My first VLOG! (mental health at school or uni)

Here is my first VLOG ever. In it, I give advice on having mental health issues at school or university from my own experience. It complements the post on Being at school or university with depression and anxiety, giving some new tips. Make sure to check out the blog post for other information as well.

So.... here it goes!

Update on my life (and its morals)

Well this is sort of embarrassing... I've spent too long without posting here. A month? Oh dear. I must apologize by saying that this last month has been extremely busy and full of great (and not so great) stuff. I have also been absent from all social networks and I am extremely sorry for that, I won't let it happen again.

I've finally decided that I'm going to start vlogging. Some great vloggers have encouraged me to do it and I've been wanting to for a long time.

I was meant to go back to university this January but things turned out a bit differently. Going back to university was causing me a lot of stress. Every time I had visited my uni town last semester (from September 2014) I had had suicidal thoughts and a lot of impulsivity partly brought in by the anxiety that being there caused me (and I was only visiting!).

The week before I left to theoretically move back to my uni town, my anxiety was so extreme that I had physical pains in my chest, and especially my stomach. I wasn't hungry, I could barely eat, I was even sick repeatedly during a whole afternoon when I simply thought about going back.

So I didn't move back. I'm still living home. I only visited to sort out everything that had to do with university and to make possible for me to finish my degree from home. I felt like a failure because I was not going to be able to move back there, but at the same time thinking about it now... Maybe I wasn't ready. I didn't have classes so I would have had a very unstructured day. And this way I can still go to therapy and start to leave the day centre little by little.

I am finishing my degree this year, I'll simply be doing it from home.

What can be concluded from this?

· Things don't always turn out the way you want them to. But it's okay, you need to adapt and maybe even look at things in a different way.

· Maybe you are setting your expectations too high. And if you fail to accomplish something you had set your mind into, it doesn't mean that you're a failure. Maybe you've just set your bar too high. Reconsider this.

· Progress happens slowly. Don't get frustrated if you feel like you feel like you're not getting better fast enough. You're not going to get better in one day, progress happens at its own pace and it's different for everyone. Things will get better.

· Let your university know about your mental health situation. I can't say this enough. I was scared since my first year to tell my university about my mental health, but I am so glad that I finally did last year. Not only did they help me giving me a leave of absence, but going back now has been made really easy for me too. The teachers have agreed to have skype sessions with me instead of face-to-face ones, and they have all made it very comfortable and easy for me. You may be going through unnecessary difficulties added to your already difficult situation, and just telling your university might help you in ways that you never thought of!

I'll start posting weekly (hopefully more than once a week) from this week again. I hope you found this post useful and helpful!

Surviving the holidays - Spending the holiday with family

This is the first post in a series of posts about how to 'survive' these holidays.

Even though the holidays are meant to be a happy time to spend with our loved ones, many of us find them challenging as well. It can bring anxiety and other unwanted emotions, so these blogposts are to ensure that your holidays can pass as smoothly as possible!

This post will be about: 

Spending the holiday with family

Your family may or may not know about your mental health issues. A lot of us spend the holidays with our families, and there are some members of our family that we see less often than others. So questions regarding you, your current situation and possibly your mental health could be asked.

One of the main things that I recommend is to think about it before. If someone asks you what you're currently doing or if something is wrong, you could easily go blank from anxiety and not know what to reply. So something that I have found helpful is to prepare beforehand what you are going to say to people.

You may want to check out the post of 'What to say if you're not ready to tell people', since it contains advice on what to say if you're not ready to talk about your mental health.

Once you know more or less what you want to tell people, it will be a lot easier when they ask you since you will be prepared.

If your family tends to worry about you and you don't want all the attention focused on you (and think that this may be an issue), you can also think beforehand about some topics of conversation to try to change the subject and redirect the conversation towards something else.

The purpose of this series of post is to make them short and easy to read to be as helpful as possible. I will be posting them at least twice a week, so make sure to keep an eye out!

