I know I have been absent again. To be honest my depression has really been hitting me in the motivation quite hard so I'm sorry. To be brutally honest and somewhat blunt - I had a mental breakdown that consisted of two panic attacks on Monday night and I'm starting to feel a lot better. It's surprising how much help a good cry can do (although I could have done without the panic attacks). On with the post.

Have you ever heard of the term 'the helicopter view'? It's something I've been trying to do for years, and never even knew there was a name for it.

Today I want to talk a little about comfort zones. We all have them, some more restricted than others, but everyone has their zones. 

Sometimes, if you're feeling particularly anxious or stressed, you might choose to remain in that comfort zone for a day, just to keep yourself and your mind happy. This is healthy, as I've said in previous posts, it's okay to do nothing if your brain needs a break.


My mum has ME and Fibromyalgia. These two things alone don't stop a person from working, I've met a lot of people with Fibromyalgia and a lot of people with ME who work. I get that it's different for everyone, and mum has had a flare up which has meant she can't do a lot. This is fair, unfortunately people do have debilitating physical health issues which mean that it's slightly too difficult to do things others can. This by no means is a post hating on my own mother. 

Mum also has anxiety. She tried having telephone appointments for therapy for it, and once her therapist told her she needed to try and step out of her comfort zone and perhaps get the bus to go and see her two children, she stopped the therapy purely because she couldn't do it. 

Pushing your comfort zone is an extremely difficult thing to do. It's called your comfort zone because it's where you are comfortable, and if there's an option to not be comfortable, it makes perfect sense for us to not want to do it. Like I said, everyone's comfort zones are different, some people's comfort zones may be the country, and only get anxious and uneasy when leaving their home country. For others, like my mum, it's just the house. You can live a pretty good life without leaving the country, although I would always strongly recommend trying to push that if you want to see the world and explore cultures. Your quality of life if you're afraid to leave the house, however, is not going to be very good.

Please don't read this as me 'telling you off' if you struggle to leave the house. I'm not at all. My boyfriend has only recently been okay with pushing his comfort zone back from just his house and it's a big moment and I'm super proud. Mum's comfort zone is her house, unfortunately she's in no rush to leave and seems pretty happy only leaving the house to go for a drive here and there. I get that there are other factors in her life, but it still sometimes makes me sad that she doesn't test herself every once in a while.

I understand that pushing your comfort zone can be tricky. It can worsen anxiety and if that happens, you'll wonder what the point in it is and not want to try it again. The only way you can push your comfort zone is a little bit at a time. Leave the house for ten minutes, once you're no longer anxious about doing that, try for twenty minutes, maybe walk slightly further. Once you're used to that try a bit longer etc. It's tough and incredibly mentally draining but it's a key step in recovery. 

I'm not saying you shouldn't have comfort zones at all, some of them might not even be distances away from your house. For me, my comfort zone is going anywhere public with music on. My anxiety is triggered by too much noise among many other things. I like to have loud music on so I can focus on just one thing rather than try and wrap my head around several different noises at once. I wanted to do this post today to talk about how I pushed my comfort zone today, and although there were a few times I wanted to quit and just stick my headphones in, I persevered and I felt really good about it. I also saw it as an opportunity to try and practice mindfulness, which is slightly more difficult when focussing on noise increases your anxiety levels.

I went shopping in the city today. There was nothing remotely unusual about it apart from the fact that I didn't have any music playing. I wanted to stay out as long as possible and just try to embrace the world and its noises while trying to remain calm and keep my panic attacks under control. There were times where it got a bit much, but I knew I could quickly escape the situation by doing something other than music. I left the shop, or went into a different, more quiet shop to just try and get a moment of quiet. It's something I want to try and do more, not because I think there's anything wrong with listening to music while you're out, but with trying to be more mindful and taking in every moment and just being present, it's much better to do that if you are actually in that present and not having music to distract you.

So I encourage you all to push your comfort zones, even if just a little. Yes, it is a challenge, No it won't cure your anxiety. It will, however, make you feel a lot better, and the pride you feel in yourself when you get home and think to yourself "I can do it" feels amazing and is really good for our confidence and our self-esteem. So try and push yourself. It's worth it.

