Acceptance of your Mental Health

As I grow I am really learning to accept my anxiety for what it is.

I guess I would see it as a friend, a weird fucking friend who wants to destroy your life but you can't let them go because they've been your friend for so long. So long that you don't know what you would do without them, because they seem to act like they know what they're doing, they've seen life in a different way and they want to keep you safe.

This is bullshit, they don't want to do any of those things for you. They are like a jealous friend who sees that you have a really great life and they don't have that so they want to destroy it for you so no one can be happy.

You seem to open your eyes and realise they are no friend of yours at all, they are evil and want to take all of the goodness out of you. What kind of friend does that?

I think looking at it that way really helps, you have to realise what anxiety is and what it is trying to do before you can accept it and move on.

So if you had a friend who was just nasty, you would eventually remove them from your life right? That's what you need to do here. Remove the toxic things from your life.

It is all about acceptance.

Have a chat with your anxiety, sit it down, tell it you've had enough...even tell it that it's a bitch and you can do better without them!

I realise that me telling you to sit down with you anxiety sounds nuts but...we're all nuts here, in a good way. I'm telling you all to do this, but really I need to be doing this myself.

I find comfort in writing these posts, they really help. If there is one thing I recommend in the recovery of any mental illness it is to write! Create a blog, get a cute little notebook, just write and write and write your feelings away. Get them out of your brain and see it all in front of you, it really helps.

Anyway, back to getting rid of your awful friend. As I said, accept it for what it is and one day you will learn to forgive them.

Accept and forgive, forgiveness gives you a sense of hope that things can move on I feel. If someone hurts you, you grow as a person and one day forgive them and it makes you feel good that you know you have moved on.

But first, accept it! Whatever it may be and learn to move on from it. It will be hard, you will sometimes feel like you need it so bad because you don't know what to do without it but you are your own person, not your mental illnesses.

Don't be tied down...there's plenty more friends out there to make!

Continuing the fight.

Hi hi hi,

I haven't posted since October, oh me. It's been a mare of a few months, here's a short summary - I'm employed (do I enjoy it? I shall not disclose that on the internet) ((take from that what you will)), I'm still with that Ryry Evz and we're saving to move out, joint bank account and all! But more importantly, I'm still suffering with that eating disorder and depression that is being a cheeky mother fucker and just does not want to budge out of my life.

Let's get into it, the last time I posted I was just starting my time at the eating disorder clinic in my town, by Christmas my nurse left and in the new year I started seeing a new lady. This lady is really, really helping me. However, I'm still struggling so much it's hard to see when the end of the journey will come.

All in all, the whole process is so difficult that I don't quite understand how anyone gets through recovery. I try my best every single day, but during that time the little ED in my head is nagging at me about what I've eaten, what I'm going to eat, how I look, how other people will see me and the feeling of my entire body - it's exhausting.

I'm not sure people really speak about the way they feel about it, anorexia is a very secretive illness. I know that from experience, I don't really speak about it with anyone apart from the relevant people but it saddens me when some people never, ever speak about it and suffer with the thoughts. I understand it, it IS draining and painful. To think so badly about yourself and not be able to stop, it's heart breaking to step out of my skin sometimes and look at myself and see what I'm doing.

I see it as being two different people, and so do the people around me. There's me, the girl who has always wanted to have a laugh, loveable, a fighter. Then there's the anorexic side of me, the one who gets angry at everyone, especially myself, the one who stops the sensible me from reaching a full recovery. A constant battle between myself and someone else who has become a part of me, one maybe my mind is too afraid to let go of.

But I have to let go, I need to. There's no two ways about it, I really need to get the strength to stick to my meal plan, realise that the food is my medicine and not my enemy, that food doesn't equal fat, it actually equals life. God dammit, I need to take my own bloody advice.

I cannot ever stress it enough how important it is to talk about your mental illnesses, I want the entire world to know this however my presence on Earth just isn't as big as I would like it to be to make this get out to every single human. But if you read this, yes you, and you're struggling please talk to someone. Do not suffer, you just don't deserve to fight that battle alone.

Sigh, another post about mental health - I guess that's all I really know!

To be okay…

Helloooo! Today (or this evening) I wanted to talk about the recovery I'm going through at the moment and people may possibly be able to relate to the way I have felt throughout. 