It's either perfect or not worth it

So, here I am, I am back. I'm sorry for all the time that I have been away. I stopped because I was feeling down and then never saw the time to come back, or what with. I wanted to come back with something great making the wait worth it and because I never felt like a topic was perfect enough, so I stayed gone.

But then I've realized that this sort of thought is very common for perfectionist people and affects in a very harmful way people suffering mental health issues such as eating disorders, BPD or even depression to name a few. 

So I thought: why not talk about it?

I am and always have been a perfectionist. I want the things I do to be perfect. And even though some may say that it's a good trait, there is a very fine line and it can very easily become something harmful for you that takes control of your life.

"If it's not perfect, why would I even bother?" is a very common thought amongst perfectionists. If something is not going the way you want, or you don't feel like you might be able to do it well, you may simply just give up on it.

Let's see a few examples:

· I start painting and it's something I have invested a lot of time on but then the painting is not going as well as I expected. When I realize that it's not looking the way I want it to, I just stop painting that instead of trying to fix it and maybe even give up painting altogether even thought it was something that I enjoyed doing.

· In eating disorders there is a very common example:  I am restricting on eating biscuits. Then one day I can't help the urge and I open the biscuit bag and eat one. I may think "Since I have already broken my rule, I may just as well eat the whole pack". And many times that sort of thought is what drives people into binge eating.

We need to challenge that sort of thought. We need to realize that not everything has to always be perfect. First of all, wanting things to always be perfect will lead us to unhappiness since we will never consider something to be perfect enough. So we have to accept things as they are and see the beauty in them.

If you enjoy something but feel like you're not good enough: don't quit. Keep on trying, no one was an expert at the beginning. And even if you don't get to be great at it, if you enjoy doing it you should keep up with it.

This sort of thinking is what drives many people into quitting school, university, a job, a hobby, maybe even relationships.

I'm not saying you should settle down for less than what you want in life. But I am saying that maybe you should reconsider whether what you want is realistic. Also, you should enjoy the things that you have and that you achieve and not quit things that you like because you feel like you're not doing them well enough. Who judges whether we are good enough anyway? No one's opinion matters except ourselves when it comes to that. We shouldn't be so hyper critic of ourselves. 

Let yourself enjoy life and things even when they're not perfect!

Alternatives to self-harm

Those who self-harm use it as a coping mechanism, but it does not only reinforce the previous problems you had and tried to escape by self-harming, it also creates a problem of its own. And it is very hard to stop. Self-harm is a very serious problem so if you do, I very strongly recommend that you see a therapist. 

So here are some things on what you can do when you get the urge of self-harming, instead of actually doing it. These are some healthy alternatives that have worked for me.

· Call a friend and talk about something else

· If you're somewhere where there's someone else, go talk to that person about whatever

· Talk to someone about how you feel

· Write down how you feel

· Paint

· Watch a TV series or movie that will keep you distracted

· Go do sports if you have the energy (the endorphins will help you feel better)

· Have a bubble bath

· If something specific is triggering you - distract yourself from it (Like for example if a certain conversation is making you feel very triggered, then ask the people to talk about something else, or distract yourself by doing something else. This is not 'escaping' the situation, it is distancing yourself from a situation that is making you feel bad enough to make you feel like self-harming. Distancing yourself or distracting yourself from a situation that makes you feel bad is a healthy coping mechanism.)

· Go see a family member or friend that you like spending time with

Make sure you also visit the link: Distractions from depression to find other ways to distract yourself, such as the post on Reading as a distraction from depression.

Obviously feel free to add your own in the comments, there will be different useful alternatives for each person depending on what you like to do and what distracts you.