Until next time,
-M x

 First of all I know I have been absent from here for the past week. The reason is that I have been coming off of my antidepressants, and it has probably been one of the toughest mental challenges I have faced in a long time.

I've been trying to find ways of writing this post for several days now. I've written a whole post, scheduled it for upload and now here I am, rewriting it for about the fifth time, just trying to find the right words to describe my experience. I don't think there is a right or wrong way. So I'm just going to tell you a little about what's been going on the past few months.

I've mentioned in my 'My Story' post that I was sixteen when I was diagnosed with anxiety and clinical depression. Although it was pretty bad and I was self-harming I was told that medication wouldn't be a good idea for me as I was still young, and if there was a chance I could get through it on my own, that was to be encouraged. I took that mentality with me through the following years and always managed to get through dark times on my own. It would take a lot of willpower and a lot of help from friends, but I would always come out on the other side smiling just for the sake of smiling and enjoying how good it felt to actually feel genuine happiness without the onset of guilt for said happiness.

October last year came around and My GP finally (after a couple months of regular mental check-up appointments) decided that I should start on antidepressants and see how I go. Considering how badly my anxiety was affecting my job at the time, it seemed like a good idea. I wanted my life back and if it meant I had to succumb to medication to get there, I was at the point where I didn't mind so much.

I just want to point out that although I may talk about how much I hate taking medication, it by no means I'm against it. I'll tell anyone to take painkillers for a headache but the only reason I'd take painkillers is if I'm in so much pain I can barely move and nothing else helps. I'm in no way against medication - if it helps, then it helps and it should be accepted. It's just a personal thing.

I started taking my medication and instantly felt the side-effects. Something I was sure wouldn't have started until a couple of days into taking them. The first day I felt sick, there was this acid reflux lump in my throat all day and that in itself lasted a couple of weeks. My mental state almost instantly went to hell. Again, I was expecting this, I had been warned and one of the most known side-effect of antidepressants is depression. It's mad, but I'm sure there's some weird logic in there somewhere although I don't exactly know how it works.

After about a month/five weeks I began to feel better. The lump in my throat was gone and the edge was completely gone. I felt a little more confident, and people could tell. I was happy, I thought although I still wasn't feeling amazing, it had still only been five weeks and I could still improve. But it didn't.

I started having panic attacks again, I started to feel anxious over tiny things again and my depression started to rear it's ugly head again - something I'd somehow managed to avoid up until this point. I spoke to my doctor and she told me to start doubling my dosage. I obliged, having heard the same warning again - that I would probably feel quite bad for a little bit while my brain readjusted yet again to the hormone changes. For these few weeks that I was on the higher dosage I turned almost psychotic. I was causing arguments out of nothing, I was snappy and tearful and not a fun person to be around. I turned into the girlfriend I never wanted to be and I turned into the daughter/sister from hell, just hiding in my room all the time and shouting like a little gremlin when someone wanted to talk to me. My night sweats also got bad and I started having nightmares every single night again and all of my self-care just went out of the window. I was a horrible person.

When I brought all of this up with my GP she suggested I come off the medication as clearly it wasn't having a desired affect. It was taking the edge off, but it wasn't helping nearly as much as it should have, otherwise I would have been able to apply for a job without having a mental breakdown. She warned me for the third time telling me that coming off antidepressants isn't easy because of the hormone changes. They're not addictive so you don't get cravings or technical 'withdrawal' you get what's known as Antidepressant Discontinuation Syndrome which is where your brain kind of 'WTF's' you and the sudden drop in serotonin. 

There are different types of antidepressant and each one comes with their own discontinuation or withdrawal symptoms and after having looked on google I'm glad I didn't get the worst of it. 

I suffered from Vertigo so bad I thought I was going to throw up just by going up or down the stairs. I was scared to leave the house alone in case I keeled over or threw up. Mentally I felt completely numb. I'd never felt so disconnected with myself, the people around me or the world around me. Everything just existed and I didn't have any feelings towards any of it. When you're depressed the thought of feeling nothing seems quite appealing but when it actually happens, you'd be happy to feel anything, even if it sadness. During this week all I wanted to do was sleep and eat, the more carbs the better. I napped a lot and ate a lot and honestly I didn't care about any of it. What I cared about were the last two weeks where I have been a mental mess again.

