Thanks for all the kind and helpful messages people have been sending me. They've made me feel that I'm not alone in this world and I'm starting to realise that having a few people who really care about me is better than having hundreds of so-called friends who don't. (But why am I so obsessed with numbers?)

I was really sad when Rob moved to the other side of the world and thought that I would lose him as a friend but it's amazing how much support and love you can get from people far away. It just shows that you don't need lots of friends on your doorstep because modern technology allows us to have friends everywhere and having friends far away means you just have to plan longer and better holidays to go and see them. Hurrah!

Yesterday I felt fine, as I said, but obviously I was a bit unsettled about how my mood had been turned on its head the day before. Today didn't start so well. I was meant to go to the Post Office for H but slept through my alarm and so missed the tiny window of opportunity for picking up undelivered mail. (I hope it wasn't too important.) I woke up at 12.15 and had to quickly get ready for my FLASH appointment. I mentioned FLASH a few weeks ago but although I'm meant to go weekly, I haven't been able to go because I've been so busy - surely a good reason.

I saw a different facilitator-type person today but it was another good meeting. On my way to FLASH, I couldn't see how they could help me. I've had such an up and down few days that I thought I needed a really good counselling session to talk about the issues and why they arose, but that isn't what the FLASH people do. I went in and said that a lot of my original goals weren't valid anymore because I could only get up early on my working days. Also, I said, because I'm more tired now I realise that my goals are a bit over-ambitious. But the FLASH-person told me that it's fine to revise goals. (News to me.) And she also made me realise that I'd made huge steps forward, in that I'm doing so much more than I was doing a few weeks ago and that I should be pleased with my progress.

I mentioned the criticism incident and she drew a diagram showing how a situation can lead to thoughts which in turn lock you into a negative cycle. From that, we realised that while the situation was the trigger, it was my thought-process that was the problem. Which means I'm a classic case for cognitive behavioural therapy. (It's been said before but nothing's ever really happened.) She also helped me realise that instead of seeing myself as this un-manageable unsolvable issue, I saw that I had a contained problem which, with work, could be resolved or at least improved.

It's not her job to do this with me but she can support me in my task. She showed me three books which make up a self-help course to overcome self-esteem. She said she could either photocopy the pages or I could buy them and so I'll be ordering them online later. (I don't think my local bookshop will stock them, or maybe I could ask them to order it. Umm...) Anyway, it was the most productive 20 minutes I've had in ages. Self-help course to the rescue.

Very happily I can say that today was better than yesterday and while yesterday I was convinced that my life consists of many days like that, in reality they just attack me every now and again.

I knew that my reaction yesterday was extreme but I could do nothing about it. Once I was started feeling awful, I was trapped that way for the rest of the evening. Nothing anyone said would make me feel any better and I was just glad when yesterday was over.

My feeling rubbish started with a criticism, in fact it wasn't even a criticism but that's what I perceived it as and how I perceived it was all that matters. I can't take criticism like a normal person and Alice (my old therapist) told me that this is because when someone says something negative about me, it triggers memories of all the other times people have criticised me and this, combined with the fact that it reinforces my own beliefs about myself, creates a momentum that has a much greater effect that the original incident and can temporarily destroy me.

Now, looking at yesterday I can see why it happened; I can see the triggers that were there throughout the day and the past jobs and insecurities they brought with them. It was also important for me to write about it because the fact that I haven't blogged about feeling like that before means I really haven't had to deal with these situations recently. One of the reasons for this is because they are often linked to work situations but now I've realised this, I guess the next thing to do is to try and find a coping strategy so I can nip these 'negative attacks' in the bud and stop them spiralling out of control.

And if there's one positive message I can take from this it's that I may have been mad yesterday but I'm not mad today.

My first thought was to ring my mum. But I'm 28 and trying to be more grown up so I'm writing this instead.

This is my day.

H woke me just before half past seven and I felt awful. I couldn't believe it was time to get up. I went back to sleep until my alarm went off. My eyes were heavy and achy. If I'd been going to college, I wouldn't have got up (which is interesting in itself). Anyway, I dragged myself out of bed and started doing my old nebs as my Ineb broke yesterday. I know, I know electronic things don't just break and the condensation on the inside of the display tells me that I may have had something to do with it. Something like immersing it in too much water. So being extremely tired having not slept that well and having to do nebs which took much longer that the time I'd allowed for them, I was running late. (Come back Ineb I won't get you wet again or leave you on the floor, instead I will treat you like the King you are.)