Feel free to send an email to newwingstofly@gmail.com

or tweet to http://www.twitter.com/newwingstofly

How to reject alcohol in social situations

Alcohol is a drug, but it is a very socially accepted one. So much so, that it is even considered strange not to drink in some social contexts. However, you may not want to drink. If you are struggling with depression or other mental health issues and know that alcohol can lead you to dysfunctional behavior, you want to stay as far away from it as possible. And if you are on antidepressants, you shouldn't be drinking alcohol either, as I explained on my previous post.
However, this doesn't mean that you can't go out, or that you have to avoid any social situation that includes alcohol. Especially if you have isolated yourself in the past, you want to start to attend social events again.
But people can be pushy with the subject of alcohol, and they may not just ask if you want to drink, but try to encourage you to drink. This sucks, I know, especially when you actually kind of want to accept and are only rejecting it because you know that it's bad for you but there is a part of you that wants to say yes.

Here are some tips and tricks not to succumb to peer pressure. It will also be helpful to keep some of this info in mind in order to not get upset.

When people offer you a drink and you refuse, they are likely to keep offering. Don't get annoyed, they are probably not doing it with bad intention even if their insistence makes you feel bad. They may have good intentions and simply be trying to get you to 'have a good time'. It is commonly assumed that that's alcohol's purpose. And most people don't see that for some people alcohol can just be either plain uninteresting or actually pretty damaging.
What you probably want to do when someone insists over and over again is something along these lines:

But that's why I'm writing this post, to offer you other solutions.

Bringing someone along who knows you're not drinking. If you have a mental health issue, having someone at the party/social event who knows about your issues and who knows that you can't drink is a really good idea. That way, if people keep offering you drinks, you will not be on your own rejecting them, you will have someone by your side offering you their strength and maybe even pushing those people away (even if that friend is drinking too).

If you bring a friend who doesn't drink either, then even better, since it will be 2 of you not drinking and things will become much easier because your friend's behavior will encourage yours and the same the other way around!

You can say that you have a New Year's resolution not to drink. People are more likely to stop offering you drinks if that's the case. 

If they have seen you drinking earlier the same year, you can do a version of the previous one which is to say that you have stopped drinking for a while to be healthy. And it is the truth!

I'm not a fan of lies. I actually hate them. But if you're getting stressed out from being pressured to drink, I think that's a fair enough reason to blurt out an innocent lie such as claiming to be on antibiotics. It will not work on a long term basis, but if it is for a one-off that you're going out or once that people are especially annoying, you may just choose to use it.

If your problem is that you actually want to drink but you know that you shouldn't and you don't know whether or not you'll be able to control yourself, you can just take the necessary amount of money for the transport back (or in case you'll need a taxi back or whatever), and leave the rest home. Or give your money to a friend that you trust. I know that when I take more money than I need out, sometimes I think "I may just as well buy alcohol" when I'm caught in the moment. So, lately I tend to take a lot less. Only the amount for a few soft drinks and what a taxi would cost in case I'll be too stressed to drive back or whatever.

If there are some people that when you meet up with them they always get drunk, and they keep insisting on you drinking despite you repeatedly saying no... You might want to reconsider whether it is good to keep hanging out with those people, at least for the moment. I'm not saying, go on and break a friendship just because your friends like to drink. I'm only saying that if your relationship consists solely on meeting up to drink and you can't drink (or shouldn't or don't want to) then maybe they are not the right people for you to hang out with at the moment.

Also, I want to emphasize that I wrote this post because I don't want you to have to stop going out just because you can't drink. You should do the things that you like, because in order to get better from depression, you should do the things that you like to do and do as much of them as you can. But I am not saying either that going out is necessary if that is not your thing. 

I hope this was helpful!

I'll confess: I tried doing a vlog about this but I'm so bad at it... and I was gonna post it anyway but then I found out the sound and the video weren't on sinc... -.- so yes, I'll try next time.

Alcohol and antidepressants

Let's be completely honest, we know this is not a good combination. However, it is normal for us at some point in the recovery process to want to go out. And drinking alcohol is not only socially acceptable but also widely considered as socially normal. So it is not that strange for us to want to try a bit of alcohol at some point, even if we know that it is probably a bad idea.