When I was disconnected I hoped that I would just wake up one day and be able to say I felt something again. And I did, to a point at least. I felt something, but it was so dark and painful and depressive that part of me wished I could go back to feeling nothing at all. I felt like my face had been slammed into a wall. I felt like a failure, that I'd let my parents down, or I'd disappointed my boyfriend. That I was never any good at anything and I wasn't important enough to be cared about. It led to several mental breakdowns, it led to me crying my eyes out because my boyfriend pretended to be sad that I didn't give him one of my chocolates. It involved me laughing my head off in one second and then the next crying again because I felt so bad for having spent that long being happy. I was in a really dark place and there was so much temptation just to start taking my medication again, but I persevered and here we are. 

Then just as quick as it crept up on me, it vanished. I'm not saying i'm completely cured of all mental illnesses, but I sincerely believe that I can do this thing with no help from medication. Of course if my GP disagrees then I can understand that, but from now on I definitely want to change things on my terms.

For now I'm happy.  There are still things I couldn't do if you asked me, and there are still things that I get very uncomfortable with but I'm getting there. I'm starting therapy in July and of course I'll keep you updated with that as well. To be honest I just really want to start living my life again. I know I have to be resilient and usually I'm okay at that part but there are still things I'm working on.

On that note I've already dozed off several times typing this so I'm going to leave it here so I can go to sleep.

My intentions with this post was not to put anyone off medication. both of my parents, my step mum and my boyfriend and his sister along with many other people have taken or still take antidepressants and have found them insanely helpful, so while I'm saying that so far I've had a bad experience with them, I'm not saying they're bad. Like I think I've said before, if something helps then it helps. There's no harm in trying something new, and there's no harm in taking medication.

Also if you are currently on medication - this is your daily reminder to take your pills. You're welcome.

Anyway, I will update you all on Friday with how I'm feeling, along with hopefully going back to my normal style of posts. I just wanted to share a little bit of what's been happening in my life the past few weeks.

Until next time,
-M x

I’m a hypocrite. I fully admit that, and I’m not happy with it. The truth is as much as I preach about therapy and how much I encourage people to go, I’m not so great at accepting that I need it myself.

I just referred myself to wellbeing. It was difficult to do because I’d convinced myself that I could do without it for so long. I can’t. It’s not nice feeling so out of control that you have to bare your soul to a stranger in order to help yourself.

My boyfriend asked me why I didn’t like doing it. I answered honestly; I feel like I’m asking for attention. I feel like by getting help I’m making the problem real, and I can no longer just say it’s just something I’m going through, and that I’ll be better on my own terms in due time. By referring myself for therapy I’m admitting defeat, and admitting I’m weak and sacrificing the ability to deal with my depression on my own.

While this is all true, I’m genuinely a huge advocate for therapy, and I do strongly believe that it shows courage and acceptance (as mentioned in my previous post) to admit that you need help. I’ve never been good at taking my own advice, and I know that’s not exactly a good thing when I run a blog that’s supposed to strongly advocate self-help.

I decided to write this post with the previous post in mind, particularly when I mentioned I should write when I feel shit. I feel like I should be ‘relatable’ in a sense for anyone to take my advice seriously. So yes, I completely understand how difficult it is admitting that you may need help from a professional and yes I do completely empathise with everyone struggling to come to terms with it. No, it’s not going to be easy for me to go into therapy again and completely bare my soul to a stranger about things that I still don’t fully understand about myself but the important thing for us all to remember is that these people you’re talking to want to help.  Why else would they go through all that training?

I want to help people understand the hardships of their mental health. I want to let people reading know that what they might or might not be feeling is normal, and others feel it too. So yes, I will continue on my mission to advocate positive mind-sets, but I also want to aim to make everything seem normal, for people to read things and think ‘thank god I’m not the only one’ even if I risk exposing myself as the only one who does something or feels a certain way about something.

