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!

A poem about BPD

This is a poem that I wrote last October, based on how I was feeling and that yesterday I decided to share on tumblr. I hope that it isn't triggering even though it has references to self-harm and suicidal thoughts. If you are feeling suicidal please check the section 'Need urgent help?' and make sure you get the appropriate help.

I must say things have got better since.

She had her monsters, she knew them well

They were called anger, pain and despair

Most people knew them but in her case

She couldn't tell them to go away

So she buried them deep

Where no one would find them

And she laughed for a year

Thinking she'd left them behind her

So when she opened a door and they all just snook through

She just didn't know what she was going to do

They said she felt too deeply

She said she felt nothing at all

They said she had to be in control

She said she was just empty

It was either everything or nothing at all

Nothing in between, no halfway to go

She cut her skin, they fed her pills

Trying to get the monsters to let go

She thought there was no way out

The emptiness inside made it easy for the monsters to control her

And there she was after a blackout

The white walls of the hospital all way too bright around her

They called it BPD

You just feel way too deeply

You can't control your feelings

Depression, anxiety

“How long will it be?”

“I don't want them here

I want them to go

I don't want this emptiness

being in control”

There are monsters in my head that want me dead

And I'm afraid they will succeed, you see

And I'm scared people will realize

That I don't know what's in my mind half of the time

I guess there's something beautiful out there

So I am glad that I'm still here

But just don't let go of my hand

I'm scared I'll drown with so much air

How can they breathe so easily?

How can they smile so brightly?

How are their eyes so troubleless?

What, are their minds not behind them?

So why me? Here, have another pill, maybe it'll calm you down

Against your sadness, against your impulsivity

It'll make you happier

It'll make you calmer

It'll make you sleepy

It'll make you easier to handle

Don't read the secondary effects, you'll get scared

No one wants that, you're already scared enough

Why do they care so much?

Why do they care at all?

When will it be time to be a beautiful beloved corpse?

She cuts her skin, they feed her pills

When she cuts deeper increase the dose

And if suicide ever invades your thoughts

You didn't get a damn thing, kid

Things will get better, it will improve

They say “you see? There's a bright future ahead of you”

But she's screaming silently, emptiness fills her eyes

It's too late for me, I am dead inside

Why I'm thankful I lived 2014 and my suicide attempt a year ago failed

This post could be triggering (I have tried my best for it not to be), but still.

If you have suicidal thoughts or ideation, please seek urgent help.

Most of you who use Facebook have probably been given the offer to 'see this year' according to Facebook. Well, so have I. And guess what? There were very few pictures, I think it's the year there have been the fewest pictures since I opened my account. Why was that? One could think this was a year not worth remembering, maybe I think that as well some times. But that is very far from the truth. This year was not the best year of my life. The worst moments and days of my life have taken place in 2014. And still, I am thankful that I got the chance to live this 2014. That may sound extremely dramatic, but you may not find it so much so when I tell you that exactly a year ago, on the early hours of the 1^st of January 2014, I attempted suicide.

Things had been getting ugly for a long time for me. My depression had come back and it seemed to be here to stay. I was experiencing panic attacks, dissociative episodes, extreme mood swings, I was in the midst of a dependance relationship with my boyfriend back then and I had had suicidal thoughts and ideation for months. I thought that I was losing my mind. I found it impossible to concentrate and had required extensions for my work at university for the first time in my life. I had resorted to parties, sex, food restriction, alcohol and drugs and mild self-harm to keep my feelings at bay, to 'control' my feelings and keep them from spinning out of control. But the truth is that by the end of 2013 not only was I on antidepressants, I was unable to sleep on a room by myself with the lights off unless I had taken a sleeping pill, and I found the idea of fun without alcohol absolutely absurd.

I saw myself as being on the 'peak' of my life and I thought I was going crazy and knew that everything was going to go downhill because I couldn't keep the pace I was on. I thought I was going to break down and that everyone I loved would leave me.

Well, guess what? No one left me when things got as ugly as they did. And I am glad that I was here to see that.

Yes, I lost a couple of friends who didn't understand the extent of my mental health issues and claimed that I was just being lazy and an attention whore. But those people were never worth it in the first place.

But all the others, all the ones who mattered, stayed by me. Even people I did not consider so close, people I never thought would be there in ugly times, showed up to show their support.

This past year has not been the best year of my life. It started with me attempting suicide. As a consequence, I was requested by my therapist and my parents to leave university, my house, my job, my friends and boyfriend, the country where I was studying, to go back home to live with my parents. The first months of 2014 are but a blur in my mind.

