Blogging & Perfectionism

This probably isn't going to be a very interesting post to read, more like reading a diary entry full of rambling. I'm not sure; I'm just sort of word-vomiting onto my laptop, in an attempt to get myself back into the swing of blogging. Maybe I'll post this, maybe not. So, I haven't blogged in what feels like forever (since the start of November, to be exact!). 

You will likely know why if you follow me over on Instagram. I don't want to get into things today, but 2019 was the worst and as a result, my mental health has been all over the place- I'm constantly flitting (that doesn't sound like a real word? :D) between a deep low to a state of numbness. It's tiring... disorienting... debilitating. The way I'm feeling has seeped into all areas of my life, putting a dampener on everything. When I'm happy for a brief moment, it feels somewhat fake... I don't really know how to put it into words, sort of like true happiness is unattainable to me now. Gosh, reading back over my words, that sounds so dire. My inner emo kid has been awaking ever since My Chemical Romance announced their comeback, but bloody hell XD. Sorry to anyone reading! 

But yeah, that's how things have been going for me. My mental health has been wrecking havoc on my ability to function. I guess that leads me onto a topic for this post I'm writing today. 

Any blogger, or creator sharing their work with others, will tell you that even with the most confident of people, there are always going to be times when you critique yourselves too harshly, question whether your work is good enough, wonder if you sound silly or [insert another negative descriptive here]. It's inevitable. We are our own worst critics, as they say. However, when you struggle with low confidence on a daily basis, or live with a mental illness- the self-doubt can be intense and really affect writing (or whatever creative outlet is your thing). 

I can't put a number to how many times I've deleted posts because I wasn't happy with how it read, or left content sitting unpublished for weeks, months even, trying to persuade myself that it was good enough to share. I often have to get my friends to read my writing for reassurance, too. That's the reality of being a blogger when you deal with anxiety disorder and depression >.< 

As with all chronic illnesses, when times are tough, when life is stressful, when you're feeling under the weather and whatnot, your conditions get worse. So all of these 'symptoms', things that occur due to that relentless, judging internal voice, become amplified, more nagging, and can have a substantial impact on the criticism we dish out to ourselves. 

So, how does this tie in with my current situation? Amongst other things, something that I can only describe as perfectionism plays a huge role in my anxiety around blogging. Well, writing in any form... essays and assignments back when I was studying, the fantasy stories I enjoy writing as a hobby, even when formulating emails or having conversations online- all that I do with regards to writing is, for lack of a better word, obsessed over. It's because it means so much to me! I put a lot into my writing and it's my favourite way of expressing myself, and thus it's something I give myself a lot of pressure to do well at. And when I'm experiencing feelings like the way I am at the moment, where my inner negativity monster is seemingly winning (if that even makes sense), my perfectionism complex is raging. 

If you made it through my rambles this far and haven't clicked off my blog in boredom, then I want to say Thankyou :) I know it probably sucks that this is my first post in ages and of the New Year, but I want to share something personal with you guys, especially with my loyal readers who have stuck around even though I've become the worst blogger ever. It means so much to me! Life is tough, but it's made that little bit more bearable knowing that you all still want to visit my little corner of the internet and are interested in what's going on in my mess of a life ♥ 

Anyhow, the reason I wanted to spill my brains into this post and share with you all my dealings with the wonderful world of perfectionism is because it's this very thing that has caused (not solely, but mostly) my severe lack of posts. Self-criticism has been ridiculously peaked for me, for a while now, meaning that I just couldn't bring myself to post new content or even write it. I convinced myself that in cheerful posts I sounded like I was trying too hard to disguise the reality, that I felt really shitty. I told myself that nothing read well, everything was uninteresting or lacking something that I didn't have the ability to fix. 

Upon reflection, I know that these 'imperfections' would probably have been unnoticeable to someone reading my posts, but at the time of writing, the anxiety was overwhelming and so I just couldn't work past it. Blogging just wasn't happening :( 

I thought that this would go away as time went by, that things would get better. But I'm still feeling as crap as ever, and I can't say anything has gotten easier. I don't really know what I'm supposed to do to help pull myself out of this hole that I've fallen into. However, my blog is important to me and it's causing me so much stress that it's just sitting here being neglected. I want 2020 to be better and so I've decided that I'm going to work my butt off to get things at Raiin Monkey back to how they were. If my writing sounds rubbish or is boring or doesn't make sense, fuck it. I'm trying my best and that's all that I can do! 

So, I think I'm going to end my first post of 2020 here before I give myself the opportunity to go off on a tangent, and make anyone actually reading this never want to come back to my blog again :D Thanks again to anyone who made it this far! You're all stars & I love you!! Wishing you all an incredibly wonderful year, filled with yummy food, happy moments, good mental health days & all the motivation to get shit done! 

Thankyou for reading!

♥ 

What's something that you're looking forward to this year?

Did you set any goals for yourself? I'd love to hear what they are!

