Tag: life

Day four of our alphabet – ways to look after you. D. D is for depression

by Anna Vaught, posted in Uncategorized

In my life I have several periods of depression and I could not see beyond it. My experience is that – reminder I am not a medical professional and I’m a Doctor of Creative Writing! – sadness and depression may be confused. I have found that when you are sad you can still have joy alongside it, but in depression it is through a glass darkly. Perhaps it’s different for you. Depression, for me, involved intense feelings that were just awful and I often felt deeply isolated, stressed and numb. I think periods of my childhood and adolescence were spent in depression too, and I knew it wasn’t right because I had felt happiness. This was the impact of events within the family home and the sense that no-one, anywhere, would believe. I still get snatches of that feeling now – but it fades.

Depression has a way of knocking you out and it also lies; it says, you will never get better: this is not recoverable. It’s an awful thing, but if you are managing it, know how common it is too. I am not, for the purposes of this blog and because I am not qualified to say, going to write anything about medicines or therapies, because that is not my place. I AM going to tell you about a book that has been my companion for a many a year. It’s by the late Australian psychologist Dorothy Rowe, who remains a bit of a heroine for me. I have been told by some that she is rather old fashioned, but I have been in and out of the system for years and I can tell you that I STILL find fresh insights and comfort from her work. Rowe was always particularly interested in how we create meaning and in this book, below, she explains that just as you created meaning through a series of pictures of the world, so you can create new meaning and different understandings. Isn’t it simple? That takes work, but, hearing it for the first time, it’s like soft rain on a dry soul. Here:

I have always adored Rowe’s warm and forthright style and her range of literary examples, which appeal to a bookworm like me and I encourage you to have a look at the book.

Gradually, over time, I have had fewer and fewer periods of depression because I have learned to think and behave differently and my, it has not been easy. But I leave you with a few things.

The first is that, perhaps, how you are feeling is a reasonable response to the life you are not living not being right for you. In my case, I had so many unhelpful thought patterns ingested because of what was repeatedly said to me about myself, myself and others’ view of me, and what I was capable of – either nothing or only bad things – that I needed to unlearn that this was not the whole of the world, but what I had been taught. I recall a very particular day when the scales dropped from my eyes and actually thinking how fresh and bright the colours around me were. I cried and cried with relief. I had to deconstruct that monolith inside me so I could begin to live a life that was right – or better – for me.

Now I want to say, please do not be ashamed and furthermore to reiterate that you are far from alone. I hope from this place can come new understanding and new life for you. I know that this has been the case for me.

Finally, there is work to be done and how long that takes is unique to the individual. I said above that depression lies – it says you’re no good and this will never end. It is not so.

I have so much to say on this topic, but all my posts in the alphabet need to be brief.

With all my love and with encouragements,

Anna.

Day 2 of our midsummer alphabet all about looking after ourselves

by Anna Vaught, posted in Uncategorized

The letter B

The first thing that came to mind for B was actually…be. Let’s go with that, shall we?

Sometimes everything hurts and, because we are being realistic, the pain of some experience has to be tolerated, it has to be felt and, to a certain extent, and step by step, it has to be assimilated. In that context – but perhaps really in all, for which read on – some days all you have to do is just be. On that day, just have a day. There are some days where you are so tired and in my experience it’s good for you not to look for solutions on some days if this is a possibility you can afford.

Just be, to the extent you can be, quietly, in the middle of your own life and experience. I think this is a bedfellow to acceptance, which I mentioned yesterday. Both of these tenets have been very useful to me because I am not fighting so hard. Even if I feel sad and scared, I think, ‘Well, I’ll just…kind of…be’ and somehow the world keeps turning.

Something it took me a long time to grasp was that joy can lie alongside sorrow. Sorrow does not entirely dissolve joy – even if that joy is tiny. If I can stop agitating for a bit, that observation comes more naturally to me. How about you?

Also on ‘be’, I have – I would imagine this is partly because of hyper-vigilance – always felt the need to be doing a thing. Like, if I didn’t do a thing, whatever that thing was; if I didn’t keep busy, solving, sorting and doing, then somehow the wheels would fall off. I was scared of relinquishing control and I am still a work in progress in that regard. I have found it is very good for me to do absolutely nothing for periods of time. A few minutes here and there; half an hour: ooh – an hour sometimes. I consider this training for me. My nothing needed a prompt, however, so let me tell you what I tend to do. I lie on my bed, sometimes I cover my eyes with my eye mask (nothing fancy) and then I put my big green exercise ball on the bed and lie with my legs up. I close my eyes, daydream, focus on my breathing – in for 8, hold for 8, out for 8, counting, and a few cycles of that, and what can be managed is different for everyone, and can just be regular focus on the breath to calm the system. If I feel fretful, I rather like listening to a deep rest meditation – here’s one I liked –https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AKGrmY8OSHM&pp=0gcJCdgAo7VqN5tD or try a Yoga Nidra practice, of which there are many free online. Or, on the Calm app, Spotify, YouTube or wherever, I really find binaural beats help me; this is music where tones of two slightly different frequencies are played through each ear and for which you need headphones. If you don’t like them, ditch them and try something else that you find soothing.

