway) and I felt nauseous, guilty and a bit bat shit crazy. I came off them (stupidly with no direction from my GP) and after the initial turmoil I felt like a huge cloud had lifted. I know that I am a rarity and often pills do help but it needs a lot of trial and error to find the right dose/ tablet.

In terms of therapy, I didn’t last long with that either. I was referred by my GP to the mental health service after a particularly bad month when an anxiety test showed my nerves were classed as pretty much the worst you can describe. I was avoiding University and sitting in the middle of a lecture theatre was pretty much unbearable. I found the NHS mental health system long winded and frustrating. The space of time between my initial consultation and my first CBT was about four months. In this time I tried to do all that I could to help myself. I moved out of halls of residence and into a flat with one other lovely person at the beginning of my second year and I swear it was the best treatment. I figured out that a lot of my health issues had been from a serious lack of sleep- halls are like sleeping through a Stomp show a lot of the time- and isolation, really. I found that keeping busy and surrounding myself with people I was comfortable with helped infinitely. Jodie Kidd told You magazine ‘I was so desperate to crack on rather than dwell in the panic’. It helps me if I avoid spending a lot of time by myself. If I feel like I have purpose I really enjoy my own company at the end of the day, and sleep a hell of a lot better.

                The CBT session that I went to was just… well fucking awkward really. I know I am shallow but my therapist was a really handsome bloke and I didn’t feel comfortable at all. He didn’t ask any personal questions after initially going through my psych file, the observations were very general. I think that by the time I attended a session I had actually managed to deal with a lot of my problems by myself, so I didn’t really want to tell a stranger anything. I rang up to cancel my thread of sessions and my therapist rang me soon after. He wanted to find out if it was anything to do with him that I had withdrawn. I felt strongly that I had been made to wait so long for sessions that my treatment wasn’t relevant anymore. I am so lucky that a change of circumstance helped my recovery, but I have two friends who both have life hindering mental illnesses and their treatment plan has gone exactly the same way. They both feel that the system has failed them.

I am not saying that CBT doesn’t work for some people. One of my favourite journalists, Eleanor Morgan, once said that CBT is a thing that needs sticking to. Looking back, although I was a lot better, I think I felt extremely embarrassed to be talking about some of the things I had to. I lied a lot in that hour about my mental health. The generalisations were probably an introduction to the method and I didn’t have the balls to stick to it. However, a lot of the issues the therapist was trying to address were based on my original consultation with a separate psychologist and weren’t relevant anymore. There are flaws in the way the system works. I had got a lot better, but what happens in the in-between time for those who get a lot worse?

I wish that I had known about Mind charity when I was going through my bad phase. There really needs to be a third party organisation- like them- that provides some on-going support either throughout the wait to be treated or to help sustain a comforting presence in particularly bad times. I know we live in a modern country, and attitudes to mental health are changing, but I still feel a stigma there. I feel this because through guilt and embarrassment I never gave any solid details to anybody but my best friend with regards to what I went through. I think a lot of people didn’t take me seriously as it was going on because I probably didn’t show any symptoms whatsoever to anybody. If you asked anybody who sat near me in a lecture they would have had no idea that those hour long sessions were complete torment. My whole body would go through hot- flush like panics and I would have to focus on breathing and sitting still so I wouldn’t have a freak out. But I feel like I was insulting my companions a little by not being entirely honest- I don’t think that any of them would have judged me or treated me differently… So why was I so secretive!? I think I felt afraid that they would stop seeing me as confident and funny.

I still have bad moments occasionally, but I feel so much better in myself now and it makes me sad that there are people who haven’t had a recovery due to failures in the mental health system. One person I know could only be given a certain number of therapy sessions because the budget for the service in the area she lives in couldn’t afford to give her any more. Millions are affected by health issues, and there is help out there, but it’s going to take some serious man- power to allow for some serious change. I think it would seriously aid those with anxiety/ depression or any kind of mental health issue for it to be treated as openly but delicately as possible. I didn’t even realise that a lot of what I was doing was wrong. I totally ignored my GPs advice on so many occasions; I took too many anti- spasmodics in an exam period once because I was trying to conquer my nerves. It affected me so badly that I froze in bed for an hour feeling like my muscles were falling apart. I didn’t tell anyone until it was over. I only realise now that getting through so many different tablets to help my IBS was really dangerous. It only occurred to me that I had a problem with the medication until… today really.

Mind charity is an organisation set up to generally support those with a wide array of mental health issues and to establish respect for them. Time to Change aims to banish the stigma linked to mental health issues. It is encouraging talking about the problems so that they are more widely understood. I think one of the best things about their campaigns is their effort to create knowledge of what to do if you are suffering. I didn’t even try and find anything to help me; I was helpless and guilty about my anxiety. I felt so bad that I was allowing something to affect my life and studies that I just let myself suffer. I eventually, last year, went to a student coordinator within my University to let them be aware that I have GAD and IBS. When your mind is under stress you are prone to all sorts of medical issues- I developed a skin condition called Urticaria on top of everything else that made me still face some mental hurdles last year. I told the coordinator everything and she laid down all of the options for me. My University could provide support during exams, an understanding of my occasionally missing classes and most importantly, east my guilt. I didn’t ask for help in the first year because I genuinely felt like it was my fault I felt the way I did. The more people talk the easier it will be to live a normal like with a mental disorder.

@MindCharity

mind.org.uk

@TimetoChange

time-to-change.org.uk