You may think alcohol can help you let go for one night of your bad thoughts and have a good time with your friends. But alcohol does not only magnify your bad thoughts if you drink too much accidentally - the main problem of drinking while on antidepressants is that the effects of alcohol increase considerably in your system (and not in a good way!!!) so it is very hard to measure how much you are drinking. So even if you think that you are in control, you probably aren't. Drinking while on antidepressants is not a good idea because the amount that before would have barely even made you feel drunk this time may make you feel extremely drunk and dizzy.

This is what happened to me this Saturday, after 10 months of avoiding alcohol almost completely after my bad experience in New Year's Eve.

Another problem of alcohol while on antidepressants is that if you are depressed and you drink, drinking can sometimes lead to other dysfunctional behavior such as other substance abuse or self-harm if bad thoughts begin to appear.

Other bad consequences may follow alcohol consumption such as paranoia (this happened to me) or some other weird effect due to the mix of alcohol and antidepressants.

And let's be fair, no one wants to be suffering from a hangover on top of depression because depression's symptoms can be worsened.

For all these reasons I strongly encourage all of you who are on antidepressants to try to resist any urge of drinking alcohol that you may have. From personal experience and people I know who have been on antidepressants and drunk, I know you generally don't obtain the desired results.

A good way of knowing what is best is to ask your therapist. If you want to drink one beer while socializing and because you like it, that should be fine, but you probably should not be drinking much more than that if you are on antidepressants.

The next post will be about ways to avoid alcohol and how to say no when you are offered.

Reading as a distraction from depression

This will be a very short, quick post (I have a massive headache that barely lets me think).

Reading is a great distraction from depression.

For me, for the last 2 years (despite always having loved reading) I was unable to find pleasure reading as it was really hard to concentrate.

However, this year in January I finally sat down with a book and decided to read and keep on going no matter what, even if I was barely understanding it, I would keep going. And even though it felt sort of awkward and unnatural and the book was not my favorite, I knew no book would be my favorite because of the circumstances. And after I finally closed it after longer than usual and took another one, it felt slightly easier. And that way, reading has become one of my favorite things to do again.

I have been reading Young Adult novels and New Adult novels because they keep me distracted the most, they are easy to read and take me away. For some reason I don't really understand, I do like books where the characters have issues... Maybe to know how they face their issues? I'm not really sure to be fair.

So I want to encourage you to read to distract yourself from depression, read what you like the most, what keeps you distracted.

Find me on Goodreads here. And add me, and recommend books to me, because I always appreciate book recommendations (one of my favorite things to do is to read book synopsis.... am I weird?)

May's books

The Fault in Our Stars

by John Green

The Lovely Bones

by Alice Sebold

Pushing the Limits

by Katie McGarry

Could be triggering if you suffer depression, anxiety and/or bipolar disorder at this moment of time. May.

The Kite Runner

by Khaled Hosseini

El mundo amarillo

by Albert Espinosa

How to improve your sleep

A lot of people have trouble sleeping. But when you're anxious or going through a stressful time, it can be even harder to sleep. Spending hours in bed trying to sleep is not only uncomfortable and boring but it can also bring you a lot more anxiety since you may be having negative thoughts that you can't fight with anything since you have nothing to distract yourself with. It is typical to get anxious in that time you are not able to sleep. And it is also typical to develop anxiety to the time previous to sleeping time, when sleeping time begins to approach and you start to think in anticipation how you're not going to be able to sleep and all those negative thoughts and all that anxiety is going to crawl inside your head.

I remember spending as much as 5 hours in bed just trying to sleep, not doing anything else, and not being able to. So when this had happened a few times, I dreaded the time of going to sleep so I started to postpone it as much as I could. But in that time that I was postponing it, I started to feel anxious.