Even though I've been crap at blogging, I'm still active over on my social media, so give me a follow to keep up to date with what I'm doing and such :)

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Why I'm Not Setting Goals This Year

Happy Thursday guys! At the end of January, I took part in a monthly twitter chat for the Blog Network (run by my lovely friends Estelle & Stacey), and the theme was goals. It was lovely to chat about this topic with other bloggers and to get an idea of how they all set goals, and also what their plans were for 2019! I talked about how I'm approaching the year myself, and it was nice to receive encouragement ♥ Today's post has been inspired by this twitter chat (even though I've taken my time getting it written up XD). I thought it would be helpful to others who, like me really struggle with feelings of failure when I don't manage to complete goals I've set. I decided after how tough a year I had in 2018 that I was no longer going to allow myself to get hung up on goals and end up putting unnecessary pressure on myself. So, I have started off twenty-nineteen without setting any concrete goals, and wanted to share my feelings about this with you all. I hope that this post is a good read! 

I feel like I have said it a hundred times now over the last year or so, but 2018 really was a pile of shit for me! I mean there were a few things that made the year bearable, which will allow me to look back at it and remember those things and ignore everything else, but as a whole, it sucked! I feel like any progress that I made with my mental illness 'recovery' the previous year just got wiped clean and thus I was a mess psychologically by the end of 2018. A lot of things happened that were out of my control that caused me a lot of turmoil, but there was nothing I could do about those things. I couldn't get away from them and I had no support in terms of therapy or anything like that (the reasons are a story for another day, maybe, but I'm not happy at all with my local MH services). I tried to get through my year the way I had planned at New Year 2017, when like most people, I set goals or resolutions for the twelve months ahead, and this is one of factors that ended up making everything just more of a struggle! 

Basically, whenever I was having one of those days... (we say this like they happen so sparingly, but when you're dealing with mental illness, those days happen all the time!), anyhow whenever I was experiencing days when depressive thoughts were all-consuming, I would always beat myself up over how bad I was doing when it came to my goals, even though I was trying my best just to get through each day, and so all of my attention was focused on that, and the goals I made got put on the back burner, or however that saying goes. 

Despite trying to remind myself that I was doing the best I could, depression likes to ignore reason and make you feel crap regardless of this, and as a consequence, I would obsess over all of the things I hadn't done. I would feel pathetic and like I was just allowing my life to fade away with nothing good to show for my existence. It feel embarrassed knowing that people are going to read those words, but I know there are other people out there who have to deal with mental illness themselves and if reading what I have to say can help them feel less alone, then it will be worth any awkwardness I feel about sharing this on the internet! 

After reflecting over 2018 and trying to decide how to better manage my mental well-being going into this year, I knew that having goals and especially sharing them on my blog had impacted me negatively. Since I had shared the goals online, I felt especially pressured to show that I was completing them and give updates, but I wasn't completing them and had nothing to show, and that just reinforced my feelings of failure and made me worry that everyone else was going to see me as a failure too. I wanted to ensure that this wasn't going to happen again, and I decided that I was not setting any goals for 2019! 

If I did have a goal for this year, it would be to be kinder and more forgiving to myself. To give myself the same level of understanding that I give to others, and to just cut myself some slack! As the beautifully illustrated postcard that I've used in my photography today so rightly says, I need to allow myself to be where I am (artwork is from The Sad Ghost Club). I am determined this year to just let myself be. To just go with the flow and do things when they feel right and not to let myself stress over what I'm not doing, but to be happy about the things that I am doing :) 

I want to celebrate the little victories! I want to focus on all of the stuff that fills me with joy and makes me smile and have an appreciation for life. I want to be able to look back on the year and remember that no matter how small something may seem, it is important and valuable and I did it! In 2017, I made a memory jar but I only put two notes into it last year... this year is going to be different. I am going to fill it with all of the small triumphs and events and moments that make me feel warm and fuzzy inside :3 #cheesemuch. No matter what the next 10 months are going to throw at me, I am going to stay focused on just trying my best! 

So that is why I am seeing no concentre goals this year. I know that is a good decision to put my mental health first and hopefully some day, I am make goals again, but for now I am just going to give myself room to breath and time to heal. I do think that goals are awesome to have and I commend anyone who sets them and does a fabulous job achieving them. You guys are awesome! But I also want to remind others that even if you are not achieving any goals you set, that does not mean you're failing, it does not mean that you will never complete your goals either. You are doing awesome too, and you will get there! Just give it your best attempt and remember to be kind to yourself :)

Thankyou for reading! 

♥

Did you make any goals this year? 

I'd love to hear what they are!

Are any of you guys approaching the year the same way as I am?

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Thankyou ♥

Hi lovelies! Today's post is potentially going to be a bit of an informal, rambley kind but we'll see how it turns out once I get into it, haha. If you follow me on Twitter, then you may have seen my tweets yesterday, about the fact that it marked my 3rd blogiversary and that also it happened to be a day when my mental health left me in a pretty shitty state of mind. Without sugar-coating things, last week was sort of a blur for me. Living with depression is often associated with feeling sad all the time, and whilst there are definitely moments like that, it's not really talked about how the mental illness can make you feel numb, like you are sort of just existing in what I can only describe as a world of nothingness. With that comes all sorts of feelings of guilt, etc... like why do I feel empty when 'this' happens, or why do I not feel happy right now when 'that' has taken place? I use this and that in my description because there are just so many examples, when you feel like you are supposed to have, for instance, a happy feeling but instead, you don't feel anything and are left thinking you are, for lack of a better word, broken....

