So like most of my anxiety posts they're always written pretty spur of the moment when I feel like sharing my thoughts and experiences.
I've been holding off writing this post for a while as the subjects I'm going to talk about are very personal but I feel a shift in how I feel now and think its time to just get it out in the open.
I'll link my initial anxiety post here for if you want a bit of a back story to my anxiety and how it all started.
So the main subject I'm going to touch on in this post is about medication and what it can do for anxiety and my experience with taking it. I'll also briefly touch on my depression and how I feel it was linked to my anxiety.
So back in May I wrote a post about how I had done a series of hypnotherapy sessions which I will again link here. I mentioned that I think it helped to relax me however day to day I didn't feel it was that effective as I was still getting weekly sometimes daily panic attacks. I then said that I felt my next step was to go to the Doctor's and seek some medical help. Usually I'm someone who will hold off taking paracetamol or drugs when possible but for me this was a no brainer step and I felt that this was the right time to try some medication after trying so many different things already.
After having to wait a couple weeks for an appointment ( how ludicrous) I finally sat down with a doctor and told her about my panic attacks and what I'd already tried to help deal with it. She agreed with me that I hadn't rushed straight into taking pills and that I'd really chosen it as a last resort measure. From there she gave me a prescription for a pill to take once a day and advised to see me again in a months time. She did mention that this pill not only helped for anxiety but they also prescribe it for depression. Now I wont mention what pill I am taking as you really have to have the right one for you, plus its quite personal.
I'm now going to backtrack a little bit. Before, during and after my hypnotherapy sessions I was battling with some depression (that I feel was partly linked to my anxiety). For a while I kept it to myself and thought it would just pass and sometimes it did ... but it would always come back again. At the time I just thought i'd ride it out not tell anyone and hope it would just go away one day. I just didn't want to go to work and even found myself crying whilst driving or in the staff room before a shift, I love my job so I knew something wasn't right. I'd just be really down in the morning about going and would hide how bad I felt through joking about it. Previous to this year I have had spells of depression (especially during my brief time at university). One event that sticks out most to me is when my Dad and I went and saw Jersey Boys perform in the West End in London. I was really looking forward to seeing it and spending some time with my dad but during the show I just felt this wave come over me that prevented me from really enjoying the show and ultimately ruined the experience for me. At the time I just dealt with it by myself didn't tell anybody and I thought I could do the same again this time.
However one night I was having a particularly bad attack when I just broke down to my mum and confessed everything I was feeling. We agreed it was time to see the doctor.
So I'm about 2 months into taking these pills and I can honestly say that I feel so much better. To start with the panic attacks did get worse and I got one common side effect but that was all to be expected and completely normal. My Mum and other people around me have also said they can see a difference in me and the way Im acting, that I just seem happier. I feel like I can talk about this now because I'm in a different state of mind. I feel a lot more positive about life itself and don't see everything as being such doom and gloom. I'm much more willing to see friends and go out whereas before the pills I literally didn't want to go out or see anyone. I've had a huge amount of support from family and friends both new and old and I'm really grateful that I am able to talk to them about what I am going through.
Since taking my pills *touch wood* I havn't had a panic attack since and things that would usually trigger anxiety havn't been. I really feel positive now about my future and for it to be less about my anxiety and more about me!
I definitely wouldn't suggest going straight to pills if your suffering with anxiety or panic attacks but I do feel for me that its been the most effective and has been for other people I've talked to who also deal with it.
Theres such a stigma about mental health especially when taking pills is involved but really who are we to judge something someone can't help?! For me I don't care that I take them because at the end of the day they make me happier and control my anxiety.
As always if you have any questions or need someone to talk to about anxiety, depression or anything else I'd be more than happy to listen and talk about it.
So today is going to be a trilogy round up of Quarantine by Lex Thomas.
(Lex Thomas is the pen name that two authors write under).
Quarantine is a series about a high school on lockdown after a deadly virus is exposed to the teens and they are forced to live and be quarantined within the school. I will be reviewing each book and will notify when spoilers will be present.
