Mental health routines are incredibly helpful in looking after our general wellbeing. Using daily mental health routines gives a sense of structure, and using routines to deal with specific events, can help us to have a sense of control. In this blog post, I discuss different types of routines and provide some suggestions to create your own routines for mental health.
For those of us who live with anxiety, traveling anywhere can be incredibly difficult. Whether a short or long journey, the anxiety can be so great that it holds us back from going anywhere alone. Often, we cannot overcome anxiety, but we can find ways to manage it. One helpful way to manage anxiety is to create an anxiety travel kit.
If you are someone who experiences anxiety, you will know how exhausting it is. Trying to carry on with everyday life, with your stomach in knots and your brain full of fog is incredibly challenging. Anxiety isn’t just in our minds either. For many people, anxiety brings with it many physical symptoms too. There are many things you can do to help manage anxiety. Read on for my top five natural remedies for anxiety.
This week is Mental Health Awareness Week and I want to talk about why I began to share my mental health story. I also want to talk about why I think it is still important that I continue to do so. This blog has been written in support of the This Is Me campaign, which aims to raise awareness and change attitudes about mental health, by the sharing of personal stories.
Stress is problematic for us all. Left unchecked, stress can lead to increased anxiety and low mood. However, when you have existing mental health challenges, being mindful of stress becomes even more critical. In my mental health journey, I have learned that I must deal with stress quickly, to avoid any negative impact on my wellbeing. To do this, I created the acronym R.E.D.U.C.E to remind myself what I need to do to take care of myself as soon as I notice I am feeling stressed.
Distraction techniques are an incredibly valuable tool in our mental health wellness kit, to help us to deal with overwhelming emotions and situations. For example, anxiety can feel impossible to sit with. Urges to harm ourselves can feel overwhelming. A low mood can mean our head is full of negative thoughts. Heightened emotions can feel so distressing that it becomes tempting to self-medicate with drugs or alcohol. I have had to manage all of these challenges in my own mental health journey and I understand how exhausting and difficult it can be. However, I have found that by learning to use distraction techniques, I have been able to find healthy ways to manage the most overwhelming of feelings.
I made the decision recently, to stop taking my Sertraline antidepressant. In hindsight, I could have approached this in a much less aggressive manner, but I stand by my decision to stop. Sertraline was causing me to have emotional numbness. I was unable to cry, which I was finding incredibly frustrating.
I am now six months into my treatment for Hypothyroidism, but my tiredness levels are still fluctuating. Despite my most recent blood test showing my TSH levels as normal, I am yet again experiencing chronic fatigue. Why is this happening if my levels are normal?
Anxiety is such an exhausting beast. To venture outside my comfort zone, with it turning cartwheels in my gut, often feels like too much of an ask. Anxiety says that to keep it quiet, I must do as it commands. I must avoid all risks, avoid new people, and always say no to anything I’ve never done before, for fear of looking like an idiot. Anxiety tells me this is the way to feel comfortable and prevent mental pain. Anxiety is a big fat liar.
The phrase, “Do one thing every day that scares you,” is from ‘Everybody’s Free (to Wear Sunscreen)’ a spoken word song by Baz Luhrmann. In my journey with anxiety disorder, I have learned the benefits of doing things that scare you. That particular line from the song has stuck with me and has become somewhat of a mantra.
I have lived with social anxiety at varying levels all my life. I have a diagnosis of Generalised Anxiety Disorder (GAD) and anxious/dependent personality disorder. This has improved over recent years. However, I still experience many times where my anxiety levels significantly impact my daily life.
My lack of writing , specifically about my coastal path adventures, stands as evidence as to how much life can suddenly change. At my last time of writing , on the back of my gender confirmation surgery going wrong, I was in the worst mental health place I had been for a while. My anxiety was so high that going outside was a challenge that took me two days to work up to and a week to recover from. I needed solitude, finding people to be just too much to cope with. I couldn’t handle people being close to this body of mine which had returned to feeling like it was wrapped in barbwire and if I moved too suddenly or someone moved against me I would be cut to ribbons.
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