Well my life for the last week or so has been like that, and with this comes all sorts of feelings of confusion, anger, guilt, but because you're not really able to emotionally work through these feelings, they are kind of repressed and once you start to get back into a ''normal'' head space, the feelings all hit you at once, it just makes life extremely overwhelming. Yesterday was like this for me and it was exhausting and all-consuming and bleak, and I wasn't in the right frame of mind to feel like celebrating. Then on top of that, I had a lot of negative thoughts about my blog, insecurities were surfacing that I'm sure all bloggers have from time-to-time, but given the way I was feeling anyway, I was just obsessing over these insecurities continuously throughout the day. I was wondering why people read my blog when I feel like it's such a mess... well, I feel like it's been poor quality this year, I don't really know how to sum up my feelings in one sentence, so bare with me XD

I feel like I mention it a lot and I worry that people will get bored of hearing it, but this year has been so hard for me. Just when I felt like I was starting to make some progress with my mental health ''recovery'', I went through so much emotional turmoil that made me feel like I was back at square one again. It was a challenge to try and hold myself together. 2018 brought with it so many tough things to deal with, like my mom being ill (I don't feel like I'm in the right frame of mind to talk about it right now, but you can read more here), and another stressful situation involving family that I don't feel is my place to talk about online. As a result of the stress from everything going on, my mental illnesses were very much affected and in turn, my physical health conditions flared up, which of course put further strain on my mental health. I was in a cycle of physical and psychological pain and not really sure how to do anything about it. I felt powerless and lost, and trying to maintain a level of normalcy in my everyday life was proving more and more difficult. 

I was putting a lot of pressure on myself to try to carry on like I wasn't going through all of this, and when I couldn't do the things I usually did, I was beating myself up for it. I was trying to force myself to do things, and then this took much of the joy away from things that I used to find so fun. One of the hardest symptoms of depression is that it takes away your passion for things, they aren't as enjoyable anymore and you desperately try to ignite the love you felt for it, and it's devastating when you don't know if you'll feel it again. Sure, there are occasions when you feel truly happy but at the same time, the emotions often feel somehow muted, not as intense as they once were, and it really sucks! Sorry guys, this post is probably so miserable to read but I just felt compelled to let it all out, to share it with you all ♥

In my struggles, I stopped taking my anti-depressants because I just felt like they were doing nothing to help me, when I should have instead talked to my doctor about increasing the dosage, but my anxiety had gotten to the stage where I wanted to avoid all social situations that I find difficult enough as it is. I also felt like my local mental health services pretty much abandoned me, but maybe I'll talk about that another time. Nothing seemed to be going right in my life. I stopped being able to function properly; I didn't want to look after myself and I was finding it hard to put on a happy face around people. Things were only getting worse the more I kept trying to carry on with things whilst having no treatment for my mental health. I was struggling to keep myself out of self-destructive mindsets, which were telling me to just give up on everything I had worked so hard at and poured so much heart into, and one of these was blogging.

I love blogging! Having my blog has been so helpful for me over these last few years. When I was in a really bad place with my mental health after graduating from university and moving back home, I started my blog as a creative outlet, as a place for me to express myself and to write about all of the things that made me happy. I wanted to focus on the little things in life that brought me joy, and my blog become my little happy place. I was (and still very much am) delighted when other people started to read and comment on my posts and find joy in the same things that I did. I have met so many wonderful new friends through blogging and I love you all so much :) I feel like this year, I have really sucked at showing it though! I struggle with social interaction enough as it is, but with the way I've been feeling, I have just neglected so many things. Of course, this is not because I wanted to, I have just felt so much lack of control over my own life; I don't know how to express fully what it has felt like to be honest. Regardless, I have tried so hard to motivate myself and on a good day, I am glad that I have been able to get a blog post up. On a bad day though, which not to be dramatic but have literally taken up most of my year, I have not been able to find the motivation, the drive, the energy, whatever it is, to do it. No matter how much I have wanted to, despite having so many ideas in my head, I just cannot find the words, or more accurately I cannot find the passion to put it down on paper so to speak (put it down on... laptop, doesn't have quite the same ring to it :D haha!). 

Whenever my head is filled with the negative feelings I have about my blog, I always think about my lack of posts this year. I am forever questioning the quality of my writing or if it reads interesting or my personality shines through in my words, but I imagine that most bloggers feel like that once they have hit the publish button. For me, when I look at how many posts I've shared in my previous two years of blogging, and see all the content that I can look back on and be proud of, I feel good about my little space on the internet. It's not that I focus on quantity over quality or anything like that, but I like to look at my blog almost like an photo album or a diary, it lays out for me so many of the occasions in my life that I enjoyed enough to want to share with the world. It is lovely being able to look back through these happy times whenever I am feeling blue, but because I haven't been blogging in the same way this year, I don't get to do that. I know that there's still lots of posts, but for me it's almost like a diary with some of the pages torn out... 

