Rachel Sarah XO

Hey guys!
It's been a couple of months since I last did a mental health post, but since it's mental health awareness week, I thought that now would be the perfect time, also the theme this year is anxiety, so I feel I can play a part in this year's awareness week. Although this post isn't about anxiety and I'm sure you're sick of me talking about it by now (you can see all my mental health related posts here and there's a fair few on anxiety) this post will be focused on how your illness doesn't define you.

So I've always thought, if there's one small good detail about having a mental illness, it's that yes, other people may be able to do stuff a lot easier than you, but they're never challenging themselves. When you have a mental illness and you have to do something that may seem completely super easy for someone else, you're always challenging yourself and helping yourself and that makes for one awesome person.

I know that right now I'm feeling very hypocritical writing this post as I'm currently looking for a job and when you're applying for jobs, it feels very much like your illness defines you. You have to make the decision of not mentioning your illness or mentioning it and not getting the job, which absolutely sucks and that shouldn't be the way things are. But it does make you begin to think "oh god, my illness does define me". But I can promise you, it absolutely doesn't.

If you're reading this now, it obviously means you haven't given up and I'm proud of you for that. We all have bad days, some worse than others.

If our illnesses defined us, we would be walking around with a things over our heads that say "ANXIETY: I get anxious a lot.", "DEPRESSION: I'm often feel empty." "BI-POLAR: I have intense mood-swings."
Imagine how judgey people would be? The good thing about that not existing, is that we can often choose who judges us. We don't have to make people aware we have an illness, because it's something that goes on inside our heads. No one else can hear it, see it or feel it except us. We have a choice of who we can tell our problems too, we have a choice of who we want to trust.

So I suppose what I'm trying to say is, trust who you want to trust, challenge yourself everyday, try to be the best person you can be. And do not let your illness define you.

I have a lot of pride and love towards people who are so open about their illnesses. I also have a lot of pride and love towards people who aren't quite ready to open up about it yet, a time will come when you've bottled it up so much that it will all come pouring out.

(Jeez, I feel like a rambly preacher. I'm not sure how rambly this post was, it was a spur of the moment post and I did no planning for this so it may be taken down within the next week but whatever.)

If you ever need to talk, go and add my personal facebook (here) and send me a message, or follow me on Twitter (here) and give me a dm. I'm never ever going to turn anybody away.

You too can join in the chat about mental health this week by going on twitter and using the hashtag #mentalhealthawarenessweek and let your tweets run wild.

That's all for now,
Rachel. xo

So, people always say 'people are ignorant towards the things they fear or do not understand', well please, start understanding, it's not rocket science.

I'd say this post is inspired by my dad, he's super ignorant when it comes to mental health and just doesn't really take an interest and doesn't bother to research it, whereas my mum has experienced it herself and it runs on her side of the family so she understands it a lot more.

So, one down side to having depression is the sheer lack of motivation you have, I know that recently it's hit me really hard so I've been finding it hard to do simple things like, take a shower, make dinner, get dressed. So there's pleeeenty of things my dad's said to me recently that I'd quite happily slap him in the face for if he says it again, like:

• "For god's sake, how long have you been lounging on that sofa for? It's been a week now."
• "WILL YOU JUST GET OUT OF YOUR PYJAMAS FOR ONCE?"
• "Wash your hair, it looks beyond greasy."
• "Stop feeling sorry for yourself and get some housework done."
• Being called a 'lazy shit' is always a fun one.
• My sleeping pattern is completely messed up, I'll sleep on the sofa during the day and then stay up all night downstairs so "If I come downstairs tomorrow morning for work and you're still down here I'm going to make sure you don't sleep."

Okay, this is my second mental health post in two days. I feel this needs to be said.

If you feel like you may have symptoms of depression, anxiety, OCD or an eating disorder. You need to ask for help. Asking for help is not going to make you seem weak like some people think it will. If you don't ask for help and you don't have that support system there for you, god knows what might happen to you. Asking for help might not even be going to the doctors to try and get a referral to see a counsellor, it could just be telling a parent, a friend, anyone that's close to you but you need to make someone aware of what you're feeling. I know I definitely left it really late, I'd been having panic attacks and having low moods 2/3 years before I even told my parents about it, I told them when things started to get debilitating which isn't good because when it came to seeing a counsellor, it was harder for her to help me because I'd let things get so bad. Also, maybe getting a diagnosis could give you some kind of closure, I wasn't prepared to start recovery until I knew exactly what was going on which turned out be general anxiety disorder, social anxiety, panic disorder and depression (yey for things! -.-).

I'm going to put down some symptoms of depression, anxiety and ocd, if you feel like you have a lot of the symptoms, you must tell someone before it develops into to something more serious. The sooner you see someone about it, the quicker they can prevent it from developing.

Depression:

• continuous low moods or sadness.
• feeling hopeless and helpless
• having low self-esteem 
• feeling tearful
• feeling guilt-ridden
• feeling irritable and intolerant of others 
• having no motivation or interest in things
• finding it difficult to make decisions
• not getting any enjoyment out of life
• feeling anxious or worried 
• having suicidal thoughts or thoughts of harming yourself.
• moving or speaking more slowly than usual 
• change in appetite or weight (usually decreased, but sometimes increased) 
• unexplained aches and pains
• lack of energy or lack of interest in sex (loss of libido)
• changes to your menstrual cycle
• disturbed sleep (for example, finding it hard to fall asleep at night or waking up very early in the morning)

So last week I did my 'how to recognise a panic attack' post and I'm thinking about doing a weekly mental health related post as it got a pretty good response last time.
This time round I'm going to be discussing depression and how it can affect your motivation.