But this 2014 I finally got diagnosed with BPD (after having recurring episodes of depression since I was 11 and needing a therapist a few times for an eating disorder, depressive episodes and self-harm since I was 16). I was sent to a day centre to which I attended every day and learnt DBT and other skills to deal with my illness and my life.

I ended up 2013 wishing to end my life, and as 2014 ends, I have hope again, and I want to live my life and find out where all of this is going.

In January I will be moving back to university to finish my degree.

This year has been very hard, but it has been filled with great surprises, great people, great lessons.

I am thankful that I got to live this 2014 and I am looking forward to 2015.

I remember at the beginning of last year I thought I was never going to feel better, but now I do. Things have improved so much and they will keep improving.

Recovery is not an easy process. I am on medication, I am still in therapy. But I'm getting better and I certainly am much better than I used to be.

So if you are struggling, remember that things do get better (and I am the living example of it - and I'm glad to be!). Please hold on. You are important.

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!

Borderline personality disorder and mood swings

Have you ever been on a roller coaster? That's pretty much how a person with BPD feels most of the time. I mean... not literally.

Okay, let me explain myself. When you suffer BPD, one of its main characteristics is the mood swings.

You may feel happy right now. And then something may happen, something that may be a little upsetting but that other people wouldn't consider 'a big deal', and BAM! suddenly you're sad, you feel like nothing is worth it or even suicidal. What happened? That little event, or there wasn't that little event. Any small trigger or small events can make your mood go from 0 to 10. The same way, someone may tell you that you were late and suddenly you're rage is so high that you feel like screaming at that person or even getting physically violent (or so mad that you feel like interiorising the pain with yourself).

Right, right. I'm not saying that ANYTHING would trigger a BPD person's emotions. But BPD is also referred to as an mood instability disorder, and that's because people who suffer it have a lot of trouble keeping their emotions in line and controlling them. Their feelings generally surpass them.

It doesn't mean that if they feel mad they will automatically get violent, do not get me wrong. But if something makes them mad, it will probably infuriate them. If something hurts them, it may make them sink so down that they may feel hopeless.

These feelings may not last longer than hours, because something else will probably happen and their mood will swing towards something else.

In the same day you can go from feeling happy, to feeling absolutely hopeless, fury and rage and then happy again. I remember when I was 18 it was when I became really self-conscious of these mood-swings and how brutal they were. Maybe one day I was feeling suicidal and then a few hours later I was extremely happy and excited about many different things.

I remember telling my psychiatrist that I thought I was bipolar. I had never heard about borderline personality disorder at this point. And bipolar was what sounded the closest to what I felt. She immediately ruled it out when she asked me what was the longest I was depressed for and I said a day.

But interesting fact: Guess what? Many years ago they used to think that BPD was a milder form of bipolar disorder.

One of the main issues with this roller coaster is that: you are very unstable and therefore as a consequence so are your relationships with people. Besides idealization and devaluation, this emotional instability is one of the major reasons why BPD people have such a hard time building long-lasting stable friendships and romantic relationships. A later post will talk about this more in detail.

But it is possible to become more stable. In my case, medication has helped me get my emotions more stable. I never thought that I'd aspire to be 'stable', but since last year that's all I want to be. Lately my emotions have been all over the place so I guess I need to visit the psychiatrist...

If you are worried about your mood swings, visit a therapist.

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

Going back to your 'old life'

I am so sorry about how long it has been since my last post! But I do have an excuse. I have spent the last week back at my university city, visiting friends and teachers. This was meant to be a way to see my friends who are back at uni, to talk to my teachers about the work that I have to hand in in January (when my leave of absence is over) and to start to integrate myself again in my old life.

And even though I came back on Sunday, I needed time to think about the experience.

I must admit that I had been very scared about going back. As much as I wanted to see my friends, I had not been at the university campus since March and I was scared about how stressful it was going to be. 

In these months I have developed this anxiety of being around a lot of young people. When I'm in the tram on my way to town and there are a lot of young people who go down at the same station as me, I just avoid the stairs that they are using and I use the other ones (they usually use the escalator, so I use the stairs). So when I arrived to university and it was FULL of young people wherever I went, you can imagine that my level of anxiety went up.

So yes, going back was definitely triggering. But at the same time I do feel like it was a necessary step. I am meant to be going back in January so at some point I had to start to make those small steps.

Something similar may have happened to some of you. Maybe in different contexts. But sometimes when you have had to leave your everyday life to get treatment, the prospect of going back can be very stressful.

As much as on the one hand you may want to retake your normal life again, you may have a certain fear about this. If it is not the case, then that is amazing and I am really glad that that is the case for you and that you have no issues with it.