I'm probably not making my blog sound like it's worth reading much in this post *insert several shy face monkey emojis here*. Oops, but now that I've probably embarrassed myself, I wanted to say the things that were my inspiration for this post in the first place. And that's thankyou. I wanted to give a huge thankyou to every single one of you that have stuck by me and my blog this year, despite the fact that I'm not as active online anymore and I barely share any posts. It means so much to me that you still tag me in your posts, and mention me in Friday Follows over on Twitter, that you all still remain my friends even though I am not around as much as I would like to be. All of these things, no matter how insignificant they may seem to some, have been very important for me, because they have kept me going with my blog when I felt like I should just give up with it. On some of my lowest days when I've felt like I was... forgettable, it has reminded me that there are people that actually like me :D I feel so shy writing this down (eeek!). So I just wanted to explain what's been going on with me, and maybe help someone else with similar thoughts and feelings know that they are not alone in their struggles. I am working my hardest to get things back on track with my blog and my life in general, and I am starting to see little improvements as I go. But yeah thanks for baring with me and for making it through reading this post. I cannot say thankyou enough and I will keep saying it if I continue writing, so it might be a good point to end it here XD haha. Happy three years to my blog and happy three years of knowing all of my awesome followers and friends! You guys make it special for me, you are all stars :) Here's to three more years of putting up with me! 

Thankyou for reading! 

(There I go again :p)

♥

Also if you have a favourite thing about my blog or a favourite blog post/ type of blog post or anything like that, and you wanna share that with me, please let me know in the comments :) 

I can't even think of a title...

Okay, so this has been a really difficult post to even consider writing. I have been trying to work myself up for weeks, months even, to at least attempt to write it up but it's been so tough. I'm typing this now and I'm not even sure if I am going to post it in the end. But here goes! If you are a regular reader of my blog or you follow me on social media, you'll have either read that I've been going through some tough times so far this year, or that I have been struggling to maintain regular activity online. I have only managed to post 10 times over these last few months and in some of these posts, I mentioned that I've been dealing with 'family problems', and I know that this has been really vague. It was much easier to 'round up' the things that I've been going through as family problems: 1) because they are relating to my family members and I don't feel like it would be fair to talk about their personal lives on my blog without their permission, & 2) because for something's, it has been too much of a challenge to write them down. By doing so, I would be triggering myself and bringing up emotions/feelings that I was already constantly struggling with, which was the opposite of what I wanted to do when I was blogging or online in general. I wanted the internet to be my escape, my respite from what was going on in my everyday life. So I avoided talking about what was going on.

However, I feel like now might be a good time to open up about the thing that has caused me the most heartache and stress, because I feel like I am finally mentally ready to talk about it. I know that there are lots of people out there who have gone through similar things and also others who like me might have been keeping their feelings and emotions bottled up or hidden in some way, so me writing about it could be helpful to them. I'm hoping it will be helpful for my own wellbeing to write it down too. I don't have any idea how the rest of this post is going to pan out, but I feel like now would be an appropriate time to include a content warning, just in case the subject is going to be triggering to some of those reading it. In the rest of today's post, I am going to be talking about cancer, and about my personal experiences of dealing with someone I love going through it. 

At the beginning of December 2017, my mom sat me, my dad and some of my siblings down and told us she had to tell us something. I wasn't sure what to expect but I really wasn't prepared for what she did tell us. My mom has been poorly for a long time, she is a fellow spoonie and has several chronic health conditions, but on top of those, for quite some time she had been experiencing other symptoms that were causing her a lot of pain and discomfort. In the second half of last year, she had finally gone to see a doctor about these symptoms and had to undergo various tests to find out why she was suffering from them. After having an endoscopy test, which involves a long, thin tube with a camera on the end being inserted down your throat and into your stomach, it was discovered that my mom had stomach ulcers as well as the presence of telangiectasia (also known as spider veins). It is a routine procedure that whenever you have an endoscopy test, like when I had my colonoscopy tests when I was being diagnosed with IBS,  that they take biopsies of whatever area they are examining. So my mom had biopsies (basically taking a small sample of tissue from your body) done and at the end of November, we were waiting on the results to come back on these tissue samples. 

And so it was a very hard time for us all when these test results came back to reveal that cancerous cells had been found in my mom's stomach. I couldn't quite believe what I had been told, the words seemed to blur in my mind. I couldn't process them for quite a few days and I essentially experienced a state of dissociation for a while. It wasn't until I spoke to one of my best friends about it around five days later that it really became real for me. Then like I do with most things, I coped with it by looking at what I'd been told in a scientific way. I already had a good knowledge of cancer from my studies at university and I am very interested in medical science so I had read quite a bit on the subject. And even though it may seem like I was detaching myself from the situation by thinking about it in this matter-of-fact kind of way, it was actually really helpful for me and it is how I coped with what was happening. This is also the way I cope with my own mental and physical health conditions too. It didn't mean that it was any less hard for me to deal with, but it just made me feel less panicky when I got upset about everything. 

