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!

Christmas day

MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL MY WONDERFUL READERS!

I hope that you all have an amazing time, wherever you are and whatever you are doing today. And I hope Santa treats you all well!

This is the time to try and forget all that worries us even if it is for a couple of days! But I know the holidays can also cause stress and be challenging, so make sure you check out the Section 'Surviving the holidays'

I will keep posting in this section because the holidays don't really end on Christmas Day. There is still all the way up to New Year's Eve and New Year.

So far you can find these posts helpful:

· Spending the holidays with family

· So much food (at Christmas dinner)

· Avoiding alcohol during the holidays

· Avoiding fights during Christmas

Also, because the holidays can be challenging, feel free to tweet me, or email me (newwingstofly@gmail.com) if you want to talk about anything!

As silly as you may find it, here is my favorite Christmas song! It makes me happy so I hope it makes you happy too!

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

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.