I just missed the first bus thanks to the bus driver shutting the doors in my face. And as I was waiting at the freezing cold bus stop, I realised that I'd left my phone and lots of fruit at home (banana power was the only way I could see myself getting through the day), and felt like giving up and going home. I know I was going to be late for work now and was so exhausted that I didn't know how I was going to do anything anyway.

But bus arrived. I got on it and made it to work. I sat at my desk and wondered how I was going to function; when my log-in details appeared on the screen, I just stared at them as if my brain had never seen a computer or log-in details before. Finally, (I'm finding it difficult here to convey the problem I had with this but it really was like my brain was frozen) I remembered my password and managed to log-in, phone a few people and do a bit of work.

The only other person in this morning was the other 'super' volunteer. I tried to converse with him about vaguely intellectual things and managed to get his 'quiz' right about when the UN was set up. (1945, if you're wondering.) He went to Oxford (obviously), has just set up a new online magazine about global politics, volunteers for an MP and has got an internship at the Oxfam head office in January. I will be looking out for him as a director of Oxfam in a few years' or as the government's head of policy for international development or the foreign secretary's speech writer. Yes, he's that good.

So when he asked me what my career goals were, I just had to laugh to myself. I'd had the worst morning by far since I'd started at Oxfam. I was feeling that I would probably have to quit volunteering and that any ideas I might have about a career were purely delusional.

I escaped for an early lunch knowing that my staying in the office was pointless and headed straight to a coffee bar for a cappuccino. Yep, I had to resort to caffeine to stop my eyes from aching. It was my last chance and I prayed for it to work. And miraculously it did. Or was it the placebo thing again, or my lunch, or maybe all the water I was drinking (which has worked in the past)?

So I felt better this afternoon and set about writing a press release. I really enjoyed writing it and thought it was pretty good and so was feeling a million times better than I had done this morning. Until that is, I asked my manager-type person if he'd read it and it was very clear that he didn't think it was good. At all.

This was my reaction.

My heart sunk. I felt awful. I felt like the most useless piece of rubbish in the world. I wanted to cry. I felt as if someone had cut me open and taken a piece out of me. I didn't want to be alive. I wanted to evaporate. I hated my job. I hated me. I thought, I'm so rubbish, I can't even be a good volunteer. They'll regret having me. I'm a mistake. All their other volunteers are amazing. I'm not. If I can't even be good when I'm feeling OK, I've got no chance. No chance.

It might seem extreme. OK, I know it's extreme but when all you've got is a job (or not even a job), it becomes a big deal. I don't know how I'm going to do this anymore. If I give up I'll get depressed and if I fail, I'll be depressed. It all seems a lot of effort, and for what? I've hated pretty much all of my jobs and suddenly they seem great. They can't all be that bad. So it must be something about me.

I'm typing this while still in bed. Ah bliss! But, why oh why, have I never thought of this before? If I get a bit too tired to concentrate on the screen, I can lean back with my head against the pillow and continue to type with my eyes closed. Wow! This actually works amazingly well as I don't make many more mistake than I do with my eyes open!

So here I am, in Leeds and back from all my travels around the country. I definitely had a good week but I have had to field a lot of worries and anxieties and stresses and strains. These things hit me like darts; leaving stabs of doubt and pain in their wake because however much I'm trying to change my patterns of thought, your brain can't suddenly change the way its worked for twenty-odd years.

When I was on the train last night, I was thinking that I could try and write a positive list of all the things I've achieved recently (as opposed to the things I did wrong). I could write how I've been confident and happy meeting new people and managed to hold my own with people who are much cleverer and know much more (I couldn't really know any less) about international affairs. Or I could write about how the other volunteers at Oxfam have been to Oxford or got MAs in international development, or both, have lived abroad and are about five years younger than me, but how rather than making me feel rubbish in comparison like it has done in the past (OK it is still a bit) I'm thinking, I've snuck in the back door, now I'm in a similar position to these people, hurrah! So I'm trying not to think about the future and trying for once to live in the present. I've just got to do my best and make the most of it.