After we were first told about the presence of cancerous cells, we discovered from further tests that my mom had stage 3 cancer, which means she had a tumour in her stomach and that cancerous cells were also present in the surrounding lymph nodes. These are glands around your body that make up the lymphatic system, which is a very important part of your immune system. For example, we have lymph glands in our throat which swell when we are ill with a cold. Very soon after we learnt this, my mom had to start chemotherapy. 

Chemotherapy is a very tough treatment to watch a loved one go through. It is a very strong medication that's job is to kill the cancer cells, but at the same time it destroys other cells in your body that are healthy and this can cause all sorts of symptoms for the patient. This is why the majority of people having chemotherapy treatment lose their hair and also experience painful skin conditions. Your immune system is very much affected by chemo too so you can get seriously ill from something like a flu or stomach bug. There are several types of chemotherapy, the most common involves the medication being given to the patient via an intravenous infusion (a tube called a cannula, which is connected to a vein in your hand, neck or chest), or through tablets. My mom's treatment included a mixture of the two types of chemotherapy. 

After several months of being on chemotherapy, my mom became very sick and had to be taken to hospital. She had gastroenteritis and also her chemotherapy has having an adverse effect on her body, and so she had to be treated in hospital for a few days. It was decided that my mom would be taken off the chemo early and be put forward immediately for her operation. We found out that the chemotherapy had still actually helped so that was wonderful news! 

Yesterday, my mom was admitted into hospital in preparation for her surgery, which is happening today. It is a very major surgery, because it involves removing almost her entire stomach (around two thirds) and all of the local lymph nodes. She will be in hospital for at least the next two weeks and it can take up to whole year to recover completely. I don't really know what else to say, other than I am feeling very stressed waiting to hear news from the hospital. I just wanted to get out everything that I've been holding in for the last four months. I hope this post is helpful to anyone who is going through the same thing right now. Thankyou to everyone who has still been reading my blog and chatting to me on social media, even though I've been very distant and haven't been spending much time online. It means so much to me, more than words can say ♥ 

Being Single on Valentine's Day

Hi guys! I know that my lack of schedule on here is probably getting annoying for you all, and you're likely getting fed up by now of waiting for me to share something new after basically ghosting my blog for the last two weeks. I don't like starting posts off on a negative note, however I feel that I should explain a little of what's been going on with me. The beginning of this year has not started off great for me, with family 'problems' and the loss of some of my beloved pets... there's just been one bad thing after another and life has been hard on my mental health. Not gonna lie, I've been in a really bad place. So, as much as I've wanted to blog, I have been struggling to even get out of bed or do the most basic of self care for myself. It's a little embarrassing to say that, but it's the reality of depression and it is my aim to be more open about my health on here. Anyhow, at 5am the other day, I had a sudden and unexpected urge to open word on my laptop and type up something related to Valentine's Day and what my personal feelings are about it. I'm not sure how interesting it's going to be to read and I'll probably ramble, but at least it's something and hopefully some of my readers can relate :) I hope that everyone is using today as an excuse to treat themselves, not that you need any excuse of course, you should treat yourselves whenever you can! But it's a good opportunity to get yourself a little something and practice some self love ♥

Well I'm not even sure where to start on this topic to be honest...

I have been single for a long time now, because of a few different reasons. It was difficult for what felt like forever to even consider another relationship after the breakup with my ex-boyfriend. I'm not sure that any breakup can be called a 'good' one, but mine was the complete opposite of anything good. It was horrible and it left me with quite a few emotional scars, which thankfully I have mostly overcome now. Time really does heal things like that, even though it seems impossible at the time it happens. I have been struggling with mental illness since I was 14 years old, and I can't put all of the blame on this breakup but afterwards, my depression and anxiety disorder started to get worse and worse over the years to come. There were lots of factors for that, like the appearance of my chronic health conditions, my struggle to get into the university I wanted and being forced to go back to study for a year at a college that my ex also attended, and I guess just all of the problems from my past combined with other feelings I had going on at the time.

When I finally did get accepted to the university I wanted to go to, I was determined to make sure that I did well and so I invested a lot of my attention to that. As well as the studying side of it, all of the other aspects of university life, such as moving away from home, living with other people, having to be independent, etc., where enough to take my attention away from my lack of a love life. Well for the time being... as the pressures of my deteriorating mental health began to get to the point where I couldn't try to bury them anymore, all of my feelings of loneliness just got so intense. I knew that I was ready to move on, that I wanted to find someone to pursue a relationship with, however my mind had other ideas. I'll talk in more detail about how my mental health affects my ability to date further on in this post, but it really does put a wall up. By mid-way through my second year of study, I was really struggling to live my day-to-day life independently, due to the increasing severity of my anxiety symptoms. I found it difficult to socialise with even my friends, so it was near to impossible for me to interact with people outside of the university setting. There was no way that I would be able to go on a date. Like with pretty much every other area of my life, I was stuck in a place where I desperately wanted to be able to do something, to help to alleviate my negative thoughts, but it was something that was beyond my power to do so. I was ill and I needed help. 

