Mental Health, Break Ups and Me

This is a not my usual politics post, it is a personal post that I wanted to share and to write following a difficult recent break up that I'm still working my way through. This tough personal experience has made me think about mental health and just how fragile and easy to reroute a person’s mental health can be. I also wanted to write about the impact social media has on mental health especially during an emotional event.

It has been about 3 months since my own break up following an over 6 year long relationship with someone I loved deeply and had made long term plans with. It's the first real break up I've been through and it's been challenging. I'm usually a self-reflective and self-analytical person, I can analyse a life decision or a political event but a break up has been unlike anything. The loss of the hopes, dreams and plans for the relationship has probably been the hardest thing to get my head around and at times I have struggled to stay positive, to think clearly and work out what is best.

A break up pushes your mind down routes that you know you can't go down anymore. Expecting a text, thinking when/if you'll see them, wondering what they're doing, are they thinking of you or missing you as much. All these things become swirled in your head and the mist they create clouds clear thinking. These little, normally insignificant things lead your mind to start fighting itself, pushing itself down paths it shouldn't.

I know from my own experience that your heart and head don't want to let this great thing die but they also tell you that you shouldn't think like that. It has made me realise just how little it takes to push your mental health off course.

Things can begin to spiral... grumpiness, loneliness, disappointment can build and build. It can be a spiral that some won't recover from and it can grow into depression and beyond. Having never been through a tumultuous emotional event before I guess I hadn't thought about how depression can begin and can snowball. A small knock can send mental health on a slide that is difficult to slow and sometimes impossible to stop. That has been one of my biggest realisations, of just how little it can take to push mental health down a path that is hard to recover from.

I feel social media is an incredibly dangerous element that can speed up any potential decline. Social media forces one to compare lives and emotional wellbeing with others on a completely false scale. Going through a break up has helped me to experience exactly this, constantly comparing my own sense of upset and loss with the other person, inevitably coming to conclusions where the other person is coping immeasurably better and inspiring more negative thoughts and doubt about the relationship you had, the strength of feelings and so on.

It has surprised me just how easy it is to firstly slip in to a decreasing mind-set and secondly how that can be accelerated and increased by social media. It has dramatically altered my prior opinion on mental health which underestimated just how quickly and powerfully mental health can be impacted by seemingly insignificant events.

In my own case, I'm pushing on with changes in all areas of my life despite harbouring regrets, hopes of reconciliation and lingering feelings for the person. I've found music, time with family and writing to be a help and although I have great days and bad days I'm gradually improving. I'm still working out how to manage social media, still working on how to analyse all my thoughts and feelings. However my message to anyone going through something similar is to keep working on it, find some way of expressing or releasing, like writing is for me, and take it a day at a time.

My biggest takeaway and my reason for writing however is the realisation of just how fragile mental health is. To encourage people to speak out and for the issue to be taken seriously. I now know everyone can struggle with mental health, especially during difficult periods in your life, and it deserves proper and financial recognition. Social media I believe has only increased the fragility and I would like teachers & parents to give it the weight and seriousness that it deserves with regards to mental health. I hope that my openness and my story is one small addition to the push for mental health to be taken seriously and given the importance it deserves.

Thanks for reading!

Why I'm Voting Liberal Democrat

Only two years on from Cameron vs Miliband and here we are again on the eve of another general election. Two years on from “hell yes I’m tough enough,” a hell of a lot has changed. After Jeremy Corbyn, an EU referendum, Brexit, Jeremy Corbyn again and now an election, politics has gone quite crazy. It is for a mix of all the above reasons that I find myself with little option but to vote Liberal Democrat on Thursday 8^th June despite having never voted, and never expecting to vote, anything but Labour.

On a personal level this election is hugely overshadowed by the spectre of Brexit. I’m resigned (resigned being the best word for it) to Britain leaving the European Union and the fact that I will likely not have any say in the issue again until 2022 but I cannot realistically watch, what I am certain will be, a catastrophe happen without saying I at least tried and used my democratic voice to appeal and fight it.

Election Backdrop

Firstly I think it is key to point out exactly why I place Brexit, and at the very least having a voice in what happens during it, as such a crucial factor in this election. Leaving the single market, accounting for £240bn of all UK's exports and 53% of our imports, will be a disaster. Before even leaving it we have seen sterling depreciate by 15% and borrowing increased by up to £100bn. Food and fuel prices are steadily increasing, inflation is growing and wages are flatlining, jobs are already leaving or making plans to and we have no trade deals to fall back on as we leave the single market.

This is before I mention the probable hard border between Northern and Republic of Ireland, EU citizens leaving or not coming, border controls possibly moving from Calais to Dover, farming and fishing industries suffering, workers rights, the ability to travel, live and work freely throughout Europe all lost. I could go on but I reiterate I am resigned to it happening, it breaks my heart but it is happening and unfortunately its effects affect how I view everything said during this election campaign.

Labour Backs Hard Brexit

This Brexit prism that I am looking at this election through means that I simply cannot support Labour because they are marching hand in hand with Conservatives towards a hard, devastating Brexit. They have committed to leaving the single market, to ending free movement and differ very little from what Theresa May or Nigel Farage want from the whole process.

It is this stance which I’m afraid makes lies out of other promises the Labour Party makes. Brexit has already increased borrowing by over £100bn according to Philip Hammond and it hasn’t happened yet. Unfortunately this means that it is just not possible to invest to the scale that Labour has suggested because without the single market the economy and ability to invest shrinks by, the markets and sterling depreciation suggest, around 15%. Not just that but the way that Labour suggests it will raise funds simply are not feasible alongside the hard Brexit stance they adopt.