Hope you are all well, and please remember that it’s okay to feel defeated when asking for help, but try to remember that ultimately it’s going to help, and there’s truly nothing wrong with knowing when you can’t handle something by yourself. It shows a certain strength I feel.

Until next time,
-M x

So yesterday I spoke to someone with the hope of getting some friendly advice about how I've been feeling the past couple of months. She asked me if I had an outlet for my depression, and I told her that I did run a blog about promoting the positive state of mind and the idea of self help. She asked me why I stopped. My answer was simply 'I wasn't in the right head space to feel like I could run a blog talking about positivity. I'd feel like I was lying to myself and those who read my blog'. Then she said something that really resonated with me.

She told me that when we're depressed we can sometimes act like a toddler throwing a tantrum thinking something isn't right. We can look at the whole 'fake it 'till you make it' bullshit or we can just accept that we are going through a tough time and get on with our life. She told me to not give up on the blog just because I'm not in a positive state of mind, but to start writing about how I really feel, if nothing else just to prove to others that it's okay to be depressed. It's okay to have dark thoughts and it's okay to have low self-esteem. It's all okay as long as you know and accept the fact that it's temporary. Think of it like a dark cloud over your head. You see it and you think 'ah shit. It's going to rain on me any second' but there's nothing you can do about it, so you accept it. You know it's happening but you know that it will go.

DISCLAIMER: Everything I talk about is based on my experience and my opinions. I'm not saying everyone's the same, I'm simply talking from my own experience.

I don't think embracing your mental health illnesses is the way forward. I feel like by saying you're embracing it, you're welcoming it and inviting it to stay and learning to love it. I don't think this is healthy by any means. Embrace is such a positive word, and should be used for things like constructive criticism or the people you love, not for something that's making you question your very existence. Acceptance is just letting it be what it is. Knowing that it's a thing that's happened or happening and just thinking 'well... okay'. Accepting something bad makes things so much easier to deal with, and I don't think depression, or anxiety should be something you should avoid at all costs.

I've spent much of the past few months putting massive amounts of pressure on myself to get better. I've been ignoring my anxiety and my depression and then beating myself up with I won't let myself do something due to panic attacks or feeling defeated. My depression has got worse and worse simply because I wouldn't accept the fact that I was back to having regular panic attacks, and would end up feeling like I've let myself down if I couldn't do something without having a panic attack. I put pressure on myself because I want to get better. I'm not patient by any means, and when something doesn't go my way, I hate myself for it.

In my opinion, this is why anxiety and depression so often come hand in hand. When you're anxious you stop being able to do things you love, and you start overthinking everything to the point it becomes unbearable and you start to feel low. That's how it was for me anyway, especially this time. I relapsed in October with my self-harm purely because I was fed up of being anxious. That's all it took. Self-harm for me is muscle memory in a way. Because it's been something I've struggled with since I was 16, it's one of those things where I know that it's a definite way for me to release pressure and feel something other than despair for a second. I don't like doing it, but in the midst of a mental breakdown and my face hurts from crying so much, my mind instantly tries to make me feel at ease the best way it knows how.

I don't want to go on too much of a tangent seeing as this is my 'returning' post. I just wanted to make note of some of the things that were said to me yesterday because they really spoke to me. Accepting you're depression, anxiety, bipolar... anything is important. It makes it so much easier to deal with because you can very easily justify the way you're feeling. You have the right to be sad, you have the right to feel low, you have the right to emotions and you have the right to have a reason for all of that. And it's perfectly okay if that reason is simply 'I have depression' or 'I have anxiety'. Those things are there, and there's no point running away from them or trying to ignore them because that's not going to make them disappear, in fact sometimes it might make it worse like it did with me.

I'm aware people have different ways of dealing with their shit. I know some people do get better by just getting on with their lives and ignoring the problem, really embracing the whole 'fake it 'till you make it' state of mind. I respect that, but this is me writing this post and it doesn't work for me. The purpose of this post is to remind people that it's okay to know that depression and anxiety are valid. To know that although neither should form part of your identity, they're there and they should be respected and listened to and recognised.