Most importantly about this word be. You know, we think we need so much, we think we need to do or gain or achive so much to be of worth, but, I would argue, if you are looking after others, looking after your world and looking after yourself, you need not do more. So much of the rest is a chase, an illusion; when you get ‘there’, you find there is no ‘there’ (there) and off you go again – and it can be relentless. So maybe to just be is enough?

With much love,

Bookworm

The first day of an alphabet, just for you

by Anna Vaught, posted in Uncategorized

Midsummer’s Day, 2025.

It has become really clear to me that, despite my doctorate, all my books, my teaching and my salient lived experience, I am not going to be able to get a big memoir or any kind of book that’s mental-health adjacent to market. I’ve tried too many times. I don’t have a big enough author profile, I don’t have the time or the health to start and maintain and build a massive podcast, I am not a celebrity and I am not demonstrably and publicly expert enough in this area. I have found this particular disappointment a hard one to bear.

But that’s not the end. I decided that, instead, I would just spend a month gifting thoughts on topics that are about looking after you. Please know I am not a health professional and that I speak from lived experience and a lot of reading. Just enjoy these or read them for interest. Please share widely.

Today is the letter A. Let’s make it about ACCEPTANCE.

I cannot tell you of everything that is going on in my life because to do so would be treading on others’ agency. I can tell you that I came from a background which left me with a lifetime of mental and physical health problems and that for a long time no-one believed my story. I am sure plenty still don’t and Dear Lord, it has caused me so much pain and confusion. Into any life may come hardship or suffering, terrible loss, or the long dark night of a soul in a life which had seemed free; now you feel it has no meaning – no core to which you may be tethered.

People endure so much. We cannot minmise the suffering of others right now, though we ought to respond with compassion – which includes practical action. Still, what I am sharing something that has been a fundamental for me. It’s acceptance; radical acceptance, really.

You may want things to be a different way, for your life and circumstances to be different, but there may also be things you cannot change. It took me a long time to realise that the reason I was so tired was partly hyper-vigilance, but partly always trying to fix things I could not fix; to understand things I could not understand because it was not possible to access the information I needed. It’s exhausting. Acceptance is a core practice in meditation, more like being at peace with exactly what’s here, in the present moment. I am also talking about fully coming to understand that if you learn to accept, with as much grace as you can muster, those things you cannot change, you are fighting less. It is simple, but requires practice and for you to remind yourself. With such practice, it is not that you feel less, but, I have found, habits of comparing oneself with others tend to recede and you notice what you do have because you are less focused on what you don’t. I find I have been less fearful, too.

In my case, I knew I had to keep tolerating certain things that were deeply painful, too; also, I’ve had a great deal of loss – and loss in traumatic and frightening circumstances, shaping who I was as a young person. I’ve found that focus on acceptance has helped to still my nervous system. If you’d like an app, then there are some helpful things to listen to on the Calm app from Jeff Warren and Tamara Levitt and I should keep an eye on the vast amount of free teaching that well-known psychologist Rick Hanson puts out there. If you google him, you’ll find meditations, talks and the very helpful JOT – just one thing – which is a free and well-written piece of information to consider every week. It often touches on acceptance

May I suggest a text for you to read? I have found this one of great practical value.

I have much, much more to say, but these need to be brief posts.

Be well, you’re not and were never alone,

Anna x

On Burnout

by Anna Vaught, posted in Uncategorized

Today has been the day when I made decisions. I hope some people out there will find what follows helpful and loving. To you, from me, with hugs. Much of this is publishing industry-related, but in the context of a complex life – and my realisation that I am not meeting my own needs.

(Picture is of me, in one of my favourite places, on St Brides Bay in Pembrokeshire – much of my family is from around here.)

