Self-Reflection

Hello lovely,

I hope you’re well. It’s been a while. I’ve spent a lot of time doing some self-reflection and looking after myself recently. I’ve come to realise that the way that I address my thought processes and reactions surrounding day to day things can change my mood and outlook completely. 

So, I’ve been actively trying to reflect on my emotions and thought processes, trying to make more sense of them to benefit my own mental health. During these reflections I’ve realised that I’ve had an extremely negative outlook on a lot of day to day situations and I wasn’t taking any notice of what my thought process was to get me to that point, so nothing was changing and I was just being a miserable sod. 

                                               

I also found that a lot of my negativity, I was picking up from others. As I’m generally quite an emotional person in that I feel all of my emotions very strongly, I often find myself absorbing the emotion of others. If someone was feeling low or angry, I would often pick up on those feelings and leave the conversation leaving more down or frustrated than I had been prior to speaking with them, but have no idea why. This is often known as ‘transference’ and can be quite a common thing to experience. Since recognising this, I’ve been much more able to detach my feelings from other peoples and alter my mindset. 

Now, when I say that I’ve been reflecting, I haven’t necessarily been sitting and writing down my feelings and thought processes, though I know that sometimes if I’m very perplexed with my thoughts and feelings I might need to write it down to physically see it in front of me. However, I will instead try to acknowledge my feelings as and when I feel them and will think about what led me to that point. This can often mean that I need to remove myself from a situation where I am around others and just take 5 minutes to myself. This can be somewhere outside that’s quiet and peaceful, or a place inside where I know that I won’t be disturbed. 

                                               

Usually, I can tell that my emotions will be a response to an interaction or something that might have been going on around me. So, my first move is trying to identify what that things might be. For example, has something just happened that’s caused a change in my emotions? If not, is something going on right now generally that might be causing me to feel this way? 

I’d like to clarify that I am by no means saying that I will reflect and be absolutely fine again, because the majority of the time that’s not the case. I do actually need to allow myself the time to experience the feeling because otherwise, I wouldn’t be human. This is usually the point where I would ask myself the following questions:

•Is there anything that I can change to help myself to feel more positive?

•Is the thing causing me to feel this way something that is within my control to change?

And a question that I’m forever asking myself if when I worry about other people’s opinions of me, which has previously been a huge anxiety for me, is ‘so what?’. This question can be quite a harsh one to ask myself, but can often be the one that brings me back to reality. 

                                                                     

If the answer to both of the first two questions is no, then it’s time to acknowledge that feeling and let it be. I’ll try to think of something I can do to make me feel at least more comfortable, even if I am still feeling emotional. I’ve recently put together my own ‘Mental Health Go To box’ for when I’m struggling. It was something that I saw on Pinterest and thought would be really helpful for me. I’m planning to post the contents of my mental health box in a future post, but this can generally include anything that can help you specifically to feel even a little bit better when you’re feeling anxious or down. I would definitely recommend it. 

My self-reflection is definitely going to be a process that I think will be changeable for me for a long while. But what I want to make sure that I’m always doing is taking time for me to reflect on my emotions because this has made the biggest difference to my mood and I couldn’t be happier with the recent shift in my mental health.

I hope you have a lovely week ahead. I’ll see you soon. 

Slowing Down

Hi Lovely,

I hope you have had a wonderful week. 

This week I want to talk about slowing down. I often find that life feels so chaotic that everything I do is done to prepare for the next thing. This can have such a huge impact on how I experience things in my day to day life. If you read my last post, you’ll know that I’ve been reading Unf*ck Yourself by Gary John Bishop. This book has well and truly inspired me to stop, take a step back and have a look at what’s going on for me. So, grab yourself a brew as I present to you my reflections that have led me to slow things down a bit. 

With everything going on in the world at the moment, it’s completely understandable to feel overwhelmed and anxious. I know that this affects me in a way that makes me feel like I always need to prepare for whatever the next part of my day, week or month will bring. This has often caused me to struggle to live in the moment and take time to properly relax. I’d rush through any planned relaxation and it would completely change my experience and feelings towards my ‘down time’. If I was going to have a nice bubble bath I would be thinking about all the things I needed to do after that and clog up my brain with stressful thoughts. 

Sometimes I think we spend so much time keeping ourselves busy that we don’t truly get to enjoy the moments and things around us.

As I experience anxiety, I often follow the 5 Senses Mindfulness Approach tool to focus on the things around me when I’m having a panic attack. However, I’ve also started to do this even when I’m feeling settled and it helps me to feel like I’m properly engaging in my down time. For those who aren’t aware of the 5 senses mindfulness approach, it goes a little bit like this...

I always find it best to begin in an environment where I will be able to embrace the calm around me. For example, today I went for a walk in the park and wanted to live in the moment of feeling relaxed, being out in the fresh air. 