I'm hoping to be back regularly. I think it might be a good idea for me to start writing posts even if I feel shit because of this conversation I had yesterday. Acceptance is part of recovery in any case, I suppose. Maybe writing when I feel down is a good way to show that it's okay to feel low to anyone reading. The whole idea of this blog is to try and make mental health more talked about after all.

I'll hopefully talk to you all soon..

Until next time,
-M x

It's Sunday right now, so this is a random post but I wanted to talk about something and I thought seeing as I haven't done my Friday post either, here would be a good place to talk about it.

I saw a post on twitter that listed all other ways of self-harm. It talked about keeping toxic people in your life, and not looking after yourself etc. I definitely don't agree that this is self harm because it's not always done with the intention of making yourself feel bad. I do think it's self-destructive which in my opinion is a slightly looser term. I want to first talk about what I think the difference between being self-destructive and self-harm is.

Self-harm is hurting yourself in order to release stress or pressure. It could be done to make yourself realise that you can feel, or to manifest all of your emotional pain into physical pain... There are so many reasons why people might self-harm. And self-harming is self-destructive.

Self-destructive is a term used for when someone does something that isn't good for them. While yes, it's usually intentional I don't think it's always done consciously knowing that it's bad for you. It could be self-harming, but it could also be bad personal hygiene, or getting drunk more than usual. As the tweet said, it could also be things like not treating yourself, or keeping toxic people in your life. Regardless of the reason, if you know something isn't healthy for your body or mind but do it anyway, in my opinion, this is being self-destructive.

I'm a very self-destructive person. I have been since I was in high school. Yes, I self-harmed and it's been something that I've been on and off struggling with since. I've also kept friends in my life who didn't care about me as much as I cared about them, one of who blamed me for them attempting suicide (and yes we were still friends after that). I also make the blame up for myself if something goes wrong, while I'm much better now than I was when I was a teenager, if something goes wrong in someone's life, I'll still find a way to blame myself.

It can be thoughts floating around in your head making you question things. Making you question your relationships and your friendships, and make you worry about how other people feel about that relationship or friendship. Since I got into the relationship I'm currently in I've always had moments where I'll sit and think I'm not good enough, I remember one bus journey home early on I cried most of the way home because I knew I was falling in love, but had convinced myself it wasn't mutual because I wasn't good enough.

Currently, we're stronger than ever and there's absolutely nothing remotely wrong with our relationship. It's the exact kind of relationship I've always wanted and I'm very happy. However I'd be lying if I said I didn't get the scary thoughts from time to time. I don't know whether it's normal, or whether it's my insecurities shining through from having many past relationships with toxic people. Either way, I'm aware it's not healthy, and I'm aware that none of them are true. My brain sometimes is just a constant state of 'what if?' and it drives me insane.

I guess to make this blog post actually fit the purpose of my blog I need to put something semi-advising here so I'm going to try and subtly segue into saying something of actual worth.

While being self-destructive isn't healthy, sometimes it's completely unintentional and we're well aware of it. It's important to notice that certain things you may be doing or thinking are self-destructive because only then can you focus on helping yourself.

Sometimes you can mistake them for just being nice. You can be like me when I was a teenager and keep toxic people in your life because you don't want to hurt their feelings by telling them the truth. You don't want to stay in and have a bubble bath and a film fest with way too many snacks because you made plans when you felt mentally able to make them and you'd feel bad if you cancelled. You'd go out of your way to help someone, even if it meant it left you worse off because you just want to be nice. These are all things I used to do regularly. Over the years I've improved a lot and I've cancelled plans to look after myself, and I'm much better at saying no when I can't or don't want to do a thing.

At the end of the day, it's you who decides what you are and aren't capable of without it badly affecting yourself. It's important to realise when something you're doing or thinking about isn't healthy for your mind or your body and do something to reduce it. (I'd be a hypocrite if I said stop it, seeing as I'm still working in it and I don't think you can every be completely free of being self-destructive, that's my opinion anyway).

Posting will resume as usual on Wednesday, and hopefully I'll be motivated enough to do my year in review then.

Until then,
-M x