Llandudno

So this week(end) I am in Llandudno on official UNISON business at the trade union's national LGBT conference. I've been looking forward to it for quite a while as it allows me to get away from the same old, same old of Bedford town and I get to explore a part of the world I haven't seen before.

Except the last few days, I've grown increasingly anxious. Anxious at going to the wrong train station and missing my train. Anxious about meeting a whole group of new people tomorrow. Anxious about hotel etiquette. The list goes on, and especially last night, I was really starting to grow quite worried about the whole thing; the thought of just not going crossing my mind. But as my branch have quite literally paid for the whole thing plus more, I decided I would be doing them a disservice by not coming and who knows, I may enjoy it?

I sit here typing this having just finished my three-course dinner of ham terrine, fish pie and baked Alaska waiting for the #TalkMH twitter chat to start, a great initiative on the social media site that connects mental health service users and indeed anyone else who may want to join in to talk, share stories and ideas and generally be a nice bunch of people for an hour.

The conference begins tomorrow and I'm having to psych myself up at walking into the world of the unknown. While it's billed as a fun and socialising time, there are heaps of official business to get through and having never been to anything like this before, I am quite nervous about what all of that may entail. Whether it entails anything at all? Beats me. But I lament the lack of confidence I once had. I regularly use my school days as an example of when my confidence was at it's peak, delivering monologues on stage and the like. Where has all of that gone? In many ways, my life is busy. A full-time job, charity work, trade union events, (attempting) to write a book and those Friday night blowouts, there should be more than enough to keep my mind away from the Black Dog. So why does it keep unleashing itself from the cage?

Or maybe I'm just overthinking the whole thing, as usual. I'm currently reading Jonathan Trott's autobiography, 'Unguarded'. Jonathan Trott is a cricketer, who had a short yet successful England career before it blew up on a tour of Australia as he battled mental health difficulties.

Sound familiar?

He talked about how he fixed it by separating his 'human' and his 'chimp'. The human mind, rationalising everything that happens and putting it in the right context, not overreacting to every little thing by imagining the worst case scenario from it. And the chimp, the all-over-the-place, naughty and messy mind that plays tricks on you and forces you to think about everything wrongly. But I can tell you, having to consciously assess each situation and untangle it before you come to the right conclusion is both mentally and emotionally exhausting. I've tried similar methods in the past to no fruition. But it is interesting reading someone else's experiences of trying to untangle their own minds.

So while my small yet significant trip to the upper most regions of Wales is just starting, my journey to a calm mind has only just started.

When I go home from this, I will be two days away from another hour in what I have nicknamed 'The Chair', and another round of psychotherapy. I can't quite explain what happened on Tuesday. I was really, really nervous beforehand because I felt I just didn't know what to say, but once I started, everything just flew out. I'm feeling the same about this week...