So, first I focused on 5 things that I could SEE: 

1. Trees

2. Water

3. Flowers

4. Ducks

5. People

Next, 4 things I can FEEL:

        1. Fresh air 

2. My fluffy jacket

3. The heat from my coffee cup

4. My keys in my pocket

Now, 3 things I can HEAR:

1. Birds tweeting

2. People talking

3. The leaves crunching under my shoes

Then, 2 things I could SMELL:

1. A strong smell of flowers

2. Another strong smell of my coffee

Finally, 1 thing I can TASTE:

 

1. A strong cup of coffee 

This approach can help bring me right back down to earth and feel more calm and peaceful. I intend to make sure that I keep utilising this approach so that I can give my brain a bit of a break. 

During this time, if I’m finding it difficult to switch off from any overbearing thoughts, I like to use the ‘Put it in a Box’ approach. I’m not really very sure if that’s the actual name, but it’s how I’ve referred to it since I’ve begun using it. If there’s something playing on my mind, I ask myself the following questions:

• Is this thing happening right now?

• Is this something that’s within my control?

• Does this thing require immediate action? Do I realistically have to tackle it right now?

If I’m being totally honest with myself, the answers to these questions are most often no. It’s something that I can write down and put aside. Or, I can make a mental note of it and ‘Put it in a Box’ and save it for later. 

Realistically, we’re not all built to be constantly on the go. It’s so important for us to take a break so that we can then re-charge our batteries and come back to the situation feeling more able to deal with it. When I work this way, everything seems a lot less overwhelming. 

So, take a break. Take some time for you. Which is exactly what I need to do. 

And on that note, I’m going to make a hot chocolate, get in some cosy PJ’s and put on a wholesome film. All of my Sunday worries are going in the box and I’m going to re-charge your batteries. 

I hope you have a wonderful week ahead. I’ll see you soon.

The Next Chapter

Hi Lovely,

I hope you are well.

The past few months have not gone as I had expected for a number of different reasons. I’ve found that my life has changed direction slightly and I’ve spent the past month feeling a bit lost. So, I thought I would start off my blog by beginning my next chapter. I’ve decided to look at it as a next chapter as opposed to a new beginning. If there’s a bump in the road in chapter 5 of a book, you don’t start again from chapter 1, you keep moving forward. This is exactly why I want to take my next chapter into a different direction. 

I endeavour to make the next chapter about me. Reflecting on my past has helped me to see that I often base my actions on other people’s wants, needs or expectations of me. I’d put other people’s needs before my own and follow a path that everybody else seemed to be following. I’d base my wants and needs on what everybody else was doing and didn’t really give myself time to think about what I truly wanted. So, my next chapter will focus on what I want for myself. 

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t plan on excluding everyone from my life and saying no to absolutely everything because that is definitely very unhealthy. It’s really important for me to maintain my friendships and relationships. I’m so grateful to have such a supportive network around me to help me get through this confusing and emotional time. The difference is that I want to balance out my time a bit more and acknowledge when I need time for me or be able to say no to things that I don’t feel up to rather than just trying to keep people around me happy. 

For me, this feels like a huge breakthrough in what could become the best decision I could have made for my own wellbeing. I’ve found a few resources that I thought I’d share with you that have really helped me in changing my view of my current situation and encouraged me to take a new approach in the way that I move forward. 

How Do You Like Me Now  by Holly Bourne is a very relatable book for almost anyone’s experiences in my opinion, whether that be now or in the past. Thisbook almost acted as a book of re-assurance for me in that it helped me to feel a bit more ‘normal’ about my circumstances. The story is very light hearted and follows a lady who appears to bepretty much perfect online but realistically her life isn’t so perfect. What I like so much about it is that you experience the protagonist's thought processes with her. I found it to be really inspiring in the context of reflecting on my own life and making decisions that I’d been avoiding for a while. I’m realising that this sounds very dramatic but just trust me - it’s a great read. 

The second book is more of a‘self-help' book. I’ve owned Unf*ck Yourself by Gary John Bishop for the longest time and I bought it with the intention of getting my shit together a long while ago. But what can I say, I’m the Queen of procrastination. I’ve never been one for a self-help book and thought they would just tell me to do some colouring, and have a cup of tea and a hot bath. However, this book is absolutely nothing like that. The author literally says ‘this book is not for the easily offended’ because it is very straight up and you need to be preparedand want to make changes. My recent change in circumstances was the perfect reason to start reading and I’ve been hooked ever since. I’m only up to Chapter 5 so far, but it’s already taught me how to look at my circumstances in a different way and how to implement changes into my life. 

With other self-help literature, I’ve found that they only just dip their toe into what you should be doing to make change. I’ve found myself thinking ‘I know I need to do that, but how do I do it?’. Unf*ck yourself gives you the exact prompts and support that you need to start to make those changes. The author encourages you to annotate and use post-it notes to highlight the parts of the book that mean the most to you. I love that each person that reads the book can interpret it differently and can take so many different things from it moving forward. If you’re in a big cloud of negativity and want to start building a more positive mindset, this is definitely the book for you. It is a metaphorical kick up the arse. 

I hope that you’ll join me on my next adventure. You can follow my social media pages linked at the top of my blog to keep up to date on the next chapter. I’d also love to hear any ideas you might have for future posts.

Cheers to a more positive week, I’ll see you next Sunday.