A lot has happened since I have graduated from uni, although it would be hard to tell if you didn't know me personally. The improvements to my mental health have been small and to others might not seem to be of any significance at all, but for me and my well-being they are very important changes. Despite the fact that I am actively making steps towards getting to a better place with various symptoms of my anxiety disorder, I have now accepted it for what it is. A medical condition that I will very likely have for the rest of my life, and therefore there are things now that I will always struggle with and even if I get better at managing them, they will always be something that I have to deal with. The way I do things/go about things now will be different to how I would have before my mental health progressed, and this will of course affect my ability to find a partner and to date, etc. I'm okay with that, but will a potential partner be? This is where for me it has been proving a challenge... 

Being a spoonie is tough, living with both physical and mental health conditions makes so many things a challenge. I have had to adapt my life around my health, to find ways of still being able to do the things I enjoy, to spend time with my loved ones, all in a way that isn't going to make me regret it for weeks when I'm in pain and exhausted. There has been a lot of trial-and-error but now I'm at the point where I generally know what I can and can't do, and what is the best way to go about something whilst managing my symptoms to the best of my ability. When it comes to my mental health, there are things that I have still not been able to 'overcome'. I don't want to sugar-coat it, my social anxiety is severe and although I am now pretty good at communicating online (when you ignore having to read messages like a hundred times before I send them, having to often send my message and email replies to my best friend to tell me it sounds okay, and taking ages to even write said messages/emails), offline in my everyday life, I am literally a social recluse. 

Once I moved back home from university, to find myself pretty much house-bound because of my mental health, I turned to the internet to meet like-minded people. I needed a social and creative outlet, and I wanted to find people who understood what it was like to be like me: a spoonie, an introvert, a strange person with quirky interests :) At first and for a long time, it was terrifying. I was worried about how I came across, if people were going to judge me or dislike me, and so much more. I had wanted to blog for a long time and taking the step to share my blog and interact with fellow bloggers was definitely scary, and even though I still get anxious when I publish a new blog post or talk to people, it is no where near as hard as it was over two years ago. My own version of confidence is probably a lot different to others interpretation of it, but for me I feel that I am confident online. Aside from my blog, I have met a lot of people through the various other social media I use. Tumblr specifically has been very helpful for improving my social interaction comfort levels. I feel like I'm rambling but this all plays in with how I come across online.

When I first explored online dating, since that's gonna be the only way I'll probably meet someone now, unless my soul mate just so happens to bump into me at comic con and sweep me off my feet (yeah right! :D), it was just as hard as when I initially began blogging. Everything was new, and I put so much pressure on myself to come across as a 'good catch', I was embarrassed to be upfront about my health and I let my insecurities and loneliness feed my need to find someone, that I was just putting up with so much crap from people online. If you've used online dating websites yourself, especially as a woman, you will know that they are full of fuckboys, that you're likely to get some delightful messages in your inbox, that people can't be bothered to start a conversation with more than a 'hey' a lot of time, and that some don't even want to take the time to write more than eight words on their profiles. Finding someone via these websites is tough for lots of people, then throw anxiety into the mix and it just seems impossible. After using these sites on and off for two years and having become a lot better at talking online, I definitely find it easier to deal with. Not only to talk to people, but also to ignore the negative things too. I am currently giving it another go, and I now mention that I am a spoonie and have anxiety on my profile, although I'm sure that people still take that as 'oh she's just got a bit of anxiety'/'everyone is nervous meeting new people'/'she's just shy, that's cute!', along with a lot of society, who are forever undermining mental  and/or invisible illness. 

Over the last couple of years, I have made a lot of progress when it comes to my own self image and my personal opinions about myself. I am not quite where I want to be, but I would not have believed someone if they'd have told me I would feel like I do now several years ago. My depression makes me question my self worth all the time and I used to believe all of the intrusive thoughts that filled my head whenever I felt bad about who I was. I still have hard days, but mostly I like who I am... I am happy and proud to be me. I am very self aware and I know what I want and need in life. I no longer put up with things that I used to from others, and when it comes to relationships, I am never going to settle for something I'm not completely happy with. I used to endure things because I believed that's what I deserved and I ignored my own feelings and needs. I'm not going to do that again, and I am really glad about how much my mind set has improved with regards to that. As much as I want to find someone, I mean I do feel lonely and I am ready to let someone into my life romantically, I am content with being single until I find someone who is right and good for me :) 

Finding someone who is right for me has been a challenge, and anxiety is a contributor to that. There are things that I cannot do that other people can, and that other people find easy or manageable, and it is hard to meet someone who is okay with that. I've had situations where I have mentioned not being able to do something because of anxiety, such as talking on the phone, which as my regular readers will know, is something I cannot do even with my loved ones (you can read more about how that affects me here). At first, people are seemingly understanding, but over time they have increased the pressure on me to do things that I have told them I am uncomfortable with. It is never okay for someone to pressure you into doing anything that you are telling them you can't or don't want to do, however I can sympathise that when someone likes you that way, they want to progress the relationship and to get to know you better, and when they don't personally know what it's like to deal with anxiety, they might not be able to empathise with why you can't do things that other people and themselves have with no issue.

