It’s well known that alcohol can have an adverse effect on mental health, especially anxiety. Alcohol spikes anxiety, which may cause you to drink, to combat feeling anxious. (A cycle that can feel infinite). But know you’re not alone, 82% of adults in the UK reported to have had a drink in the past 12months, and 49% drank at least once a week.
Read MoreThis year’s Mental Health Awareness Week campaign is highlighting the impact of loneliness. Most of us can relate to loneliness and experienced it at some point in our lives. It’s a complex feeling that effects people in different ways. Some people can feel lonely even if they are in a room full of people, while others experience loneliness as a true form of isolation, where they may not experience any human contact for a prolonged amount of time.
Read MoreAs women, we tend to prioritise everyone above our own needs. As mothers, wives, friends, sisters, daughters and colleagues people tend to look to us for support, advice and care leaving less time for ourselves. When we fail to take time for ourselves it can lead to stress, anxiety and increased drinking.
Read MoreStress affects how we think, feel and behave. One of the biggest behavioural responses can be to develop avoidance strategies, these avoidance behaviours can make the situation more difficult to break. This is because avoidance relieves the physiological symptoms but reinforces the negative thoughts and affects your confidence to manage the situation in other ways.
Read MoreWe don’t need to say how challenging the past year has been. The Stress Management Society found that 65% of UK adults surveyed reported feeling more stressed since the initial lockdown.
Read MoreI’m beginning to see the impact. A 14 unit week and I feel great. It’s now not about what I have lost but what I have gained. The spectre of booze has diminished, it’s not in the rear view mirror of my mind anymore.
Read MoreI cut the quote to the title of this blog short as it seemed a bit morbid. What I wanted to write about today was how much better I am sleeping now that I have laid off the booze. I thought I was sleeping relatively well. It turns out I was not. I’ll go through the problems I was having that I had incorrectly put down to just getting old.
Read More“We go again” the mantra that Liverpool Football Club used which took them (among other things) to their first league win since… a long time. What I am asking though is how do we maintain behaviour once we have established it?
Read MoreSome days it just seems too hard, why bother, why not take the path of least resistance, to accept I like a drink and so I should just drink, it’s easy. So let’s go to the fridge and open a beer, except past Me, me when I was fully engaged with reducing my alcohol intake, has not restocked the fridge.
Read MoreIt’s all gone wrong, belly up, boozed up. Best laid plans and all that, this week my units were on the up rather than the down. Pressure at work, stressed partners, homeschooling nightmare and a feeling I deserved a drink for all my hard work the previous weeks. And now I feel terrible, failure is hard and I’m not used to it, in fact I often avoid doing things that are likely to result in failure, I hate it that much.
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