Rating: 5/5Pages:
The first book is "The Loners" and starts of with there being "a drop" in the school playground that the kids are all anticipating. We don't know why or what has happened at this point. It then goes back in time to before this big event and we meet the two main protagonists. David and Will are brothers of which it is Will's first day at high school. They are walking the hallways when all of a sudden there is an explosion and the teachers start to throw up blood and instantly die ( If you think that's too gruesome this book probably isn't for you). The book then follows David and Will as they try to come to terms with the fact they are trapped within the school wondering how they will survive and get food especially since they aren't part of a group. The teens have taken it apon themselves to craft different groups such as "the pretty ones" or "the freaks". These are largely social status based but offer vital protection and food.
Let me start by saying the book is extremely violent and is probably not one for the younger readers(below 16?) There's scenes of swearing, sex, rape and acts of murder and it is just extremely brutal. Normally I would shy away from such violence however I really liked it in the book as it showed what lengths they went to to survive and how savage they had become. There was also a lot of thieving for food and people would trade whatever they owned just go get the basics.
We later find out that the virus only thrives in the bodies of teens and that it is deadly to anyone younger or older ( hence why the teachers died). We are also told that a teen who had the virus from an illegal experiment escaped and ran into the school in which the military then had to shoot at him and blew up part of the school.
In the foyer of the school is a scanner in which pupils go to on what is supposed to be their graduation day. Their grad day signifies the virus leaving their body and if the scanner recognises this then they are taking through a chamber and out of the school.
This book reminded me of The Hunger Games as it was very survival based and brutal but it also reminded me of The Maze Runner in which they had to learn to be self sufficient.
David ends up protecting a girl called Lucy and we find out that Will has had a huge crush on her however she likes David and we are faced with a love triangle storyline.
Overall this book really kept me gripped as it's very different from anything I've read before and again I actually really liked how gruesome and survival based it was.
The rest of the review contains events that happen late in the book and I suggest you don't read on unless you've read the first book. Below is a review I recoded over on my YouTube channel.
David is approached by some people called the scraps who do not belong to a group and ask him to be a leader for a group they want to be called " The Loners". David agrees and this is a natural progression for the book which I enjoyed reading about.
One day a student tries to escape during another students grad day and after that stint no more food is dropped into the quad. Things get really desperate for the teens especially for David as not only does he have a group to run but his graduation ay is approaching.
The day he's supposed to graduate the portal and scanner aren't working and David needs to find a way out to survive or risk death due to be surrounded by his friends.
Will, Lucy and the other Loners help David however we are left with a huge cliffhanger!
David find a tunnel to get out however the tunnel collapses on him and Lucy and we don't know if either of them have survived!
Finally a group of outsider teenagers manage to enter the school offering food and help. We are left not knowing who they are and if they are infected or not.
Needless to say I got straight to ordering the next two books and would highly recommend this trilogy!
Rating:5/5
Pages: 384
The second book starts off different from the first as we start to read from Will's and Lucy's perspective and are left to question what has happened to David. That being said it does pick up right where the first book left off with the group of kids called "The Saints" trying to free the quarantined students. Will and Lucy make a break for the exit and are so close to freedom when a school bus crashes into the side of the school and blocks their only way out. Faced with the reality that they are still trapped within the school the students turn to the Saints for answers about the outside world.
One of the ousiders tells them that other teens have been infected including the Saints and that family's were moving away from their children to protect themselves. The Army proceeded to shoot some of the infected teens and then put out a call for teens to hand themselves in however they didn't know that their fate would be a gas chamber. ( To me it sounded like a lot of what happened during the Holocaust and people handing themselves in not knowing what their future held for them.
Will and Lucy spot a outsider teen wearing an eyepatch that they instantly recognised as David's. When they approach the teen he tells them that he got it off a dead kid and this further backs up our thoughts that David is dead. For me I felt that his death was rather overlooked and didn't focus on it much however this did become apparent why at the end of the book.
Without David the group of Loners starts to disintegrate as they no longer have a leader to guide them. Members including Lucy reach out to new groups in hope of finding somewhere new to belong. Lucy decided to join the slut group and has to endure an initiation week... completely naked.
This leaves Will essentially on his own until Gates a member of the Saints asks him to become their leader. Will suddenly has to deal with this huge amount of power and pressure which I feel goes to his head a little.
It was really interesting to see the tables turn on Sam and to see him go from being the leader of the Varsity guys to being held hostage by the Saints and crumbling to nothing.
There became a point in the middle of the book where everyone seemed at peace with one another and their situation. They had all the supplies they wanted ( thanks to the help from the parents who visited them on the wall) and there seemed to be no major arguments between the groups.
