Low Moods: How chemicals in your brain cause you issues.

Why hello there dears... Okay so I've had all kinds of crazy writer block and although I planned a bunch of blog posts I just haven't sat down and committed to any of them fully. Every time I sit down to write something I blank out and end up just writing words and not having any kind of emotional energy driving what I'm writing- and I hate that. I think that because of the content of this blog I like to be totally emotionally truthful and write with heart, because I just think writing words for the sake of it when I'm trying to talk about happiness is a poor use of my time to do and yours to read me babbling nothing.

Now that I have grovelled to you about my commitment issues I found something I really wanted to talk to you about today. I'm going to use a little internet research from more reputable sources than my own brain to break down "low mood" a little bit.

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Low mood is something I wanted to talk about because it is a little different from depression and is something that I find wasn't really talked about very much. I wanted to make sure the facts I put on this blog are actually solid ones and that I don't claim to know about things which a doctor or specialist would- I just want to offer advice and share what I know about issues that a lot of people will deal with in their lives. So, here I checked out the NHS website (in my opinion one of the best most straight forward for advice about anything health related) and their facts about low mood. I read a lot of websites when I was trying to figure out how to fix my issues and feel better last year, trying to find out why I was feeling the way I was, and if being so constantly miserable was normal.

When I was looking around I read a lot of opinions and a lot of information from sources I didn't recognise, so I wanted to get back to basics, a medical opinion. Although when I was trying to work things out I flatly refused to see a doctor, I did accept that it was a good idea to address my issues and research them. The NHS website is a great place to do this- they give straightforward factual information and a lot of advice and links to help people with whatever they're going through, even though at times I found them limited I very much like their website. So I thought I'd share the information that they have regarding low mood.

They explain that

 "A general low mood can include:

• sadness
• an anxious feeling
• worry
• tiredness
• low self-esteem
• frustration
• anger

Normal feelings, feeling everyone has, that we have all had to deal with at various times in our own lives. I want to just address the concept of low mood because I really think its something that a lot of people experience a lot in their daily lives. Every single person I know, regardless of how together their lives appear to be, has experiences some if not all of these emotions and low moods. A few days in a week where it just feels like everything is getting on top of them and it drives us a little bit crazy. The NHS website goes on to explain:

"However, a low mood will tend to improve after a short time. Making some small changes in your life, such as resolving a difficult situation or talking about your problems and getting more sleep, can improve your mood."

This is some information that I found incredibly comforting when I read it, the idea of a kind of temporary emotional discomfort rather than this negative grey state of being. I like the idea of things that make me feel bad being temporary, that you can switch your mood or step into a diferent mindset after a period of time. I kept on reading and the website went on to explain that low mood and depression are not necessarily the same thing, but that constant low mood can be a sign of depression. They differentiate between the two and explain depression can be characterised by:

• continuous low mood or sadness
• feeling hopeless and helpless
• having low self-esteem 
• feeling tearful
• feeling guilt-ridden
• feeling irritable and intolerant of others 
• having no motivation or interest in things
• finding it difficult to make decisions
• not getting any enjoyment out of life
• having suicidal thoughts or thoughts of harming yourself
• feeling anxious or worried

This is how I look at it: if you look mental health like other kinds of health it helps to understand it better I think. So bare with me and this metaphor for a second.

The way I see it is this: deteriorating mental health could be like pressure on a muscle, putting the muscle under strain and causing discomfort etc. This can be like low mood. With changes to lifestyle etc you can relive that kind of tension on your body, you can relax it, adjust aspects of life to accommodate or deal with things comfortably- like physio. You can do psychological yoga or mind pilates or something to get yourself out of the aches and pains you feel. In my own head I feel like that's what low mood is to me- mental aches and pains. Signals that you aren't holding up so well. But those aches and pains are temporary and they pass and you can get on with it. You can make changes so that you can deal with those blips and you can carry on going about your own little life.

I think serious depression or anxiety can be described as a kind of breaking point. You tear that muscle or you pull it really badly, you're forced to address the issue because it's left you in a kind of vulnerable position. It's after a panic attack or a night awake just crying or hurting and you realise you've crossed over a line. The aches and pains stop becoming temporary and start becoming this niggling sensation in the back of your mind that doesn't really leave. It becomes a prevalent part of your daily life that you can't shake, and that seems to keep getting progressively worse and having a greater impact on your day to day. I think coming back from that, building yourself back up is the hardest at that point, and you fall off a lot but slowly and surely you end up getting things into an order.