Improving your sleep is an essential step in order to improve your lifestyle. It's simple: if you're tired all day you can't be as functional as you would be otherwise. You can't concentrate as much, or enjoy things as much, or have energy enough to do the things you may want to do (or have to do). So sleeping is one of your main priorities.

So what can be done in order to sleep when you cannot sleep?

· Have a sleep routine

This is probably the most important point. If you didn't manage to get sleep until very late, you may feel tempted to stay in bed until quite late to make up for that (I know that I did, some days I would wake up at 1pm or 2pm). But that way you're not helping to stop having sleeping problems. You have to set a time at which you will go to bed and a time to wake up. Even if you don't manage to sleep all those hours, get up at the time you had set, don't stay in bed for longer. And next day, try the same thing. And keep on doing this day after day.

You should keep on going even when you have no trouble sleeping in order to not have issues with your sleep again. In the long term, it works really well and it is the one that has helped me the most!

· Do something boring before sleeping

Reading is good, however reading a very exciting book can make you not want to stop reading or keep thinking about it once you have closed it. Reading something a bit more boring is probably a better idea if you're struggling with sleeping issues.

· Stop studying at least 1 hour before going to bed

Maybe in exam period this is a hard one, but try to stop studying a while before going to bed.

· Create a comfortable sleeping atmosphere

Your pajamas, your bed etc must be something your brain associates with sleep. So try to avoid spending a lot of time during the day on your pajamas or in your bed watching TV etc.

· Do some relaxation exercises

Don't think about sleep or about what you'll have to do tomorrow because that will only make you more anxious.

Concentrate on your breathing, breathe in through your nose and out through your mouth, and focus on how the air comes in and out.

· If you wake up halfway through the night and you can't sleep leave your room and do something boring

As the point above said, you must associate certain things with sleep. And in order to avoid associating your room and your bed with the anxiety of being unable to sleep, if you wake up in the middle of the night and you can't sleep, leave your room for a while and do something boring until you get sleepy, and then try the steps again.

· Avoid long naps

Naps may help you feel less tired throughout the day, but if you have trouble sleeping at night, they will make it even more difficult. So part of creating a sleep routine means avoiding sleeping at other times. If you feel like you really need a nap, you shouldn't nap for longer than 45 minutes.

What has helped you sleep better?

Share in the comments

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Being at school or university with depression and anxiety

I have mentioned a few times that I had to leave university because of depression last January. I will talk more about that in a later post. However in this post I wanted to talk about my experience in school and university with depression and anxiety and what helped me make things relatively better.

Hopefully those of you who are struggling with work, university or school can find this entry helpful.

I will not lie, this was not the first year that I stressed because of my degree. since a very young age my studies, my parents' expectations and my aim for perfection have made me stress more and more every year. I hadn't yet arrived to uni when exam periods made me so stressed that I would cry for days or even two weeks, claiming that nobody cared about me, they only cared about my grades. The sentence "I am only a number" has become a highly repeated one in my repertoire.

I was aware that there was a school psychologist and looking in retrospective, I think that I should have gone visit her. Talking to a teacher could also have been a good idea. Maybe not just any teacher, but someone that I trusted and who knew me well.

However when I arrived to university something changed. I must clarify that despite my good grades at school I did not feel ready to go to university, I didn't know what I wanted to do. However I succumbed to the pressure around me and I picked a degree. Although I think university is an incredible opportunity for those who can afford it, I do think that if you are unsure about what you want to do, you should feel free to take some time to consider it despite what your family might say at the beginning.

Thankfully I do not regret my choice and I turned out to like it. 

But the pressure at university became completely different. I only had 6 hours of class per week (people in the UK might know there are not many classes, unless studying engineering, I'm not sure of how it is in the US or other countries). So I had to organise my own timetable, my own study hours. I was also living away from home so there was no one supervising me. I had complete freedom yet I had responsibilities no one but me was checking that I was doing. It was a big change. And stress came in a whole other level. In my first year I had a big depressive episode, along with self-harm and my eating disorder reappeared, but I still didn't know all the resources that were available to me at university. 

