Rebecca's Blogs

In previous blogs I have spoken a lot about how I use Minecraft, gaming and mindfulness colouring to wind down. All of those things offer me a chance to mentally escape my worries for a brief while. However it’s not solely what would be referred to as “recreational activities” that enable one to become relaxed and calm. Depending upon our own passions and interests, certain activities that involve work and learning are very effective with allowing us to unwind as well.

As I have previously mentioned, I had no idea that I had HSAM (Highly Superior Autobiographical Memory) until I was diagnosed with it at 23 years old; nor did I know that the condition even existed until I was 21 years old. It was my firm belief that every person thought, felt and remembered in exactly the same way as I do.

Yet regardless of whether I knew about my style of memory being somewhat rare or not, there was always an activity (which I now know to be related to my HSAM) that I enjoyed doing since I was a preteen.

Since the very beginning of my life, I have always experienced anxiety about unpredictability. These episodes aren’t just mere moments of daily stress either. On the contrary, whenever an unexpected change happens my natural reaction is to completely lose control, and have intense meltdowns where I’m uncontrollably yelling as well as thrashing around on the floor. Now I have learned mindfulness exercises (of which I’ll soon discuss) that enable me to gradually pull my mind out of the terror. 

The first thing that comes to mind when many of us think of mindfulness, is that it solely involves meditation and/or breathing exercises. Yet despite many being available that do involve meditation, there are also other ways of practising mindfulness. Doing artwork is one example. In truth activities which could be termed as artwork are vast. But the reason why visual art (that of which is intended to be aesthetic to someone by sight or purely and simply seeing) is mentioned in the following paragraph is merely because it’s an activity which I myself do.

Throughout the past few decades, my challenges with anxiety have been talked over, discovered, misunderstood, pondered over and so forth. Psychology and the understanding of life science, in general, have also come a long way in thirty years. Nowadays many of my current and recent therapists have advised me to do mindfulness exercises.

Speaking verbally is something that I’ve always found to be very difficult, both physically and emotionally. It just doesn’t come naturally to me and that causes me to feel very anxious whilst talking. The feeling I get isn’t social insecurity or shyness.