Tag: love yourself

Purposeful Writing

The idea of this blog is to use writing as a cathartic tool. I want to be able to question things and write them down. I want to use is it a mechanism to aid my recovery. I believe it helps.

I’m not writing posts with the intention of becoming a blogger, I’m not writing to share with friends, I’m not writing because I want to discuss anything with anyone. I’m doing it for me. I think it will be useful to look back throughout the weeks, to see how far I have come. To potentially answer some of the questions I have asked.

You see mental health recovery isn’t a linear process. It is fraught with ups and downs. I can have a really good day; achieving many things and feel powerful. The next day can be a shambles. I know in the grand scheme of things the great days are building me up each time, creating a foundation for stronger mental health. I am lucky that I can see that now – as in the past I couldn’t.

Whilst reading a mind management book and during therapy sessions recently – I have realised that I have to WORK at myself to get better. When I started my sessions I expected someone to come in and just fix me. That was incredibly naive of me. This is down to me.

I have learnt that past trauma’s cause a lot of the negative behaviours that I demonstrate when having a particularly bad day.

I have also learnt that if I want to get better, I need to recognise when my resources are low.

I have learnt I have to start to love myself (work in progress – current progress….. 10%? 15%? Too low, regardless)

I have learnt that to help others I first must help myself.

I have learnt that to fully recover from trauma I have to understand it/make sense of it then let it go (very difficult, also work in progress!)

I have learnt that I know myself better than anyone else does.

I have learnt to understand my negative thoughts a little better.

I have learnt to set boundaries and say NO.

And the biggest lesson I have learnt is that I am not TRYING to get better. I am succeeding. I am seeing the differentiation between having a bad day and having a bad life. I am beginning to look at things in a more positive light. I am succeeding.

There is certainly a long way to go. I have a lot of things I do not understand yet. I am learning.

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Practising Positive Affirmations

During a chat with a friend about mental health, she suggested writing positive affirmations daily.

Three nice things about myself – every… single… day!? It is SO hard.

I have an automatic response to regularly beat myself up, despite what I achieve. I’ll be honest it annoys the fuck out of me – but I still do it! Say for example; I complete a piece of work that achieves a really high score; I will still focus on the one grammatical error that is pointed out.

I am having to slowly train my brain to stop myself doing this. I know it isn’t going to be easy; particularly when I have a bad day.

A great deal of my therapy centres around the way I treat myself.

I am often told of my hypocritical positioning. I would never dream of treating others the way I treat myself; it’s harsh. So why do I do it to myself!!?? I’m certainly a hypocrite. It is years of self inflicted torment that I am trying to undo. Positive affirmations are only one small portion of this.

So I am trying it! I am a week into my positive affirmations. It’s actually quite lovely. I forgot what I had wrote on the first few days, so I just flicked back and it made me smile. I am super hopeful that continuing to do this will give me a book full of amazing things about myself.

I’m guessing that doing this alongside therapy will hopefully change my outlook and perceptions about myself. I hate that I treat myself this way; I would be devastated if my children did this to themselves. A habit can be broken. Taking tiny baby steps!!

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