I found out that there was an Eating Disorders Unit at the University Health Service. I only found out about I guess many universities, if not most will have something similar so try to get advice from a regular doctor or online.

I found out about the service because I went to the doctor because of constant headaches and dizziness. After asking me many questions, I admitted that I was not eating properly and that is when she mentioned the Eating Disorders Unit and she referred me to them.

At the time I did not see leaving university as an option because I thought it would be an enormous disappointment for my parents. I considered the option of suicide more viable than the option of quitting university. Quite extreme, huh?

I ended up seeing a psychiatrist when I returned home in Christmas and taking some medication and things got better.

In my third year, I had learnt to organise my time. And not only that. Thanks to my job as a residential mentor in 2nd and 3rd years I had learnt about quite a lot of the options and resources that the university offered to students with problems. I also knew that depression was not something uncommon at university.

This time my depressive episode had started over the summer. So when the university year began, my anxiety attacks didn't take too long to follow. The last year was not just a lot of uni work, I also had to think about my future and start applying to jobs. And besides my degree I had a job and I was part of the committee of a society. I guess it's not something unusual to do many things during the university time. We want to fill our CV (Curriculum Vitae), have a full experience, learn more things. However, if you are someone who stresses easily and you already suffer from anxiety and/or depression, maybe don't make things so hard for yourself. This doesn't mean that you can't study and work. It doesn't mean that you can't do what you want. It only means that you should try to know and learn to know your limits. In my second year I had no problem with my degree and my job. However, in third year with that same job, I had a bit more uni work and I added the committee. I honestly believe that things would have got out of control even if I didn't have my job or the committee, but those two things certainly did not help and only made things more stressful.

I went to the doctor and later the psychiatrist and got some sleeping pills (besides antidepressants). I found the sleeping pills very helpful especially at the beginning because I was suffering from a really bad case of insomnia. However, (if you choose this as one of your options) I cannot say this clear enough or too many times, do not self-medicate. Only take the amount that your doctor prescribed and the way that they prescribed it.

I talked to my personal tutor. I had only talked to him twice before. Once the first day of 1st year, once the first day of 2nd year. So it's not like I trusted him a lot, or knew him a lot. But the doctor at the University Health Service insisted that it was an essential step in order to facilitate things. And you know what? It was an enormous help! He was really understanding and really helpful. He asked me to email him every once in a while keeping him informed. And he told me that if I brought a medical certificate I could get extensions for all my essay deadlines. I had not expected this at all. And it did really help since I found impossible the simple task of concentrating. Even if I didn't need the extra time in the end (which I ended up needing), my stress and anxiety got relieved knowing that I had more time to do it.

I could have done this in first year, it would have probably helped me relieve some stress. But I didn't do it because I thought he would think I was lazy and I was embarrassed. But honestly, do not hesitate. If you are struggling and are having issues, go talk to your tutor. Even if you don't need more time. They might find some way to help you make things easier and better. And it is all confidential.

Talk to your mentors, to the tutors, look up the resources online. They are all there to help you. I know from experience that I was too scared to talk to my own mentor in first year. But when I became one I wanted to help people and our job was to advise them and keep the information confidential.

There are resources available to you.

You are not alone.

I hope this helped!

For those who are quick to judge you (or Broken Friendships Part 2)

Following the lines of last entry, some people might be quick to judge.

I talked to my "friend" John (you will know who he is if you read last entry) and he told me that he thought a 'free' year out of d a free year out of university was too much, that I was being lazy. I wish I had had a free year out of uni, but that's not exactly what it was and I would have loved to not have suffered from depression, not have had to return back home and be able to graduate this year.