But of course, it's all built on a lie. A not having cf lie.

And lying is apparently bad. This may be obvious to most of you but to me lying, or bending the truth as I prefer to call it, gives me more confidence and enables me to enjoy situations I wouldn't otherwise be able to enjoy. Humans lie all the time and I thought I was just being a normal human but having just read "How to Change your Life in Seven Steps" by John Bird (The guy who started The Big Issue), I've realised that not only am I lying to others but also, and far worse, is that I'm lying to myself.

It doesn't help that I look younger than I am so it's easy to brush away a few years and it's not as if I'm going to tell the truth and say well actually I've done nothing for the past six months.

Also, I know lying is bad because I've been here before. When I started my first proper journalism job I was over the moon and it was one of the best times in my life. I was rushing about interviewing people and being uber-confident and writing stories and loving it but I was also living big lie. I hadn't told them about cf, was petrified of them finding out and sacking me and the chances of me getting ill were greatly increased by the stress trying not to cough too much and having to hide my medicines.

Writing about it now, one of my so-called best times in my life doesn't really seem so great. But it wasn't just cf, I also made out I'd had the life I'd always wanted: a great time at uni; loads of friends; boyfriends at 12 became proper boyfriends; blah, blah, blah. All this time I knew I was making trouble for myself and I knew it couldn't last. When I visualised myself I could clearly see that I was walking on a tower of playing cards; they were swaying as I walked and I knew that sooner or later I'd come crashing down to earth. And, of course, that is what I did, spectacularly.

So, why am I doing it all again? Why am I lining myself up beautifully for another disaster? Why can I not just accept who I am?

I'm no longer riding the cards and know that I have a much more solid foundation now. If there's only one thing I've achieved in the last six years then that's got to be it. My foundation is better because I've accepted a lot of things about myself, but crucially it seems, not cf.

These last few days I've been shown a glimpse of a life that I want and in a way it's not surprising that I've got so many thoughts going round my head. The other reason I came crashing down was because to me my job was everything, well actually it was the only thing I had. I didn't have a social life, or a boyfriend or lots of friends or hobbies, work was it. When doing A levels and at uni, I'd used all my energies to get the grades I wanted and the reason for this was that for some reason my whole life has been based around this vision of me having a wonderfully successful career. I was 23 then, I'd been aiming for goals my whole life, but when was I going to live?

These past few months I've been living more but not working but these couple last of weeks I've been working and I've been happier but I think I can safely say that any if I want some sort of a career, I'll pretty much have to accept that I won't have much of a social life.

But of course, who knows what's going to happen next? I've got a stupid annoying cough right now and while, of course, it's not the end of the world, things aren't exactly certain.

I thought that by writing this I'd arrive at some wonderfully simple conclusion but I'm no nearer that than when I started. I think I'll just do my meds and go to Oxfam on Tuesday and Wednesday and do my job to the best of my ability. Maybe if I do rather than think or plan, the solution will become clear. Or maybe not? But you see, if you're continually fielding your thoughts, if you block things out of you mind, if you push things away without dealing with them, they don't go away but linger around and strike you down when you least expect it. I know, I've been there too many times. And while I haven't come up with a conclusion maybe by writing about my thoughts and fears, I'll slowly come to accept them (and me) and I won't be stuck down by serious depression in a few months' time.

A quick hello to anyone who's still reading my blog. I haven't been posting because I've been very busy which means that the times I'm not very busy, I'm very tired. Things are going well, I think, but I haven't been thinking so much (because I've been so busy) which is good.

I'm meant to be proofreading some stuff now but thought I would post as I'm blatantly not doing my work and finding other household-y type things to do. But I better get back to it as I'm off to Oxford later today! Yep, I know, my body is in shock too, I've gone from being Ms Inactive to Ms Active. Mind you, this should be my busiest week, or at least I hope it is.

My thyroid tablets seem to be working or maybe they're just acting as a placebo? I don't know but I don't really care as long as I don't collapse before the week ends.