Stridi

Hello.  This is sort of a follow up from the “anonymous” supermarket piece a few months ago. Which, spoiler alert for those of you who know my writing style – was me. In the world of PR and Social Media, you’ve got to be pretty careful with this stuff, especially when you’re writing about your real life work place. But, hey, all you know is that I work in a supermarket…. So, you have quite a few options to guess from.   Photo by Oleg Magni from Pexels A colleague and close friend of mine encouraged me to write this piece. Hello Julie, I know you’re reading this. This colleague of mine wanted me to write about all the obstacles I’ve overcome since I started back in May last year, and it’s heart-warming to see someone who has worked with me so closely since day one, talking about me in those terms and noticing my progress. Yes, I feel like an entirely different person sinc...

Hey guys! It’s Matt here. How are you all doing? I thought I would try something a little different with this piece. An old uni contact kindly sent me a handout about the lovely (but maybe a bit scary) topic of: Making Friends! So, today I’m going to share some tips with you about how to make some new pals.  The thing is, we all need our alone time. Our quiet time. Our “me time”. Whatever you want to call it, it’s beneficial for your mental health, particularly if you have social anxiety. Whether you use that time to chill out and read a book, watch TV or just sit in your bedroom enjoying the silence. Alone time is good for us and allows us to relax, unwind and reflect in the company of our thoughts.  Photo by Sofia Garza from Pexels   However, too much alone time will start to reduce our social skills and thus make it a little bit harder to meet people and ma...

I'll give you a bit of insight into my life. The thing is, I’ve just started a new job in a busy supermarket. I'm sure that sounds tricky to many of you. Of course it’s tough, when you’re not really a “people person” and you’re suddenly working in a place full of….. well, people. The reason I’m sharing this is because I know that lots of you will be getting jobs while you're at uni, whether that's to top up your student loan or simply so that you can get a bit of real world experience. Either way, it’s a great idea and it will help to keep you busy – and to top things off, it's a great way to meet new people and make friends. I had my induction a couple of weeks ago and it took a while to complete it. There was loads of important information, and I was encouraged to take plenty of time to take it all in. When I reached the end, I could feel the butterflies dancing in my stomach. It was nearly time. I had been told that I would be trained on the checkouts ...

It is important when reading my story to know that this is my own personal experience and opinion and what you may be going through could be different and have a different path to overcome the issues that you have. What I can say for sure is that I have overcome my Social Anxiety. I want to start by telling you my understanding of Anxiety from what I have experienced and from an explanation given to me by a talking therapies coach in West London. I will then go on to tell you my story up until the day of writing this post. I will finish with giving my advice on what steps you could do to overcome your anxiety. “What is Social Anxiety?” is a difficult question to answer because we’re still not fully in agreement about what causes it and how to cure it. My Talking Therapies coach who saw me towards the end of my struggle told me that essentially every human has a an ‘Anxiety Gauge’ with a limit. When our Anxiety reaches a certain level, we go into ‘Panic Mode’ and ‘Fight or F...