But if you do feel stressed about the prospect, then I think that what I have done is a good idea. This time I have only gone for a week. I will be going back before January for another week more or less. Even though this may be triggering in a way, at the same time it did show me what scared me the most and what things I have to get ready for and work on.

January may come and I may still not be ready, that could happen. But I think that taking small steps before instead of going all of a sudden in January is a lot better. The shock that came from this visit was a shock that, after all, I spared myself from in January when I move back in.

Have you had any similar experiences?

What has helped you to adapt again to your "old life?

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.

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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Am I losing my mind?

I remember asking myself this question a lot during the months of November and December of 2013. Early November I even went to the doctor and told her, with these words, that I thought 'I was going crazy'. The fear of going crazy only increased the amount of stress that I was feeling, making the problem even worse, making me experience even more symptoms. This eventually became what seemed like an endless cycle until I reached rock bottom and finally got the therapy, medication and information that I needed.

Information is such an important requirement in order to help reduce stress. To help us and those around us to understand what is going on we need to understand what is going on in our minds.

I am writing this post because I would have liked to find something like this back then. With information about some of the most common stuff that could be going on.

The following problems can lead us to think that we are to losing our minds. However, they can be relatively normal depending on the condition we have and the amount of stress we are under, some even appearing with no need of suffering any mental illness.

I hope this post helps people and provides information. But remember, if you are trying to find out exactly what you have, you should visit a therapist and get a diagnosis.

I am no therapist, I am only talking from personal experience and from the information I have gathered. All these are a lot more common than people generally think. So if you have recently experienced one of them and are worrying, I hope this helps you worry less, just gather information, and talk to a therapist about it.

Panic attack 

A panic attack or an anxiety attack can be characterized by some of these symptoms

• an increased speed of the heart rate; 
• breathing getting very fast;
• feeling like it's hard to breathe;
• feeling nauseous

Read all symptoms here

You might suddenly feel an irrational fear, you may be scared of death or scared of going crazy.

My case in November was the latter. It was not my first panic attack, I had had some created by stressful situations in times of revision. But in this one I was in a 'relaxed' situation. I began hyperventilating and I had to cover my eyes and hide away thinking that there was some real danger. When I managed to stop, the only thing I could think about was 'I am going crazy'.

A few months later, while playing beach volleyball I started to feel pain in my abdomen and I got a panic attack. I told the teacher to please call an ambulance because I was dying. And I was not joking, I seriously thought that I was about to die.

If in a previous similar situation you felt anxious, there is a higher chance that you get a panic attack. Maybe because you have associated that situation to anxiety. Or maybe because you think (without realizing that you're thinking this) that because you got anxious in the past, you will get anxious in the future as well. 

A good example for this is people who suffer from insomnia. When I had this problem I associated the time of going to sleep with stress and anxiety. When the time approached that I was meant to go to bed I began to get anxious and I ended up getting panic attacks and having even more trouble sleeping.

If you have panic attacks, talking to a therapist about it could help you to find methods to cope with them. 

And always try to remind yourself that despite how real your fear of dying or going crazy feels when you are having a panic attack, it is not real.

Hallucinations

Sometimes, people can have hallucinations as they're falling asleep or as they are waking up. It is generally associated to anxiety, but it could appear even without it.

This has only happened to me once, but it was very scary. I woke up and I could hear noises and they were very clear, someone was inside my house (I was alone at home) and they were at the other side of my room and trying to open the door. And it was very clear to me that this was not just something that could be happening, but that it was a very clear noise. But when I tried to reach for my phone just next to my bed, I found out I couldn't move at all. I was absolutely terrified. Some people even see things that seem completely real.

Drugs can lead to hallucinations even if other people take them without facing the same effects. Everyone is different. This can happen even with drugs that are not meant to cause hallucinations. The probability here is increased if you mix drugs.

However, it is important that if you are scared about possible hallucinations you go see the doctor. Especially if such hallucinations ask you to hurt yourself or hurt others.

Dissociative episodes

There are different types of dissociative episodes. The ones I will mention here, since they are the ones I have experienced, are:

• Amnesia
• Depersonalization
• Derealisation

Read more about dissociation

These do usually happen in stressful moments.

Amnesia happens when there are specific incidents you can't remember. (It's considered that if you haven't taken any drugs, because if not it may have been drug-induced)

My example was I was talking and then suddenly I felt like I got back into myself... and the people I was talking to were staring at me, looking worried, asking why I was saying those things. When I asked what we had talked about and for how long, I couldn't remember, for me only a couple of minutes had passed and it had actually been nearly half an hour. I got very freaked out.

Depersonalization happens when you feel like your body changes shape or it becomes unreal, or you have an out-of-body experience.

