I started this week feeling a bit off. To be clear, this wasn’t in a good way or a bad way, it’s just kind of the conclusion I came to as my Monday progressed. Part of it is that this week will take me out of my usual routine, which always does something to make me slightly anxious. But the other part of it is this feeling that I’m missing something.Â
mental health
The Difference Between Mental Health and Mental Illness
I talk about mental health a lot, I write about it a lot and I read about it a lot. It’s a big part of my life (if you haven’t guessed that already). When you’re learning about a new aspect of yourself, you want to learn as much as possible about that aspect so you can understand how to deal with it. In doing all of that, early on I learned about a few common misconceptions about mental health, and anxiety and depression in particular.
Shifting Our Mental Health Perspectives
So an interesting thing happened over the weekend – I broke my laptop. Nothing major, just a cracked screen. I took it into the store the next day, they confirmed that’s all the damage was (no hardware issue), and I should have it back by the end of the week. When things like that happen in my life, events that warrant a reaction of any kind, I tend to use those as examples on my blog. It’s kind of a ‘lesson learned’ for how to react to certain things. But before I could get to writing, someone who’d been going through my blog (shoutout to the new reader!) gave me a helpful reminder that made me laugh out loud: I’d already written that post before.Â
Something to Remember When We Feel Overwhelmed (Part 2)
Earlier this week, I wrote part one of this post where I talked about a possible approach to take when you feel overwhelmed. Obviously, there are many things we can do when feeling overwhelmed (I even wrote about some of those things last year), but this two-part post is more about the thought process we have while feeling this way, and some thoughts we can stick to so that we don’t feel too overwhelmed.
Something to Remember When We Feel Overwhelmed (Part 1)
Sometimes life can be overwhelming. Regardless of the external or internal factors that cause it to be that way, we’ve all hit those moments in our lives where we just feel like it’s too much to handle. So how can we deal with it?
Understanding Our Impact on Others
I’ve been thinking a lot about the word ‘influence’ this week and what it means to me. That word gets tossed around all the time now because of the term ‘influencer’ but honestly, the reason an influencer goes by that term is accurate. If an Instagram influencer posts about an ad or a product, they’re doing so because that company recognizes their influence and knows that what they say matters to tons of people. And while not everyone might have an audience of thousands or millions hanging on to our every word, we all have some sort of influence on others. But the thing is, we don’t always know in what way.
Tips For Sleeping With Anxiety
There’s no doubt that there’s a connection between mental health and sleep, especially when it comes to the quality of sleep we get. There’s plenty of advice to dole out about this, so you have to be careful not to look at the problem from the wrong point of view. For instance, if you are anxious and you can’t sleep, there are other ways to fall asleep than getting rid of your anxiety entirely. Even though people will take that route.
Instead, you can manage that anxiety through different tips and techniques to help you sleep better. Yes, limiting screen time and not having caffeine too late in the day are both very important tips, but that could honestly affect everyone. Instead, I’ve found 3 tips that have proven to be helpful to sleep well with anxiety, so I thought I’d share them!
The Link Between Sleep and Mental Health
Once upon a time, I used to be good at sleeping. Then, when I was 18, I went through a rough stage of life and it affected my sleep schedule in a major way. It became almost impossible to go to sleep, stay asleep, and get the right amount each night. I’d be going through my day on 3-4 hours on average – it wasn’t fun.
Since life does go on, I got through that rough stage, but my relationship with sleep didn’t get better. And though it’s improved in the years since then, it’s very safe to say that I don’t sleep as much – or as well –Â as a healthy person should.
We’re Just As Human As Everyone Else
How’s 2020 treating you so far? Maybe you’re thriving, crushing it in every way and absolutely loving life. Maybe it’s the opposite and you’re just hanging on for dear life. Or you might be like me – hopelessly stuck in the middle and uncertain of which direction to go. I usually wait until later in the year to tell myself what I’m about to tell you, but I didn’t feel like waiting. It’s time for a public service announcement:
Whatever is going on in your life right now – you’re just as human as everyone else.
One Way to Improve Self-Talk
When I’m facing bouts of depression and anxiety, sometimes it’s hard to see things outside myself. And if I’m spiraling, it becomes almost impossible. If all you’re trying to do is hold on and survive the next minute, hour or day, it’s easy to forget that you aren’t the only one going through this. But as statistics show, you are not even close to being the only one. But I’m different, I would tell myself. No one is suffering in the same way I am. And I know why I thought that so much when I first faced depression. Even now, years later, there are still moments where that’s in the back of my head when I’m in a tough spot. I never viewed myself as a person just like everyone else, so the way I spoke to myself was extremely terrible (it’s still not great now, but it used to be much worse).