So, depression can take a lot out of you. You may not want to wake up in the morning and you may want to stay in bed all day... Everyday. This is just one of the symptoms of depression. You'll often feel exhausted, overly-tired and just very rough.
Lack of motivation can actually make you feel much worse as you'll lie in bed all day doing nothing and at the end of the day you'll go "oh crap, I didn't actually do anything productive today." As someone who doesn't go to college, doesn't have a job and has no means of transport, this is something that's been happening a lot recently so I thought for my sake and for the sake of others, I'm going to make a list of things you can do to try and be a bit more motivated.

Now I'm going to tell you ways of getting yourself off that sofa and doing something a bit more productive, you'll need to start off with baby steps though:

• Playing video games, reading a book and writing can actually be really motivational, you may have no motivation to get out of bed but if you do any of these things, I suppose you're achieving something whether it's meaningful or not.
• Start a blog, that's what I did. Again, this is something that some people may not think is exactly motivational but it's something to be proud of if it becomes successful. I try my hardest to do blog posts almost daily (depending on my mood) and if I complete 5 or 6 blog posts in a week I feel like I've achieved something.
• Set yourself a list of chores. So you may be sat there thinking 'why would I do that, I hate housework'. Yes, that may be, but if you complete a list of chores you will often be rewarded in doing so. Receiving rewards and praise is a great way of becoming more motivated.
• Think positively. If you're not thinking positively, you're going to be in a slump all day which isn't going to help with your motivation problem. If you think positively, you're going to be much more pleased if you do something productive with your day.
• Make a playlist. Make a playlist of songs that make you happy and make you want to dance around your room all day. That way you're going to be getting yourself out of bed. Music can also help when doing housework, I find doing chores much easier if I have music playing really loudly, haha. For me, it's extremely cheesy 80's pop songs.
• Get into a routine. Set yourself a time to wake up, get up, have breakfast, get ready and get on with things that need to be done.
• Don't be disheartened. If you're reading this now and thinking 'YES I'M GOING TO DO ALL THE THINGS TOMORROW' and you wake up and feel awful, don't be disheartened, there's always tomorrow. Things like this take time to get used to if you've been lacking motivation for a while. Start off easy like reading a book and work your way up to going out and doing the weekly shop or whatever.
• Exercise. You get on that Wii Fit board that's been hiding away in the cupboard for months or whack out the Zumba waistband and you do those dances. Exercise is a great way to become more motivated. Things like Zumba are great because it's fun and you're making your body feel better.
• Don't sleep too much or too little. I can't say anything about sleeping too little. I'm the worst at the step. I get to sleep at around 5am and then wake up at 2:30pm and there's the majority of my day gone. If you're like me and just can't sleep, taking 3/4 of a Nytol tablet will knock you out within 15 minutes and you don't wake up with the Nytol hangover. If you're to take a full tablet before bed, be warned, you will wake up with all the symptoms of a hangover in the morning,

Hello there, me again.
Not having the greatest time at the moment in the way of anxiety and emotions and what not. I'm on the verge of dropping out of college because when I do manage to get myself into college I can't concentrate because I'm worried about having a panic attack and then when I'm not at college I'm getting behind on work and everything's just piling up and leaving me feeling awful. I just feel like if I don't get the work done I'm never going to even pass this course and then I'll have to re-do the entire year, whereas if I drop out now, work on my anxiety and get my head sorted I can return next year and start a fresh, because let's face it if I fail this course this year and don't get on to level 3, I'm going to feel like a huge failure. To me, my mental health comes first, my non-compulsary education comes second. The sooner I get my head sorted, the sooner I'll start doing better at college. Everything's just a bit blah at the moment. I'm sorry this post and my last post were a bit kind of negative, but that's just what's happening at the moment and I can't really help that. I'm trying to keep on going with my blog and I'm quite proud I've even lasted the few weeks I have without forgetting about it, haha!

That's all for now,
Rachel. xo

Hello there,
So this is going to be an anxiety/mental health related post. A couple of weeks ago I went to the doctors about getting counselling again because let's just say, my old counsellor made my anxiety so much worse so I got referred to the Wellbeing Service run by the NHS, I'm kind of sceptical but I had a telephone assessment and my new counsellor told me that it sounds like I live a pretty miserable life as it sounds like I'm living in constant terror, which is correct so I didn't have to spell that out to her but whatever. She's offering me CBT (cognitive behavioural therapy), graded exposure (to ease me in to going places by myself) and behavioural experiments (contributing to mental health research by doing things like discussing fears, plans of actions and keeping diaries) and then after a few months of that I'll go onto long term counselling (I'm not going to go into too much detail but my parents, GP and counsellor reckon I have too many years of not very nice things happen to me (mainly bullying) to just undergo a few months of counselling, she said the long-term counselling could range from a year to 6 years so that's good I suppose, at least I know I'm not going to get discharged from the service after 6 months without any notice. So that's what going on in the way of counselling, hopefully I can get my life back on track.

That's all for now,
Rachel xo