Businesses are already relocating some or all of their staff from Britain to somewhere within the single market. How is this helped by raising corporation tax? As much as I want to see businesses pay their fair share of tax, I also want them to stay put in this country. What reason is there to stay if the UK is outside of the single market and raising tax levels. The same argument can be made about wealthy single investors, what reason to stay in the country when not only is the economy smaller, it has no/barely any access to the single market, they face paying more tax both personally and professionally as well as losing their European passport.

Let’s then take the NHS. Labour’s promises are nothing more than lies when prepositioned by their Brexit stance. 10% of registered doctors and 4% of nurses are EU immigrants, in total 55,000 EU citizens work in the NHS, where will the promised extra staff for the NHS come from when, as Labour promises, free movement ends? As a result of Brexit EU citizens have already left in their tens of thousands since Brexit with Labour only promising to continue this trend. 

Moving on to education and with an end to free movement, it also means an end to international students at universities. Since Brexit Cambridge has already seen a 14.1% drop in students from across the Channel. Universities receive around one eighth of their funding from this group and it is also estimated that these students contribute around £7bn to the UK economy. Labour would end this, shrinking the economy yet further and denying UK based students top universities and a wide range of courses. On top of this with the scrapping of university fees, universities would be facing a funding crisis, far from the life long learning that Labour says it will offer.

It is impossible to talk about this election without mentioning Jeremy Corbyn. He is another major reason why I simply could not consider voting Labour this election. His lies and inaction over the EU and during the EU referendum, his stance over anti-semitism including not expelling Ken Livingstone and still not talking to the leading Jewish newspaper during this election and his appearances on Iranian TV. For all of the above he lost my vote long ago.

The Only Truly Liberal Option

The party with the best and most realistic stance over Brexit, the NHS and Education is the Liberal Democrats.

• ·         Every person in the country be able to look at the actual Brexit deal, not the lies and fabrications of the referendum 12 months ago, and have their say on it.
• ·         A penny in the pound rise in tax ringfenced to fund the NHS would be a sustainable and easily managed way to increase funding for the NHS and provide the best health care in the world once again.
• ·         It is proven that targeting children when they are young with excellent education is the best way to increase achievement. The Lib Dems would triple the Early Years pupil premium allowing progress to be made earlier and quicker. There would be no new grammar schools and free childcare would be extended to all two-year-olds.
• ·         Fracking would be banned and four million properties would receive insulation by 2022 with fuel poor households targeted first. Reducing carbon emissions, helping the environment and lowering energy costs.

All of these promises are believable because the Liberal Democrats are the ONLY party fighting to stay within the single market and customs union, safeguarding jobs and incomes up and down the country, ensuring our economy does not shrink and there is money that can be invested in the NHS, in education and to build homes.

It has been difficult to change what I thought would be a lifetime of Labour votes but the Brexit stance, which undermines every single spending promise made, along with Jeremy Corbyn himself means that I simply cannot back Labour in this election. The Liberal Democrats have the most sensible, open and outward looking manifesto of all UK parties, their spending commitments can be trusted and they would give you, me and everyone over the age of 16 the right to have a say on whatever Brexit deal is negotiated. On Thursday, vote Liberal Democrat and change Britain’s future. 

London Terror: Responding to an attack

On a morning like today following a night like last night it is hard to know what to say or rather, hard to find the words for all the thoughts and feelings that go through your head. For the second time in as many weeks a travesty has happened, an act of unspeakable and unknowable evil. It goes without saying that my thoughts are with those injured or tragically killed but particularly with the families who will be waking up to an unimaginable feeling and a radically altered future. As Lin Manuel Miranda wrote in Hamilton, “dying is easy, living is harder,” and I cannot for a second imagine what the families of those killed or injured are having to go through.

What happened last night was particularly hard hitting for me personally as someone who has walked through and around the London Bridge area so often in recent years. When something so awful happens in an area you’re familiar with, the impact of the news is only increased. However I wanted to write something not only to condemn and express my sadness about what happened but to talk about the reaction to despicable acts and dark nights like last night.

As we have sadly grown accustomed we go through a tidal wave of different emotions and thoughts in reaction to an event like that in London and in Manchester. To many it is sadness and despair at a world making increasingly less sense but for others it is anger and frustration at how this can be allowed to happen. All of the above are understandable because, it must be remembered, they all come from a place that cares and worries.

In response to vile terrorist acts like those in the past fortnight many familiar names will repeat familiar refrains about needing to strike back or needing an aggressive response. While I would not personally react in the same way, I think it is important not to over react to this reaction. The initial response of all of us is a desire to protect those who mean so much to us, to keep them close and protect them. This feeling is just expressed in very different ways and how that desire is achieved follows very different paths. It is important to remember that no matter the view, it comes from a thought, a feeling, an innate human desire that we all share. As always, there is more that unites us than divides us.

Division is exactly what the people who commit these heinous crimes want, it is the only possible raison d’etre. With that in mind it is important that rather than focusing on criticising each other’s response to this catastrophe we instead focus on the astoundingly brilliant and instantaneous actions of every single emergency service. We instead focus on the selfless deeds of those innocent civilians caught up in the act. We instead focus on the empathetic response from those offering beds, drinks and support on social media. There is so much more that unites us.

The national topic of conversation will be focused on this tragic event with what is probably a minority talking about a ‘strong’ response, identifying minorities and more. As hard as it may be to remember but for 99.9% of these voices, the views they share will come from the same place, a place where family and friends are protected and safe.

Instead of retweeting, reposting or arguing about what the best way to respond is, I recommend switching off, spending time with loved ones, talking to those you care about, seeing them if they live close enough and taking every moment life gives us. If there is anything that events like this remind us of, it is that life can be so cruelly and abruptly ended so why waste time arguing or engaging hate with hate? Love is the only way hatred of this kind is beaten, it should not stop in the wake of events like this.