You read about burnout and, while some of what I write will be about industry, this is in the context of my managing life. I feel very tired, but in a way that is not relieved by sleep. I need a broader rest and considerably less stress. So, without going into detail about the care needs and complexities in my family, just know that I am sad and need time and space to offer more loving care and more to myself. Because of my past, I am hyper-vigilant and find it difficult to let go and not be in charge. In short, to respond to life’s demands as if they are not an emergency because much of my early life and key developmental stages were predicated upon threat and emergency. I need time and space to build on the repair work I have done in specialist trauma therapy and EMDR and with meditation practice, yoga and keystones of self-care. I need time to be alone and recharge. It is very rare that I can be; that someone does not need me to do or be something and so, of course, in I rush. But you see, I am already carrying a lot and this is partly trauma response. I want to fix everything. I need to turn back to my immediate family and to myself.

What will this mean? In no particular order…

  1. I have shaved back work to teaching and mentoring for which I am contracted over the next two to three years. If I am waiting for confirmation of an event, the new rule is chase once, no reply, OUT. In other words, I am on time and frequently ahead of deadline out of respect for others. I know doing things when you say you will is not always possible, but it happens so much in publishing – in my experience that is – and the strain has shown on me. So where things are open-ended and I said I needed a decision, I allot a time period and then it’s over.
  2. I am going to start initiating deadlines more often because I just cannot have so many open-ended things happening. This will not always be possible, but I need to be more in charge of timetable where this is possible in order to plan for the care of my immediate family and to have space to respond to need and to crisis.
  3. At the moment, I have five books, including a previously published novella, two nonfiction proposals, a novel and a brand new novella under consideration. I just finished a PhD. Honestly, at no stage have I seriously given myself time to understand the volume of work that was. I need to. I need to celebrate that level of outputting. Just me. I also need to do some writing slowly and some for fun. I am switching partly to digital-first commercial fiction – if they will have me, that is – so that, among other things, the timetable is more predictable. I am feeling the strain.
  4. I realise that I am carrying much grief – for the illness, pain, the long road during which my family has been let down by any number of health and education professionals. It has been and is heart-breaking.
  5. I am just…really disappointed by elements of publishing. I am grieving that, too. But I haven’t allowed it properly. I’ve been thinking it’s trivial to have got upset, but it DOES bother me that most of my books (there is shining exception) have not been promoted much, have been ignored, that communications have been so poor, that a beautiful book sits there with stacks of unsold rights which I cannot access to sell, that I have never got funding, that I am chasing royalty statements, that Curae and the young carers’ project didn’t get funding, that I have been so let down by the industry press and by some industry professionals on the Curae prize. It’s a ground-breaking initiative for unpaid carers, for heaven’s sake. I need to grieve all that – the time wasted, only I couldn’t have known. The situations and people who just…ought to have been better.
  6. I want to find time to recharge so that I can appreciate blessings more acutely – because there are many. Teaching is the joy of my life, for example. And I actually get paid for doing something which means that much to me.
  7. I found that with my out of office on, publishing and writing folks still filled up my inboxes across socials because they need help. I don’t think I have anything spare right now. I also realised that, much as I adore people, socials were depleting my energy. I feel compelled to stay in touch and also, partly through not having been promoted as a writer, I feel compelled to always be ON. Engaged. But I’m too tired. I can’t keep this up any more. All apps off my home screen, and possibly will come off my phone, but it’s not practical just yet.
  8. I realise that I am going to have to cut a few ties, frankly. Though I am an adult, I am still seeking approval from family members who will never approve of me because my own mother didn’t approve of me and the lie settled. It’s still there. I’ve had enough now. There are other people in my life whose demands on me exceed what I am able to give; it’s tough to say, but it’s time.
  9. I want to concentrate on beauty, breathing, my kids, books, hearth and home. You may know, if you’ve kept an eye on me elsewhere, that over the past year for reasons we don’t know, threatening behaviour has happened towards me in my own home and an area of my garden was vandalised. I have not felt safe at home for some time, but I have spent the past few months strengthening boundaries, adding lights, security cameras, being supported by the community policing team and the council, who have been delightful, and by my lovely local community. We don’t know who has done this or why. For someone who comes from a trauma background, to feel invaded in this way by persons unknown has been very stressful. You see another reason I feel burned out? I haven’t felt sanctuary.
  10. I want and need to simplify my life and ringfence time to be alone and to heal. To build the strength to bear sorrow with more equanimity. That will not impact my work, which is teaching and mentoring, but it will in terms of my toleration for others’ demands, people flaking on projects, and open-ended publishing situations. I need shape and structure in a chaotic and restlessly sad world, so I can find my way back home. So I can find myself.