He also said that being home 'doing nothing' with people victimizing me showed how weak I was and that I had given up. And that I should go out there and face my problems. You might come up with people who say something like this to you. I honestly hope that you don't, but you might. So here is my reply to John's argument (and what I told him). If he hadn't been so quick to judge, if he had actually asked me something, he would know that I am at a day centre, going to the psychologist, having loads of therapy and fighting to fix this problem. I am not 'doing nothing'. I am not weak for coming back home. I am facing my problems. I have not given up, actually coming back home was a really hard decision for me but it meant that I didn't want to give up just yet. 

The fact that he claimed that clearly shows that he does not understand depression, that he is really judgmental and that he is not a friend. I have enough problems of my own, I do not need someone like that in my life. 

And neither do you. 

So if you come face to face with someone like that in your life, as hurtful as it may be at first, I encourage you from here. 

Do not listen to their twisted arguments. 

Do not listen to judgmental people. 

You are strong. 

You are a fighter. 

And if they say something else then they know nothing about you or your illness. And they certainly are not your friends. It's better to be without those people, honestly.

Broken laptop and broken friendships

My laptop is currently being repaired since it broke. After feeling a bit lost without it, I am currently using my old laptop so if there is any mistake in this post it's probably because of that.

First things first, since most of the viewers of the blog are from the USA, I am going to add the US emergency numbers to the page  Need urgent help? . If you want one from a specific country please request it.

My absence was not completely due to that, there were also good things in the last month, but I have been a bit off-line and I must apologise. In this post I will not focus on the reasons of my absence but on something else of a greater importance. I think this is a problem that most people with a mental illness have probably faced at some point in their life.

I know depression can lead me to think that no one understands me and that it won't always be true. But sometimes, it is true. Some people just don't understand depression or mental illnesses. Some people do nothing to understand and label mentally ill people as either crazy or attention seekers or weak. And sometimes someone close to us is that person who does not understand, and we happen to care about what that specific person thinks, and their words hurt like hell.

So let's talk about my specific case to make it clearer. At the beginning of January my therapist, my parents and I had decided that I should take a leave of absence for a year from university and leave my accommodation in campus to go back home. I didn't tell many people about it at the beginning.

I told one of my best friends around March. Let's call him John to call him some way. I told him on whatsapp, he studies outside the country and I didn't want to have to do it on Skype. I didn't give him too much information even though at the time I already had a diagnosis and was preparing with my therapist my entrance at the day centre. However, I decided I would give him little information, just to test the water. I told him I had had to leave uni for a year because I had had a depressive episode.

His reply was so cliché and uneducated I could almost not believe it. However I decided to not stress and be patient. He said that something really horrible must have happened for me to decide to leave university and asked what was wrong.

I explained that everything in my life was alright, that nothing had actually happened. Only that I suffered depression and I had had a lot of panic attacks during the first semester and the symptoms had only been getting worse.

He asked me something so horrible that I can't even write it here. But he basically asked me if someone had done something bad to me. If someone had hurt me.

I said no. And then again tried to explain that depression was a mental illness and that it could happen even when everything else in your life was fine.

His reply was something along the lines of "Oh. I see... if no one has hurt you, then you're fine. That's nothing then"

I think I tried to say again in just one line that depression was a mental illness and that there was very little info about it out there but I had already realised that I had lost him. And his simple "I know, but you have every reason to be happy" made me realise that I was right.

We haven't talked until now much. And the other day he told a friend of mine that he'd rather not see me because he is going to tell me what he thinks and I am not going to like it.

Some people don't understand. And we can try to educate them about it. But if they show no interest in what it is, my personal opinion is that those people are of no interest for us. Someone who doesn't understand you, who doesn't want to be with you anymore in your down-times, is not your friend. Friends are not only for the good times. And I guess that if I can find a silver lining to hitting rock-bottom (or being in a hard situation), it is that I can see who is there now, and who has walked away. And as much as it can hurt in a first instance, I have realised what I ask you to realise if someone walks away or doesn't understand you: you are better off without them.

I have found this blog which I thought was quite interesting and along these lines:

Visit blog - Shit said to depressed people

Distractions from depression

As promised, here is a list of some distractions from depression that I find useful. 