It helps, I think to look at your own issues like that. Like a metaphor, like an injury, that way you can almost step back from it and separate a little from yourself. Your low mood are a bruise, a sprain, not a significant and deep rooted part of you. Your body, like your mind is resilient, it'll repair and recuperate if you let it, if you help it.

Let your body fix itself, let your mind and heart recover.
Mental health is still health, treat yourself with the kindness and respect a patient needs.

Hannah Hart.

"Fears?"

"We accept the love we think we deserve" is a line from 'The Perks of Being a Wallflower' and my mum absolutely loves it. She is a firm believer in the idea that we get what we put out into this world, and her philosophy seems to extend into the concept of love. I think her belief system is probably firmly built on the fact that as my mother, she feels that I am entitled to best this world has to offer me and that anything less is a cop out. (That's a beautiful feature of mothers, even if they are a little to crazy and overboard sometimes.) That applies everywhere, in the past she's written into school about teachers who couldn't care less if I passed or failed a year, about bad text books or about the way we were told to study. She was the person throughout any hiccup with friends or relationships who reminded me that deserved to be happy too, that going out to lunch shouldn't make me anxious, that sitting with a group of friends shouldn't have been an ordeal and that I as had as much right as anyone else to have a good time doing whatever I was doing.

I think accepting the love we think we deserve is a really accurate way at looking at life and relationships and happiness. As well as love I absolutely believe that we accept the happiness we think we deserve. People who remain in toxic situations or relationships are often those who believe they can't do better than that, or they deserve the way they are treated. They accept a mediocre level of happiness and love, because it's comfortable, it's what they know, and pursuing anything more than that would mean they need to flip their whole lives around and reconsider everything. That's scary and hard.

The reason I wanted to write this post is because of the adorable little lady above. Those gifs above are from a Q&A video on Hannah Hart's channel. Hannah is a hilarious and wonderful human being who I subscribe to on YouTube and I find her really interesting and entertaining. In the midst of her typically light hearted video Hannah gave her response as to what her fears are- her response was as seen above. It kind of blew me away to be honest, what she had to say really resonated with me and I think a lot of other people and is what prompted me to want to keep writing about happiness- because let's face it, that's what I want to do with this blog.

Sometimes being truly and completely happy is not easy. It can mean that you have to cut ties with people who you've known for a really long time, because they're no longer good for you. It can mean trying something new and pushing yourself past what you know into a situation where you're out of your depth, where you're uncomfortable. Sometimes being happy requires an awful lot of pushing and will-power into the big scar unknown.

True happiness and the absolute pursuit of true happiness sometimes requires us to address the fact we're not actually happy, that we are sad or angry, that we are not content with where we are. It means instead of us pushing away the things that hurt us or pissed us off, we have to face them and that's terrifying.

So we don't.
We often drop things, we let them go so that we can go about our day. There's a certain way of doing this that means in many ways when you choose to ignore a feeling or let go of something that happened, it stops or fades and disappears, we can go on with our lives pretending it never happened. We settle. 

We settle for less than we deserve in our jobs, we don't push for the things we want or do the things we need to be successful or pursue what we really love. We settle for mediocrity and a pay check and stability and our comfort zone. We settle for nine to five and coffee smell, we settle for gross hours and rude customers and pushy co-workers and an entire pot of pens that don't work.

We settle for less than we deserve with the friends we surround ourselves with. We will allow ourselves to fall into bad habits, like ignoring our feelings or not speaking our minds. We will settle for following the crowd and moving as one entity. We will settle for not addressing hurtful comments or stand offish behaviour. We will settle for surrounding ourselves with people who hold us down, not bring us up, and who cause chaos in our space when in actuality, good and true friendship makes your space better and brighter, it makes it a clearer place to be.

We settle for less than we deserve in love. There are expectations and standards we meet as a society that put a real strain on genuine love and connections. There's a list of things that people expect you to be doing, to be saying. We settle for the artificial appearance of a great relationship, we settle for cute couple photos on instagram and pictures of the jewellery/ flowers/ shoes you bought or received. We settle for being with someone out of familiarity, out of the known.

We settle for not being valued the way we should be, people in relationships can treat you badly and you can let them. We all know being ignored or ridiculed, yelled at or belittled is wrong, we all know someone making our space chaotic and stressful is not the way relationships should be, and yet we continue to allow that to happen.