I really liked that in this book you could read from Lucy's and Will's thoughts, experiences and perspectives. I especially liked getting to know Lucy more in the second book.
One overall point I want to make about this book is that it is just as brutal and violent as the first book which I actually really liked.
I'll stop there if you havn't read "The Saints" but if you have or want to see more of my thoughts on the end of the book then keep reading.
During Lucy and Will's time apart in separate groups they have an argument and from a reader's perspective you really want them to makeup and get together now that David's out of the picture and not complicating things. Surprise surprise not long after this point in the book they make up and even get down to... the deed... if you catch my drift.
One event that was quite unexpected and just reiterates how gruesome this book is was when Sam got killed by the pig that managed to get loose. It also showed once again how far Sam had fallen in such a short period of time. When I think of Sam being killed you would expect it to be in a fight probably shot or stabbed not mauled by a pig!
One character we start to get to know a lot in this book is Gates who is one of the Saints. Towards the start of the book we don't know that much about him but as the story progresses we not only find out about his past but I feel the school and the virus as made him go quite mad. Gates slowly starts to go crazy and hallucinate, he starts to believe that Will is his dead brother Colton ( who Gates actually killed).
The big twist at the end is when Will gets to graduate early, leaving Lucy truly on her own and we're left speculating what will happen to her and how will Will cope on the out side. When Will does get outside of the school who is he faced with but his brother! David's alive and thats where they leave it on a cliffhanger. Personally I really liked this ending as you are left with so many questions such as "How is David still alive?" " How's the rest of the state dealing with this virus?" and "How will the book end?". After reading this book I was really excited to see how the authors could possibly wrap up the trilogy and bring it all to a conclusion.
Don't read on if you havn't read the first two books.
Rating: 4/5
Pages: 272
The third book "The Burnouts" starts again exactly where book 2 left off which is a element I really like within this series. Book 3 is noticeably smaller than the first two books however I didn't feel as if there wasn't enough or too little content. After Lucy kills Gates in the first book she is kicked out of the sluts in the third book as their leader Violent also died in the same fight and the Sluts blame Lucy for her death.
One huge question left from the end of the second book is now that David's alive who is going to be in a relationship with Lucy?! We are back with the love triangle which is made even worse by the fact that Lucy is now pregnant with Will's baby! (This was a major unexpected twist).
One of the things David tells Will when he gets out is that there might be a cure for this virus and they begin to plan to find this cure. However when Will finds out Lucy is pregnant he is set on going back in to find her.
I'll stop there to save spoilers but if you want to find out more and get my review on the final book in the series then keep reading.
So Lucy is left pretty much on her own now that she is group less and stumbles across the "burnouts" who spend all their time making and taking any drug they can find in the school.(she also has a miscarriage, which we probably feel is for the best seeing what situation she is in). One twist to the story was how Hilary dies at the prom she puts on before her graduation. For me I felt like she had it coming to her and she finally got a taste of her own medicine.
David then helps the remaining kids escape the school and sees them reunited with their parents. Then the love triangle really comes to a head. Will gives Lucy an ultimatum to choose between him and David. When Lucy ultimately chooses David, Will flees town and is met by a group of people saying they have "the cure". Sadly this is not the case and the liquid they start to spray on the infected teen actually makes the start to throw up. When David,Will and Lucy start to see this they start to run but tragically Will gets shot in the head. As a reader we feel compassion for his loss but this seems not to be the case for David who essentially turns and leaves him showing very little affection. I also felt that Will's death was very abrupt in this book.
Now fast forward to the last chapter of the book. Lucy and David are reunited and the biggest plot twist of all is that Lucy is still pregnant! When she previously had her miscarriage she only lost of of 2 twins she was carrying! This was really unexpected and its sad that Will never got to know about this other child he had. This last chapter really left me hanging and I would of liked there to of been some kind of epilogue set in the future to see how they tried to get mack to normality.
Overall I really enjoyed reading this series as it really was a different read for me!
I would really recommend you start reading this series if it interest you and until next time,
I recently purchased two Anxiety related books off of Amazon and now after reading both I'd like to share my thoughts on them.
I've also filmed a review over on my YouTube channel which you can see below.
Rating: 4/5
Pages: 132
The first one is called "Making Friends With Anxiety" by Sarah Rayner.