They are listed in no particular order.

• Do not isolate yourself (even if you don't feel like meeting up with people, make the effort. It will eventually become easier the more you do it)
• Do not stay in all day. Get out of the house. If you can't get to meet up with people, then go out by yourself. It doesn't matter where, go for a walk. Just make sure you don't stay in your house all day.
• Exercise. You don't need to run a marathon. Even just walking will help you, but make sure you do move.
• Stay in touch with the people that you care about. You may not feel like communicating much with the rest of the world at the moment, but make the effort to call them or even just send them an email, just make sure you keep in touch.
• Try to meet up with someone you care about and who cares about you. Seeing them will help you feel better and will help you keep your interpersonal relationships.
• To the extent that you can, keep your house (and/or room) clean and tidy [I'm not good at this]
• Take care of your appearance - make sure you have showers, still use the perfume you like, use nice clothes (meaning clothes you thought were nice before you were depressed, I don't mean expensive clothes), brush your hair, and try to make yourself look nice. By looking better it will help you feel better.
• Treat yourself. Take the time to do things you generally don't have time to do: have a long bubble bath, cook something nice....
• Do manual things: making bracelets, painting, coloring mandalas and other DIY stuff will help you keep your mind off the things that trouble you.
• Write down what you are feeling to bring it out of your system.
• Watch a funny film or TV series (or if you don't like comedy, one that you enjoy and is not triggering).
• Meditation and Mindfulness can also be very helpful.

Check the post on healthy alternatives to self-harm.

In our Pinterest you can find cool and fun DIY things to do to keep your mind off so make sure you check it out.

Sigue el tablero Positive distractions de May and Hya en Pinterest. 

You can also have a look at the mandalas and even print those that you like and color them.

  Sigue el tablero Mandalas de May and Hya en Pinterest.

Check our Distractions from depression playlist. It includes the idea of the Crisis box and some meditation. 

After watching many many videos I have chosen these ones according to my own personal criteria. However, I have not watched any other videos from these youtubers so I don't know how their other stuff is and whether or not it is recommendable.

What keeps you distracted from depression?

Share it in the comments.

What to say if you're not ready to tell people

As I have said many times, there's nothing to be embarrassed about. However, it is understandable that you may not feel ready to tell people just yet. 

You might want to tell some people but you might not want to tell others. It has to be your choice. You are the one who has to decide who you want to tell. At the beginning, when you have only just been diagnosed and you are still a bit overwhelmed by everything that’s going on and trying to face it yourself, it’s easy to get convinced by your parents, for example, to not tell the family, especially if you’re still living with your parents. As you can read in my first post, that was my case. This is probably not done out of bad intent, but just as a way to try and protect you. However, once you grow stronger in yourself and start to accept what’s going on, you have to realise that it is no one else’s choice to make. As I started to think, and my therapist then told me, it is each person’s own personal choice to decide what they are going to tell the people who surround them. Your parents may advise you, but in the end it is your choice, and if they are not happy about it, you can always ask your therapist to talk to them to make them understand that this is about you.

Try not to lie. This has come up in group therapy and although I hadn’t thought about it before, when the therapist explained it, I realised how important it actually was. I didn’t really lie because I don’t like lying.

1. You can tell a half-truth: for example. I was studying in another country and when my family asked me what I was doing back home I told them there were no more classes at university since people were doing their dissertations. This was actually true. What I was not telling them was that I was on a leave of absence from university anyway. (I guess this is best for people you don’t really care about or for family members who are too old to understand or ill etc…)
2. You can tell them that you’re not ready to talk about it if they ask you something. The therapist put a lot of emphasis in this option. You might think, like I did, that it is not a very social acceptable thing to say ‘I’d rather not talk about it right now’. However, if those people care about you and are discrete, they might not push further. If they do and you’re still not ready to talk, you can always go to option 1.