Tag: parenting

The Kids

One incredibly worrying thought is how every aspect of my health affects my children. Of course, this blog focuses on my mental health as this is predominantly what changes the day to day with us. My physical health is good, I am young enough and healthy.

We talk openly about mental health – I firmly believe you should as a parent. You OWE your children that. When I look at suicide stats across the world; I panic. It makes my blood run cold. I have fallen foul to the lack of mental health services throughout the UK and I am incredibly lucky to be accessing them now. I genuinely feel if I hadn’t gotten the help I needed; I may not be here.

That fucking scares me. It terrifies me. I don’t want this shit for my kids. I want them to grow up feeling mentally strong and healthy. There is so much shit goes on in every single person’s life, it’s a wonder we all cope. I see signs of anxiety creeping in with my pre-teen daughter and I am worried about how she will cope with this.

I will continue to be open, but, should I be doing more? Accessing services for her? Helping her work through things or letting her use her own resilience to work things out? It’s really hard to know where to step in. I don’t want to be too overbearing and upset her about it; talking about anxiety is really bloody hard.

xo

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!!

x