Category: Mental Health
It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year!
It is upon us.
The insurmountable pressure to be happy about everything, normal won’t do, it has to be absolute unadulterated enthusiasm about all things ‘Christmassy’ and that can range from who does the best mince pies to this year’s John Lewis ad. When that first advent calendar door opens… BOOM. You better have a smile on your face for the next 25 days, attend everything your invited to, wear a Christmas jumper to work, join in Secret Santa, embarrass yourself at the Christmas party, OR ELSE!
Let the Festive Fakery begin….
Free at last!.
I have been going through a confusing period with my writing recently. I have a few unfinished blogs that I keep going back to but not really getting much further along with. I keep questioning what I am writing, should I even be writing about it?, should I say that?, changing things around, taking bits out, putting bits in, my heart isn’t fully commited to what I am writing and that is most unusual for me, but then all of a sudden, it struck me, it became obvious. I am entering into the next phase and what has gone before is no longer relevant because without realising, I’ve won! I’ve made it through to the next round.
From the Ashes.
‘And just as the Phoenix rose from the ashes, she too will rise. Returning from the flames, clothed in nothing but her strength, more beautiful than ever before’
– Shannen Heartzs
1st July 2019.
‘Phew, this is hard.
This is almost harder than before, because now it’s not new, it’s just here, all of the time, only now I have lost the fight I had in me to make it go away, because what’s the point if it just comes back again?. Nothing’s changing. Not even when I try my hardest. Maybe it will never change.
I am existing right now, existing for other people, because it would be too painful for them if I didn’t. Well I guess if we are to take positives, that means I can’t be the selfish person that my ex-partner would love to tell me I was on a regular basis.. so there is that I suppose’.
This was my diary entry for today.
What if?.
It’s back again.
I have felt it looming around in the past few weeks. I’ve felt the weight of it, it sits on my chest on a morning when my alarm goes off, sometimes it lets me doze back off, sometimes it will keep me awake, just to make me watch the clock “tick tock”, past the time I could have gone to the gym…. “tick tock”… past the time I could have had to make myself a healthy breakfast, “tick tock”, past the time where I could have had time to put my make up on…it stays there , just the right amount of time, just long enough to make sure that when I finally get out of bed I am racked with guilt, self loathing and generally feeling like shit. Then comes the sigh, the sigh that signifies the next phase, the release of the invisible asshole that has been sitting on my chest, the sigh that means I can no longer put off the inevitable, I need to get out of this bed.
Another day in Paradise.Read More »
Are you tough enough?
It has just been Mental Health Awareness week and I have seen lately a lot of discussion flying around particularly on Twitter to do with mental toughness and mental resilience, largely fuelled by Piers Morgan and his incessant need to self promote by being deliberately controversial about things he doesn’t really care about. Sometimes I agree with him, sometimes I don’t, on this current issue, I do see where he is coming from in suggesting that mental resilience should be taught in schools, and I do believe teaching any positive life skill to children can only be a good thing, however it could also reinforce the stereotype that if you are struggling with mental illness then that means you must be weak, that you must be a little bit less than, and as we all know, or should do, that is simply not the case.Read More »
You have to laugh!
Something that I am noticing more and more lately is that as a society we are fast in danger of loosing our fun factor, our ability to laugh. There is this wonderful group of people, ‘The ‘professionally offended’ , they are the people who once upon a time no one would invite to dinner parties or social gatherings, but who have now found their audience through the medium of social media and are wreaking revenge for all of the missed opportunities they had over the years to spoil our fun.
And the saddest thing of all is, they appear to be winning.Read More »
Lets talk about suicide.
Everytime someone in the public eye passes tragically from suicide. It starts to become the hot topic on social media and in the press for a few weeks. Everyone starts to talk more about how we need to try harder to reduce the stigma around mental health issues and suicide, and then as quickly as conversation comes, it goes away again. The important question is, does the temporary heightened awareness and outpouring of grief that we share with strangers on social media, about people we have more than likely never met make us feel more comfortable talking about suicide and mental health issues in the longer term amongst our family and friends?. Does it help to significantly reduce the stigma surrounding suicide?, In my opinion and more importantly, my experience. No it does not.Read More »
Fabulous February.
I know I have been off the grid for a while. I did start a blog post in December about Christmas but then Christmas kicked in and kicked that to the kerb!. I dislike Christmas intensely and have done for a long time, so I really worked myself up this time around, knowing I was going to have to get through it whilst also managing this illness, therefore work twice as hard at pretending to be twice as happy than I actually was about everything, because that it what Christmas is right? as I like to call it , A Holly Jolly Headfuck!. So needless to say I am glad it’s all over.Read More »