Drink Lots of Water

I have just written a list of things to live by, rules, I guess.

My first and biggest rule is drink lots of water. It’s really fucking important. I can’t stress that enough.

Hydration is key to good brain function and it makes you feel a lot more human too!! I find it really helps when I am going through a bad bout of depression. It only helps when I remember to do it, though.

The list was prompted by the mind management book I am reading (I know I have talked about this in the last few posts – I am enjoying the book!)

I have typed my list up, printed it on nice paper and I am going to look at it every morning when I write my positive affirmations & reasons to be grateful (thank you to the person that suggested that in my comments!!).

I suppose the idea behind printing it out is that I can surround myself in my beliefs and positive words in the hope it will re-train my brain and give me a better outlook on life. I am hopeful. Half a lifetime of depression, suicidal thoughts and anxiety will not wash away with the creation of a poster but it seems a good start.

Another thing on my list; get lots of rest. This is a new one to me. I love to be busy. I hate to be still. I am very, very high functioning for a depressed person. I hate this so much. I don’t like to hate something that comes naturally but I get so overwhelmed and frustrated that my body will not slow down.

That is something else I am re-training within my brain. It is OK to rest. It IS OK. The world will not stop turning if I sit down and relax. I know these feelings centre around guilt. Guilt for not doing ‘enough…’ The idea that there is always something to be done. Housework, studying, reading, bathing the dog, visiting family, educating the kids… the list is endless… It is exhausting.

I actually welcomed lock down with open arms. Not the pandemic, the fear, the virus, the grim bits. I welcomed the slowness. The idea of not being able to do all the things I felt I needed to do. It has made me massively re-evaluate how I go about life. I am certainly learning that life is too short to give too much of a damn about how clean my house is.

My life always has and always will centre around family and love. I surround myself with the people I love for a reason. They make me feel good. I have learnt hard and fast that having negative people around you is a bad path to follow, I have let them go.

That’s all for now, remember to drink lots of water.

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.

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!!

Social Media Control

The number one reason I deleted Facebook: my mental health.

I was suffering. The constant negativity. The inaccuracies about current affairs. The pandemic. The bitching. The arguing. The ‘I’m doing better than you’ bullshit.

I deleted it to protect myself. I am vulnerable right now, more so back then – but it still remains.

At first I felt I was missing out, that feeling slowly dissipated. I decided that if people wanted to know what’s going on with me, they can get in touch – old school. This has actually helped build relationships with family members!

I logged on today to download my photo’s and videos – I have found it really hard not having access to photo’s, particularly as one of my therapy sessions included selecting 3 photo’s from the past!! (I had to call on my best friend to send some over.)

I’m so pleased I have got access to the photographs and videos now, lot’s of lovely memories and silly moments.

The first thing I noticed when I logged in was the top post on my news feed. A friend talking about the buebonic plague. I mean – fucking hell – that is not what I need right now. I didn’t read it properly; it vaguely debunked myths about the new plague hysteria.

I am all for people debunking myths, I really am. However, I found this behaviour is what led to my ‘downfall’ in social media land. I was constantly chasing people trying to educate them about the inaccuracies they posted. No, I wasn’t a member of the grammar police, I’m not one of them… I mean fake news, bad sources and sharing bullshit claims.

A lot of it at the time centred around the British public’s initial reaction to Covid-19. People became hysterical – making up stories and sharing ‘articles’ that had no factual content. This led me to have a severe panic attack during and after a regular appointment for therapy.

Other posts focused on race, religion and ethnicity. Now, bear in mind that I take pride in my close circle of friends – they are good people. I don’t associate with racists – but some people do. For example; a friend would post a killer article about the plight of refugees. I love that, educating their followers with a news feed full of beautiful accurate information. The problem I found was THEIR followers – commenting and trying to dissect things that were facts and when they failed, resorting to racism and xenophobia.

When I Initially deleted my account, I convinced myself it was because of the bad things happening; Covid, racism, sexism etc.

After a few months of reflection I realise it is not the subject matter of these things that cause me the problems. It is the way people use information and twist, contort and change it to suit their ideals.

I have learnt to search out the facts, educate myself and stop myself over-thinking by making assumptions. I love to learn about difficult topics, it is the only way I feel I can progress as a person.

I guess what I am trying to say is that I understand bad things happen and that they will affect me in one way or another. How I allow them to affect me is totally different though.

If I choose to read the bullshit posted on social media- I am part of the problem. If I choose to read from legitimate sources (not newspapers, folks) then I am allowing myself to develop. Then I get to choose if I am scared. I get to make that decision myself.

I suppose the outcomes of my experience are that;

-Reflection is really important. Always look back at where you were and see how you have developed.

-Allowing such a huge amount of information into your daily life can have dramatic consequences. I feel lighter since deactivation.