My journey to health and happiness has been ongoing, as has my illness. My mental state is one that I've been open about because it's gone on since I was 10 years old. My recovery truly started in December, however I have had many forms of counselling in the past. 

What I really want to talk about is the time when I started on anti depressants in December of 2014. 10mg a day is what I started on and what I am still on, I had been reluctant beforehand to go on medication. Although the offer had never really been there because I was so young, I had never asked for it either because the thought of medication scared me but do you know what...I was so wrong. 

The first two weeks were crazy, with the medication comes quite strange side effects that the majority of people on the tablets experience so it was to be expected. I had nausea, absolutely no appetite (apart from pick n mix, ya I'm nearly 20, pick and mix RULES) I also looked high as a kite with dilated pupils, anyone would've thought I had been hot boxed I looked mad. But it all wore off and what came after was something I've never felt before - the feeling of being somewhat content. 

For years all I've ever known is a low mood, a low daily mood was all I ever felt. I'd wake up hoping for a new feeling but it just never happened as much as I wanted it and as much as I tried, the world just wasn't my friend. But these tablets started to change me and it was quite amazing. 

I hadn't felt content like that in God knows how long, it was strange. A week in January/February I sat in my room at university in London and I felt empty, not in a bad way but not in a good way either. Usually my mind would be on overdrive but it wasn't, there was nothing there and I didn't know how to feel about it. I rung my mum, cried and told her I felt weird and lost and she responded by saying something along the lines of "it's because you're not worrying, you're not sad and you're not used to it" and that was true! I never knew what it felt like to have a stress free mind, a mind which just wasn't fussed about silly little things that I was usually bothered about, it was scary to be...okay? 

I feel like many people get like that in their recovery from mental illnesses, we are so used to not being okay that we settle and once it changes and we start to feel okay it's all weird and abnormal. Really, it's the way we deserve to feel, of course. We really do deserve to be okay, to be more than okay! To feel amazing and that's where I want to end up, I'm still on that journey. 

Eventually it all becomes okay, and feeling okay is the norm. All the sad times and the bummed out feelings become a distant memory. The way I see it I've fought my mind and come out so strong (however, with a long way to go still) and I'm here to continue the fight. 

Good luck to you if you are also fighting for happiness, you rule x

What Did I Learn In 2013?

Hiii!

2013 was a crazy as hell year, we saw Miley Cyrus and her tongue many, MANY times, McBusted became a thing, Robin Thicke was very creepy, a future king was born and One Direction continued to take over the world. But that's all well and good, I could talk about all them points but you've been hearing about them all year long!

2013 for me? It was the best year of my life as you can read about in my last post! This year started off really bad, I had a bad spell of anxiety from Christmas day 2012 right through to about April and I hit many lows during that time, visited counsellors and all sorts and even though I was doing fun things in that time I just couldn't fight the sadness and hard times my mind was putting me through.

As the year went on I just hit a point and that's when I started to help myself, bring myself out of the depression and anxiety and learned how to be happy.

When you have depression and things like that then it just seems physically and mentally impossible to be happy, no matter what there is no getting out of it - or so it seems. But I learnt how to push away negative thoughts, I learnt how to turn negatives into positives, I LEARNT HOW TO BE HAPPY FOR NO REASON. That's the best thing, just going to bed one day thinking 'I don't want to be like this anymore' and waking up the next day with a completely different mind set. I never thought it would happen because I was so stuck in this massive pile of anxiousness and sadness but it did happen.

Sure, I still have days when I want to turn into Patrick Star from Spongebob and just live under a rock but then I remember that it won't last forever and that tomorrow is another day, I just taught myself how to look forward to the future. I don't know what will happen in the future? But I can just hope that something good will happen and look forward to that! I could sit around and be sad that I don't have a job but I know that in a few months I'll be going to university so that's not really a problem right now. I could be sad that I don't have a boyfriend but that's not the end of the world, I'm only 18. These are the things that have to be put into perspective and they are what I've learned from.

If I can learn to be happy then anyone can, anyone can get out of the horrible ruts of mental illnesses and get better - IT IS POSSIBLE. Anything is possible. Just a little bit of positivity, motivation, support and a lot of self belief and you can do anything you want to do.

I plan to post a lot more in the new year and hopefully my blog will take off!

Have a happy new year!