I have not been able to find a lot of people who are willing to invest the time that I need to get comfortable with someone, and I am not blaming them really because they are on a dating website to find someone to be with. It's just that they are not the right person that I am looking for, but it's been emotionally difficult to deal with sometimes. I mean I will obviously develop somewhat of a crush on a guy I've been talking to a lot and getting along with well, so when they start to be unhappy with the fact that I am not ready to meet them in person, things will eventually drift off either on their part because they are tired of waiting, or on my part because I can no longer put up with being nagged to meet for coffee all the time. Dating me is not going to be easy if you're a guy who isn't willing to build up a relationship with me online first, if you're not willing to wait until I am comfortable enough to open up to you and let myself be vulnerable with you, if you are not going to accept that I won't video chat with you or talk on the phone for a long, long time. I have lots of online friends who am now very close to who will tell you how patient they have had to be with me to even get to point of me snapchatting with them, but they haven't given up on me because they value my friendship and they want to get to know me. They don't make me feel pressured and they just let things be; they're happy to communicate with me via whatever way makes me comfortable. I wish that I could find a potential partner who is willing to do the same. I hope that I don't come across as big-headed or whatever by saying this, but I am an interesting, complex, wonderful person and they are missing out! Good things come to those who wait is something that keeps popping into my mind as I type. Fingers crossed that I am able to find a guy who is happy to get to know me for as long as I need before we meet in person and go on a date, because I would love to find someone :) 

via GIPHY

So my thoughts about being single on Valentine's Day are both good and bad. On the bad side of things, I have a lot of love to give with no one to give it to. I am a very affectionate person and I'm feeling pretty unfulfilled in my life right now without someone special. I can't deny that I am lonely and that I am yearning for someone to express a whole side of my personality that is neglected, both emotionally and sexually. My regular readers may have read my posts about being a submissive and into BDSM, and this is another thing that makes finding the ideal date a challenge. With regards to intimacy, I need to have a deep emotional connection with someone before I am engage in any kind of passionate relationship, and with no love interest on the cards at the moment, this is something that I am missing too. On a positive note though, I am happy to be able to focus more attention to working on my mental health 'recovery'. I am glad that I have been single for a while and have been able to develop a love from myself that I didn't have before. I am proud of the way that I think about myself now, and how I am now approaching life with a better mind set that I can take with me into my next relationship.

If you, like me, are single this Valentine's Day, please make sure that you are spending the day concentrating on self love. I know that it is easier said than done, especially when you're probably in the same boat as me and struggle not to look back on your past relationships especially this time of year when everyone is talking about love. It is hard not to dwell on your previous partners and breakups and things like that when every shop window and every website is basically slapping hearts and flowers and other romance imagery in your face. However, remember to be kind of yourself and focus on embracing all that is wonderful about you. Watch your favourite movie, listen to music that fills you with joy, have a relaxing bath and pamper yourself, give yourself some TLC if you know what I mean ;), do whatever makes you feel good. And as I noted in my introduction, take the opportunity to spoil yourself today (or tomorrow, because discount chocolate!). You are fabulous and you deserve a treat! To everyone who isn't single and is spending Valentine's Day with your partner, I hope you are having a lovely time and spoiling one another :)

I am not sure if this post has been fun to read or not, but if you made it this far then thankyou so much for persevering with my rambling. Happy Palentine's Day to all of you guys! 

Thankyou for reading! 

♥

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Depression & Numbness | Mental Health

Hello everyone! Today's post is going to be a more personal one, about something that has been really affecting me lately. It's been quite a while since I shared a post opening up about my mental health; my last one was all about what it's like for me living with obsessive compulsive disorder. Although many people still undermine the severity of OCD, and see it as being overly cleanly or strict when it comes to organisation, there is still a lot of information about it available online. However, when it comes to a particular symptom of depression (and many other MH conditions), the symptom that my post today is about, not many people know too much about it and there definitely isn't all that much information out there. I wanted to do my little bit to change that, to share with you all about numbness, what it really means and how it impacts my life. My hope is that this post helps others who can relate to what I've written, and also that it lets people know about something they may have never heard of before reading my post ♥

So you may be thinking... what do you mean by numbness? And to be honest, it's a little hard for me to put into words that really explain how tough this symptom can be.

What I basically mean is emotional numbness. The inability to process emotions, a feeling of being empty, being void of emotional response to things that used to make you feel something. When people have heard of this, it's usually focused on a situation of grief, on lost or heartbreak or deep sadness. Which is definitely part of it, but what some people might not know is that it has an effect on all of your emotions... happiness, anger, excitement. Emotional numbness can make them feel muted, like your feelings somehow don't work anymore. 'Some people describe the emotional numbness as feeling unfocused or ungrounded' - the healthline. It is a very distressing thing to live with, and it makes it tough to challenge the other symptoms of your mental health condition because you just can't seem to regain your emotions. 

