Alicia Brunskill
Bio
Alicia writes about her experiences with anxiety and depression, teaching and learning languages, education and cats. She also shares her poetry and fiction from time to time.
Find her on Twitter: @aliciabrunskill
Stories (40/0)
Recovery Is a Different Road
I wouldn’t precisely describe the journey that I’ve been on for the past few years as recovery from mental illness. I think a better way to describe it would be to say I’ve been learning to manage my illnesses and putting coping strategies in place to improve my quality of life. From the outside that might sound quite cold, clinical even. From the inside, it’s been a process of acceptance, trial and error, patience and tenacity.
By Alicia Brunskill4 years ago in Psyche
Nowhere for Anxiety To Go
Right now, the Corona Virus outbreak is causing most people a lot of anxiety. It’s taken me back to times when I felt like I couldn’t get away from my anxiety for even a moment; that feeling of being a caged animal or of being backed tightly into a corner with no escape route yet desperately needing to flee. I don’t doubt that I’m not alone in feeling like this.
By Alicia Brunskill4 years ago in Psyche
Just Doing Things
After being diagnosed with anxiety and depression, I started trying to work out what exactly was making things more difficult than they used to be. At first, I thought that it had a lot to do with feeling like I was constantly trudging through a field of sludgy mud, on a foggy day with little idea where the edge of the field was. I still think this has a lot to do with it. More recently, I realised that there’s something else that plays quite a big role, at least for me. I don’t seem to be able to just get up and do things anymore. Instead my brain mulls over the things I have to do, it can feel like just a few minutes to me but when I check the clock, I’ll find I’ve lost hours at a time.
By Alicia Brunskill5 years ago in Psyche
Not Feeling Good Enough
I spend a lot of time paralysed by a voice in my head that tells me I’m not good enough or not worthy to follow my ambitions. Some days I lose hours battling with it to get the simplest of things done and it often leaves me wishing I had an off switch for my brain or a way to completely check out of thinking for a while.
By Alicia Brunskill5 years ago in Psyche
- Top Story - July 2019
Living with Anxiety Long-Term Is Like Living in an ApocalypseTop Story - July 2019
My all-time favourite film is The Terminator. I watched it again on the weekend and it set my mind thinking. Why are all my favourite films/video games on the theme of survival or apocalyptic destruction? Why do I find it so hard to find a comedy programme that I don’t find banal and that can really entertain me? Why do the comedies I like always seem to be tinged with at least a hint of disaster?
By Alicia Brunskill5 years ago in Psyche
The Pressure of New Year
After Christmas and surrounding New Year there’s a pressure to change your life, make resolutions, chart the progress you’ve made, celebrate the passing of the past year and welcome the new one. It’s in the media, supermarkets, the high-street, colleagues, family and friends are full of it.
By Alicia Brunskill5 years ago in Psyche
Emerging from a Long Period of Poor Mental Health
Recently I’ve had a few good days in a row, more than my usual sporadic one good day in the straddling mess of bad ones caused by anxiety and depression. I feel different, like I have a purpose and motivation that just didn’t exist a couple of weeks ago. I hesitated to write this for days and kept it as a draft for even longer because I was afraid that putting it into words might break the magic of feeling somewhere close to normal. I wanted to share how I felt though, because even if it’s only a fleeting period of good mental health, I managed to get here once so I can do it again; and so can you.
By Alicia Brunskill5 years ago in Psyche
Stuck in a Winter Loop
If you’re anything like me, as soon as the weather turns a bit colder and the days start getting a bit darker, your body starts to shut down. It doesn’t matter how much I love walks in the cold, crisp air with my dog, all the joys of snow, wrapping up warm in coats and gloves or chopping wood in the garden; my body has other ideas. My brain does too, part of it seems to conspire against the rest of me and forces its very different idea of daily life on me.
By Alicia Brunskill5 years ago in Psyche
Creating a Website for the First Time with WordPress
I’m not a computer wiz so I’ve been using WordPress to create my first website. It’s taken me on a very rewarding journey so far. As well as teaching me some skills, it’s reminded me how fulfilling it can be to challenge yourself to create something that you don’t think you have the ability to do.
By Alicia Brunskill5 years ago in 01
Nellie the Rescuer Cat
In another story, I wrote about how I came to adopt my cat, Nellie, and described some of the impact she had when our lives became mingled with each other. In that piece I touched very briefly on her ability to sense when I’m feeling down and comfort me.
By Alicia Brunskill5 years ago in Petlife
When Muted Emotions Give Relief
It might sound a little bizarre at first, how can dampened emotions provide any kind of relief? Why would you welcome that "nothing zone" from depression where all you do is function? There’s no sparkle, no raison d’être; you retreat within your walls and go through the motions waiting for feeling and enjoyment to return. You wait to live instead of exist, so how could this also be a tonic?
By Alicia Brunskill5 years ago in Psyche
The Best Teachers Have Real World Experience (Opinion)
I have the utmost respect for all those people who teach, have taught and will teach; whatever route they take to do so. It’s not an easy profession and definitely not a leave it at the door kind of job. During the time that I taught in secondary schools, I noticed differences between those teachers who had spent all their lives in education and those who had come into teaching later in life after having had another career. The points I mention below are not indicative of every teacher who never left education. Of course they aren’t. But they are the things that I observed that made me believe that the best teachers had been out in the real world and gained some experience before coming back to share their knowledge.
By Alicia Brunskill5 years ago in Education