Derealisation is when the things around you seem unreal.

If you are having dissociative episodes, it may be best if you don't drink or take drugs as these could lead to even worse dissociative episodes. You may want to visit a therapist about it since it could be part of another disorder.

Depression Challenge | Day 2 - Things do get better

(oops I skipped a day... sorry)

Day 2

Today I will tell myself that things do get better.

I guess it's not the best time (or maybe actually this is the best time), since I have been kind of

relapsing these last few weeks... But if someone had told me in late January 2014 that things were going to get better I would have never believed them.

However, I have had other depressive episodes before, this is not the first time that this happens, even though it is the toughest one. And it has always got better. So that is proof that this time it will get better too.

The way I was feeling a month ago: seeing friends, writing, reading loads, having good moments... If someone had told me I was going to feel like that in late January I wouldn't have believed them, and yet I was. I was feeling so much better that I thought was even possible some months back. 

When we are deep down in the hole, it is hard to see the light. But it is there. It is always there waiting for us. Things do get better. We just need time, help and treatment.

It gets better. So just hold on. 

And think that if months ago we couldn't even imagine how well we were a few weeks back, right now we can't even imagine how much better it can get. And somehow that amazes me.

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!

Depression kept me from blogging

So what took me this long to post a new entry?

Well, it was depression. My mood, again, took a down turn and brought me to dark places. Thankfully I am doing better now and I am back for good!

Why would depression keep me from blogging?

This is a rough explanation that most of you who are familiar with the symptoms of depression or other mental illnesses will probably (and unfortunately) understand.


1. I had no positive words

Because I was in a low point of depression I really had no positive words to share with you. I didn't feel much hope or illusionment for pretty much anything. At a few points I did consider writing an entry about how I felt but then I reconsidered it, realizing it was probably a pretty bad idea. I couldn't have transmitted anything good and I don't want to write in here when I am feeling like nothing is worth it, because I don't want to spread that feeling online. I thought it was better to retrospect on it when I was feeling better and more optimistic.
We all feel like that at times.
This is certainly not an easy road although I'd hope it was easier.
But we are not alone.

2. Depression keeps you from doing things that you like

That is one of the main features of depression: it stops you from having any sort of motivation.
Many times it stops you from doing the stuff you enjoy. I stopped reading for entertainment (and by this I mean books not related to my degree) a few years ago; and it's only this year that I have started again.
A few months ago I stopped doing yoga and it had been extremely difficult to find the motivation to sit down and write fiction again.
When I came up with the project of this blog I knew it was possible that there'd be periods of time when I'd stop because depression would stop me from doing it. However, I am very excited about this project and I am feeling better so I am back!

These 2 reasons take me to the topic I will talk about in the next entry: Things to keep you distracted from depression
I think it will be a very interesting entry. It will be out tomorrow. You should all definitely check it out.

You're strong

These last couple of weeks I have been feeling more down than I had for the last couple of months. Some of the 'biggest' symptoms of depression that had disappeared with medication, such as suicidal thoughts and constant crying, started coming back again.

Yesterday my psychiatrist readjusted my doses of medication and hopefully I will experience a change soon. (I know there are different points of view about medication, I am currently taking meds. I will expand on the topic of medication on a later post)

What I’m trying to say is: don’t give up if at some points of your recovery you feel down, because that

will most certainly happen. But it doesn’t mean you are weak, it is what happens to everyone and it is important that you know that you are not alone in that. You have to constantly make the choice of not giving up, and that is what defines your strength.

It doesn’t matter if at times you feel down or weak because it does not mean that you ARE weak, it is only your mind trying to trick you into thinking otherwise. You have to be stronger and smarter and pick to not give up, pick recovery over and over again.

What I am also trying to say is that you should not be afraid to go and ask for help if you need it. If you feel like you need to talk to someone about it, then do it, either to someone you trust and if you think that some symptoms have reappeared, don’t be scared to say it. Sometimes, different types of therapies or medications work differently for different people and your therapist might consider that a change could be appropriate.

You might be scared about people thinking that you are weak because once you have started recovery you think that you technically should go from feeling ok to feeling better and shouldn’t have any moments when you feel down. I understand that you might not want to tell people close to you, I have this problem too. I don't want them to worry, I want them to think I'm fine. But if they care about you, they want to know how you feel and probably if you told them you feel down they could help you feel a least a little bit better by making you feel understood. Because having to pretend is exhausting, I know.

If, however, you don’t want to tell your family, at least tell your therapist.

However, I encourage you to tell someone in your entourage as well and DEFINITELY your therapist. It is normal, it happens to everyone, and you will recover once again from it.

Don’t give up, hold on. You are not alone.