It can also impact anxiety, which is just double the stress if also struggle with anxiety alongside your depression. You may be constantly worried about how your emotional reactions are viewed by others, or that they will think you are being ungrateful or cold or intentionally being awkward about something. I know that this is something that I personally get nervous about. As well as affecting your anxiety, emotional numbness can cause you to experience a serious lack of motivation, because well, your enthusiasm for things that you used to love doing may have dissolved. Where you once felt excited to get up and go do something like a much-loved hobby, you might now not be bothered about whether you do it or not. One of the most common ways in which depression affects people is by making them not enjoy things they used to love to the same degree anymore, and when this is coupled with emotional numbness, it can make everything feel like there's not much point to it anymore. 

How has emotional numbness affected my life? 

I have always been an over-emotional, very sensitive person. I am the one who sobs their heart out at movies and TV shows. Someone who's default emotional response to any feeling is to cry, whether I feel mad or upset or really joyful. I tear up if I see something that's really adorable because I can't cope with how cute it is! Yeah, I'm that emotional, haha! Or so, I used to be... then emotional numbness came along and took ahold of my feelings. It's really strange how it progressed, like the symptom just creeped up on me and I didn't even realise how much it was affecting me for ages. At first, I was just not as excited anymore, about most things that used to fill me with happiness. This was starting to really be a problem since I had little things that would still help to cheer me up when I was having a particularly bad depression day, when my intrusive thoughts wouldn't go away, but these self care practices started being less and less effective. This left me at a loss on what to do to improve my mood. 

I've briefly mentioned a few times on my blog that I have been going through some family problems and other stressful situations over the past few months, and I noticed a difference in the way I responded emotionally to those things too. Originally, they were a challenge to cope with, but over time I started to feel numb about them, like I felt nothing at all anymore. As a result, my anxiety was heightened because I began worrying about why I wasn't bothered. I was getting all sorts of unwanted thoughts about myself because of it. This is when things started being a huge problem, and I feel embarrassed talking about how feeling emotional numbness started to make me behave :( 

I started to get into a very self-destructive mind set, in an attempt to make me feel something. I tried other things at first to try to help with the numbness, such as listening to songs that have always made me have an emotional response, you know the kinds of songs that belong on a break-up playlist. I also watched a few movies that would always be my go-to when I needed a good cry. None of these things really did much to help me, even though I did tear up to a few of them, they didn't do anything to get me out of the headspace that I was in. There are many self-destructive symptoms when it comes to depression, one of them I have already talked about on here before and its probably the first one to pop into your mind when you think about the topic. However, there are plenty of others.. for me, I would try to make myself upset. I would start thinking about triggering moments from my past or I would go over and over something in my mind that I thought would make me react. I feel really anxious sharing this online, almost ashamed at myself *insert 26 shy-faced monkey emojis*, but I just feel like it might be helpful to me to say it aloud like this, and hopefully make someone feel not so alone in their own struggles. But yeah, none of these behaviours where doing much, other than making me stressed at myself that I kept putting myself through those things. 

Another thing that my feelings of numbness seem to be causing me to do is to lose track of my days. It's not that I forget the day of the week or whatever, but there doesn't feel like there's a clear margin between each day. I don't even know if that makes sense. It's like my days are an endless blur, like one constant day filled with the same old stuff. Fellow spoonies, have any of you ever felt like this? That's another thing that is impacting me... I just feel so alone in this feeling. I know that there's people out there experiencing the same things as me, but at the time that I'm stressing about what I'm going through, I feel so isolated, like no one would understand if I tried to explain. 

I wanted to conclude today's post with some advice, but I'm not sure I can give much because I'm still dealing with emotional numbness and I don't yet know how to help improve things for my mental wellbeing. All I can say is that I am putting in a lot of effort to stop myself getting into the habit of using self-destructive behaviours, because in the long run this might have a horrid effect on me. I might be building up all of these negative emotions that all decide to come to light when I do start to feel more again. This has already been happening a little. I've started to feel something, and then it becomes very overwhelming. I'm getting there though guys! Apologies if this post has been a miserable one to read. On a positive note, a piece of beneficial advice that I can give is to keep doing things that used to make you happy, don't give up trying to make yourself feel good, even if at the moment it may seem pointless. Just keep at it and eventually you might feel awesome :)

Also talking to someone, a mental health professional, might be something that helps you. It is believed that emotional numbness can be caused because you've endured a lot of tough things and have bottled it all up inside, so being able to express your feelings might make a big difference to how you feel. You can talk to your GP to get referred to your local mental health services. It's worth a try, even if you don't think it will have any effect, it might surprise you. Look after yourself guys!

Thankyou for reading! 

♥

Have you ever experienced anything similar to what I've mentioned today?

Or had a loved one go through similar things?

If you have any thoughts or advice, please share them in the comments :)