-Obtaining information from reputable sources – IE; people with lived experiences, scientists, non-biased news articles – is CRUCIAL to how you attach emotion to problems.

-I have SO much more time for myself and my family. I have time to reflect, to write, to clean more things, to walk more. That time used to be used exercising my thumb.

-If there is one bit of advice I can give it is – try! If you feel social media is a problem in your life and is dragging you down then deactivate for a while. It doesn’t have to be forever. I’m not completely social media free but I certainly choose my content wisely now – it is having a noticeable affect.

Intrusive Thoughts

Whilst chatting with a friend, she revealed that everyone has intrusive thoughts. I found that hard to believe, some people seem far too level headed for that shit.

So I spent a little time researching it and apparently it is true – nearly everyone will have experienced intrusive thoughts at some point in their life.

You see the idea of the thoughts is not that you want to harm, hurt or do anything bad – it’s just a thought. It’s not an action. There is no intent behind it.

When I experience intrusive thoughts- I panic. I feel like a complete nut case and wonder what the fuck my head is doing to me. I had them so often at one point that I continually that I thought I was losing my mind.

I’ve mentioned in previous blogs that I had post natal depression and anxiety. During that time the intrusive thoughts were so intense that I would feel debilitated. A simple trip to the shops would end in panic attacks. Bus journeys would send my anxiety through the roof. People talking to my baby – no! I felt like everyone was a threat.

The problem with these thoughts is that when I look back, I know they are completely irrational (that majority of the time!) and I know that my brain is thinking them because ultimately I want to protect my babies. That being said; when I am in the full throes of a panic attack there is absolutely no way I can use that rationale. It is just not possible.

Apparently it is something to do with fight or flight, the adrenaline, the brain preparing you for potential conflict. It’s a useful tool to have, it’s just a shame it is something that massively clouds judgement and ‘normal’ behaviour.

During my research, I learnt that intrusive thoughts can be particularly bad for a person with OCD. This is something my therapist has suggested I may be suffering from – we are going to look into it when my sessions come to a close. That could explain the severity of the intrusive thoughts and could provide some insight as to why they can feel so debilitating.

I am now learning to accept these intrusive thoughts, allow them in but not let them take a hold. It is really fucking hard. There are days I just can’t do that. But the good days are outweighing the bad at the moment, so I am certainly achieving something.

Am I Making Myself Depressed?

I have learnt the difference between depression and depressive mood. Depression, generally, is a constant state of low mood. Depressive mood can fluctuate between positive mood and depressed mood.

I have been diagnosed as depressed. I am medicated for that.

It has really got me thinking. I -although diagnosed with depression – am generally a happy person. I find the beauty in the small things in life, I love intensely, I enjoy doing things and being around my favourite people. All these things – in my opinion – equate to happiness (I know this is measured on vast scales and differs from person to person but.. stick with me.)

I have good days and I have bad days. I experience the range of emotions that the majority of humans do – anger, disgust, surprise, contempt, happiness, sadness and fear.

I firmly believe I have not been equipped with the knowledge or resources to know how to deal with these emotions, until I sought help from a therapist. I rejected the idea that I deserved to be happy. I punished myself for achievements. I thought I was stupid and not worthy. This could be construed as depression, as the feeling of worthlessness overrides practical thoughts, yet I don’t think it is.

Punishing myself has always been my ‘go to’ emotion. I presume this is an effect of the trauma of bullying. The therapist informed me that learned behaviours – compulsions – like this are very hard to change, though not impossible. I suppose the reason for writing this down is to remind myself that this behaviour is not forever.

All of this leads me to think that maybe I am not suffering from depression? I may have been conditioned to believe so. If I can be happy at times then depressive mood may take over and swoop in, causing me to believe I am depressed. I don’t know. I’m not doctor, it’s just an idea.

Society is quick to give something a name or a label. I was happy to discover that I had depression! Not because I wanted it but because I could finally put a name to these feelings and find a cure (ha). Now that I am 15 years down the line, I recognise my naivety to thinking there was a quick fix.

Now don’t get me wrong, I am not negating the doctor’s that diagnosed me (multiple times). I am sure they had their reasoning. I filled out forms and answered questions which obviously pointed to ‘depression.’ It’s just the idea that it is something less ‘permenant’ has struck a chord with me.

The two may seem much of a muchness, but to me depression is an all-consuming illness that takes over and swamps your mind and body. I don’t feel that every day. When I do feel it, it hits hard – but this is the same for the positive feelings I have too.

So I do ponder… am I making myself depressed? Has this diagnosis/label caused me to believe I am much worse than I really am? It’s possible. I am not underplaying the shit I have been through. Every part of this ‘journey’ has been valid and pretty fucking traumatic, I am just trying to see things from a different perspective for now. I am certainly going to think about this a lot more over the course of the next few weeks.