Tuesday, November 01, 2016

NaBloPoMo 1. Mental health

I nearly forgot about this. But then I remembered and prioritized, as it's delightful having a window on my life stretching back over the years.

Today I worked from my 'home' office, the one I am officially assigned to. I worked on lots of bits of tech support and some planning for next year.

In the evening, I had dinner with Tom before he went to a church event, and I spent the evening doing bits of housework, before watching Mad Men and doing some more work as I was chasing a deadline.

Today's prompt: when you're having a bad day with your mental health, what do you do to help yourself?

My mental health can be quite varied. I've had incidences of deep depression in the past, and of racing anxiety, and of magical thinking. Sometimes I'm not aware of my irrationality, sometimes I can see it, but can't do anything to  stop it, sometimes I can shake myself out of it.

So how well I look myself in these situations depends on that self awareness. Sometimes I let myself have a day of wallowing where I don't push myself and usually sleep lots, then try and get on with things as normal the next day. Sometimes I try and talk to others to test if what I'm being anxious about is realistic. Sometimes I prioritise knitting or going for walk to try and focus on something outside of my head for a while.

Recently I've been struggling with a low level background depression where nothing seemed good and that I was good for nothing. I tried to combat this by organising lots of extra lovely things to do, and buying some new clothes that made me feel more confident.

I don't think I enjoyed all I planned as much as I might have if I'd been well mental health wise, but now that the worst has passed, I do feel like they helped me feel happier.

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