Happy World Mental Health Day everyone! Looking after your mental health If you don’t have a diagnosed mental health issue then you’d be forgiven for thinking that World Mental Health day isn’t for you. But we all have mental health in the same way we all have physical health – and that mental health needs…
Category: All posts
Social media, mental health and mindfulness
Exploring the potential damage that social media can cause; promoting unrealistic representations of daily life and encouraging us all to make unhealthy comparisons with our internal experience. It was only a few years ago that the idea that Facebook and other social networking sites could diminish happiness or affect wellbeing was still a relatively new…
What dogs can teach us about wellbeing and mindfulness
How my dog helps me remember to be mindful through acceptance, curiosity, living in the moment and pure joy. Be more dog? O2’s recently launched ‘Be more dog‘ campaign got me thinking. Their emphasis is on finding excitement and joie de vivre in a world too bored and their aim is to sell their services….
Pills and Pregnancy – when careless journalism damages vulnerable people
Pills panic Sitting down at my desk this morning, I opened Twitter for my usual pre work browse. My eye was caught by this tweet, which linked to an article by the BBC ‘Antidepressants ‘could be risk to unborn babies”. Of course, I clicked straight through. My recurrent depression and uneven support and information from…
Food, fat and flexible thinking – what’s so great about perfect anyway?!
Appearance is one of the main reasons for suicidal thoughts in the UK According to Samaritans research, appearance is one of the main reasons for suicidal thoughts in the UK. APPEARANCE. This makes me very angry. But I can also completely understand why it is up there in the top three along with ‘feelings of…
Happify yourself?
Want to be happier every day? Well who doesn’t? Personally I am interested in exploring ways of helping me manage my wellbeing as I try to cut down on the anti depressants I have been on for the last 12 years (a process that seems to have stalled around the 20mg mark). I’ve also recently…
What’s in a letter? Creative letter writing for self guidance and managing mental health
A blast from the past Last week, through the magic of social media, I made contact with a penpal I’d last written to over a decade ago (she has since written a wonderful piece on catching up with old friends here). Exchanging letters is a wonderful way of making and cementing a bond. You share…
Happiness – an emotion, a mood, a goal or a way of life?
What would we describe as a ‘happy life’? “The idea that humans can capture a mere mood – ‘happiness’ – and somehow preserve it seems absurd. As an aim for life it is not only doomed but infantile.” Sebastian Faulks – A Possible Life The idea of ‘happiness’ seems to have been popping up everywhere…
Managing depression and anxiety in relationships; early days and long term.
Tips and suggestions for managing depression and anxiety within relationships. A version of this article was published in the Summer 2013 edition of ONEinFOUR magazine. Managing mental health when meeting someone new; the early days of uncertainty and strong emotions. Four years ago I was pretty happy. I felt I was finally managing to keep all life’s…
Understanding mental trickery – notes from depression island…
The three tricks that a depressed mind can play on you – and how to overcome them. An ongoing balancing act I would describe managing depression as an ongoing balancing act. A lot of that is knowing and understanding how my thought processes work and what influences my mood. Alas, the mind is a tricksey…
Compliments and wellbeing – #passonacompliment!
Yesterday and today, a twitter friend @TheAgentApsley and I were engaging in small scale hashtag creation #passonacompliment. It started with a TheSite.org member sharing an ‘emergency compliment’ website. While I love it, and it brought a smile to my face, it’s a little impersonal. Unless of course my hair does smell like a lawn –…
Christmas, comparisons, media and mental health – thoughts on having a more realistic Christmas this year.
Internal comparisons Do you have an internal picture in your mind of how your life ‘should’ be? When you are feeling low, do you ever find yourself judging your experience as ‘not right’ and comparing it to how you feel you ‘should’ be feeling or what ‘should’ be happening? By this I mean thinking thoughts…
Finding a breathing space – eight weeks of Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy
Over the past month I have been working on a series of posts for Mind about my experience of Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT). My own original post about Mindfulness – ‘Keeping the beast asleep’ is by far my most popular – and Mind are interested in how users of their services can develop resilience…
Writing my mind – some thoughts about the benefits and impacts of public and private journalling
Childhood diaries I’ve always used writing to know and to guide my mind in one way or another. Usually, this has taken the form of a diary or journal. In thinking about the part that writing has played in managing my mind, I had an interesting evening going through my old diaries and notebooks. The…