Changing my thoughts, changes my world 🌎

I love going to Frieze Art Fair, it’s my second year where I had a brilliant meeting with Meihui Liu and I found an artist I couldn’t resonate more with- Jeppe Hein. He captured my state of mind, perfectly. I love reminders that help me keep my mental state healthy. Of course, according to insta and FB it looks like I’m living my most fabulous life but let’s face it, this is totally unreal and an illusion that’s fun to play in. To me, social media definitely represents a skewed sense of reality, a 2D existence with a shiny veneer. Even I wish life was as fabulous as my insta feed IRL! 💃🏽

I struggled with depressions and a bipolar way of life with manic highs and the most extreme lows that seemed to stem from an undiagnosed Hashimoto’s thyroid disease from when I was 18 until I was 28. I only got diagnosed once I had grown a golf ball sized goitre over my thyroid by the amazing nutritionist with a SCIO machine Maria Burke. I was, however blessed to have a best friend Cathrine Keen who understood my lows better than I did and was able to catch me when I fell. She would literally come over to my parents house and pick me up to go wash her car, or she’d lie and say Angelina Jolie was in a film so I’d go see it - even when she wasn’t in it! 🎥

It was anything she could do to get me out just for a few hours as I didn’t want to leave the house. When I started taking my Levothyroxine every day at 29, I saw a massive improvement in my mood and in my weight, in everything really! I still get the lows and sometimes they still cripple me, but nowhere near how I used to get them. I think ongoing therapy really helped with my mind too as well as taking out foods that flare me - to be real with you, I’m still working on the food triggers 10 years on but I have made major improvements. 🍎

Now, most days I genuinely do feel that I can conquer the world and accomplish everything I want too however on some days I still definitely feel the pull of anxiety when I wake up and find it challenging to get stuff done. I have learned to try and moderate the days where I feel strong so that I don’t spend all of my positive currency at once and on the days that I don’t feel as robust I am slower and kinder to myself as I am able to be. Thanks to my cousin Rabia Lalani who once read me a quote about this, I think it was Rumi and it really stuck with me.

Without doing my daily mindset work, habitually catching myself if I happen to fall into a rabbit hole of negative thoughts and taking time every morning for mindfulness, I wouldn’t be the shiny soul I’m able to be. It takes a lot of inner work for me to shine and do my best work. I would suggest to anyone that suffers with mental health issues that there is always a way out, however you do need to find great support and the willingness to share even when you don’t feel able. It was because of my ability to communicate and a willingness to change that I managed to get what I needed to start the journey of recovery. 🌞

Oh and before you ask - yes I did go round Frieze in this look with my sunglasses on throughout #divamoment