Out of the two books this one was my favourite as I found it to be written on a very personal level and it was extremely relatable.
This book is broken up into 7 chapters each focusing on a letter of the word Anxiety. For example A is for Adrenaline and T is for Time. One thing Rayner really focused on was making this book easy to read when having a panic attack therefore its all broken up into small paragraphs and the most important info is highlighted in bold text. I can see this being really helpful as I like Sarah find it hard to focus during an attack.
This book starts off with acknowledging the signs of anxiety and learning about symptoms that come with it. For me this was something I already know about and wasn't that helpful however if you think you may have anxiety and don't know a lot it could help. She also goes through the types of anxiety which helped me to know which category I fit in (Generalised Anxiety Disorder and Panic Disorder).
One thing I liked that Sarah included was the medical reasons behind some of our symptoms for example "Blood is taken from areas of the body where it's not needed, such as the stomach, because in a life threatening situation, you're not going to stop for food. Thus when you're afraid, you may feel sick and unable to eat." This is reassuring to know the reason behind what you're feeling.
Sarah goes over some of the things you can do to help with your anxiety from Yoga to medication. I've tried a lot of different things and have just finished Hypnotherapy sessions. I found it helpful to know a little more on different types of medication as this may be the next option I take. Sarah includes a few breathing exercises which is good for those who havn't been to a doctor/counsellor or searched for some online and is one of the reasons why this is a good book for people who don't yet know a lot about their anxiety.
Sarah talks about not fighting your anxiety and to acknowledge that its there but at the end of the day it is just anxiety and it is just adrenaline causing it. This can be helpful however I sometimes find it useful to almost do the opposite and distract myself during a period of anxiety or when I'm having a panic attack. I'm not saying this is the correct thing to do but it's what I do to cope.
Sometimes when your enduring a long period of anxiety it can become second nature to expect to wake up and have an anxious day however this is not the case and Sarah has a tip for this. "When you wake up tomorrow, rather than think ' I'm going to have an anxious day and feel rubbish' you could venture to consider ' today might be ok after all'". Another tip Sarah gives is "If you are triggered, try to remember that the sense of panic will pass. Nothing in life in permanant including anxiety."
One quote that she included which really stuck with me was said by Frank Zappa "A mind is like a parachute, it doesn't work if it's not open". I like this quote as I feel you do have to be quite open minded with anxiety as you have to be able to try different coping methods and want to learn and analyse more about yourself and your anxiety.
Sarah talks and demonstrates what happens when you avoid a anxiety prone situation for example getting on the tube or going out with friends. For me it is key to try and not avoid the situation but to face it and prove to myself that I can do it. Yes I know this is easier said then done and I have struggled a lot of times with this but to just slowly push myself out of my comfort zone helps to not completely isolate myself.
One thing Sarah suggests and has been recommended to me numerous times is to talk to yourself during a period of anxiety how you would talk to your best friend. You're more likely to be reassuring and give yourself realistic facts.
Overall I really liked this book as it felt very personal and relatable. I would really recommend it to people who are just starting to be aware of their anxiety or have had a panic attack for the first time.
Pages: 128
Rating: 2/5
The second book is Anxiety: Panicking about panic by Joshua Fletcher. As you can see from the caption above I only rated this book 2/5 this was largely down to how scientific it felt and impersonal.
It felt that Joshua was talking to us as if we didn't know anything about anxiety or that he was trying to explain what its like to someone who's never experienced it before. For me it felt quite redundant reading a lot of the book but for someone who wants all the scientific facts this is the book for you.
Throughout the book it seemed that Josh was repeating a lot of the same information and it just seemed like we were going over the same thing just worded slightly differently.
This book is split up in four parts the first being about Anxiety and diagnosing if you have it ( chances are if you picked up the book you know you have it), the second being symptoms. In the third part Josh goes over how to cope with anxiety mentally and physically. Personally I feel the last part could be the most helpful, its an emergency panic attack help page. This is literally a couple of pages that are meant to help calm you down and reassure you during an attack and I can see this being very helpful.
I could relate to Josh with his symptoms and how he likes to distract himself during anxiety/panic attacks. However he made it seem at times that it was so easy to get over and deal with your anxiety and he just made it easier said than done.
Like I said if you don't know anything on anxiety and want some real scientific facts then this is the book to pick up.
I hope you enjoyed this post and I hope to do some more anxiety related posts soon.
