Blogging about my mental health A few weeks ago had an internet date. Of sorts. Not a romantic first date (thank goodness) but a face-to-face meeting with someone I met online. Someone like me in lots of ways. Someone who could be a friend. We knew a lot about each other’s vulnerabilities and fears before…
Tag: Social Media
Festive comparisons and the Facebook effect
An article exploring how the media forces us to make damaging comparisons in the festive season – and how we often magnify the effect with our own social media activity. A friend and old colleague Holly was recently published in the Vagenda. Her article was a spectacularly cynical but very funny piece called ‘How to…
Moderating real time support chat with TheSite community
What does moderating real time support chat online for 10 – 25 young community members involve? Support chat Every other Sunday I moderate support chat on TheSite.org. TheSite runs a number of types of chat – I’ve also been an expert for their recent Mindfulness chat. I used to do moderation as part of my role…
Mental Health Awareness Campaign Support
This summer I provided interim support for the CEO of Richmond Borough Mind in the initial stages of organising a campaign for World Mental Health day in October 2013. Reducing stigma around mental health The campaign was focused on reducing stigma around mental health with an emphasis on encouraging employers to consider mental health and…
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…
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…