More than that, so many people settle for being "not being unhappy" in that they move along through life with another person, not miserable or unhappy or hurt, but not fully happy either. We settle for not communicating and feeling alone when there is always someone there for you. Short conversations and blank expressions and kind of dull low cloud.

We settle for second guessing love and that is so sad and so hard. We are human beings, we live for connections with one another, love holds us together and builds us up in a way that can never be fully explained. If you have love in your life, wherever it comes from, relationships or family, your kids, your friends- it helps. Love helps us in our day to day and keeps us going and focussed, it makes us feel like it's worth it. So why do we settle for anything less than be entirely fulfilled, giving and receiving love the way we know we can?

This is the way I see it: if you, in your life, are settling for less than you deserve, then you are just not going to live a fulfilled life. You are not going to be truly happy, you will not love truthfully and the pace you make for yourself in this world is always going to be a little too chaotic and a little too dark and stressful to be in, because you are not being true to yourself. You will always, always know in yourself when you are not happy. You will know when things are wrong, you will be thrown off the natural rhythm of your life and you won't be able to ignore it forever.

There is definitely something to be said for letting little things go in life. It's just not sustainable to allow yourself to feel every tiny pain the world has to offer you, otherwise you'll just end up miserable. But at the same time, you can't and you shouldn't suppress your feelings. We all deserve to express ourselves and how we feel so that we can take control of our lives and have every opportunity to be the happiest we can be. We can only do that if we are honest and true to ourselves about what we want and how we feel.

We shouldn't settle for less than we deserve because it seems scary or hard, we should be able to live life for ourselves, the happiest and most fulfilled way we can.

Disconnected.

It was a weird week last week. The phrase my best friend used was "stuck in a rut". That's exactly what I was- stuck in an emotional rut.

I wrote my last post about feeding negativity after a week of doing just that. I had managed to wiggle myself into this weird mindset and this entirely weird situation where I managed to do all of the things I mentioned in my post that feed negativity. I sat on Instagram and stalked fitness gurus and pretty girls, I managed to convince myself my friends would be happier and better off without me, I stayed home and ate bad food and generally distanced myself from all the people I really love. My mum didn't really know what to do because even though she and I were both kind of aware of the weird mood that seemed to have descended over this little brain of mine, but I couldn't even put my finger on why I felt so unbelievably down all week.


Now to be honest there was a reason for my negativity, I had a conversation with my best friend that ended on a weird tone and for a while after we had talked and seen each other but it really hadn't felt the same. It's very difficult to explain this in a way that makes actual sense when put together in words. We had hung out with our group of friends and laughed and messaged each other about little things but we just hadn't had a conversation that had any substance to it? Eventually yesterday evening both of us had come out with the fact we'd felt weird and out of sync and generally really down and upset without really knowing how to, or whether we should address the situation. It was like a physical weight had been lifted off my chest, I hadn't realised it had been crushing me until my friend pointed it out. It sounds insane, you would think you should be able to identify something that causes you such unhappiness and cultivates so much negativity, but it just didn't happen for me this time.

Long story short, we just didn't communicate with each other because we felt silly about how we felt, maybe even a little irrational. I for sure felt like I was just being neurotic about the whole situation, having decided in my own mind no one wanted or needed me for anything and I should move to Canada and live in a shack with no internet connection because my online presence would be unmissed and everyone would have a great time without me and the world was ending and the general dramatic insane crap that runs through my head when I completely fall to my anxieties. Talking it through and voicing our issues and insecurities meant we could deal with them and talk to each other and work things out. We both felt so so much better after we looked at the weirdness that had been surrounding us for too long and it's like the whole bizarre atmosphere was just lifted off us- we had safely escaped our weird emotional rut.

I wanted to write this post with this little anecdote about my life for 2 reasons. Firstly I wanted my little bog to be real, for me and for the tiny group of people who seem to read it (I appreciate every single one of you, I'm looking at you too Mamma). I wanted this blog to be something that I can use to have a positive voice even if it's a really small scale thing, but I feel like my voice could be miscontrued as fake, or as preachy, which was something I could absolutely not stand when I was at my worst. What I mean by that is I don't feel like I will write a realistic view on life if I don't address in some way that sometimes things get hard. That we aren't super strong and we're not always mindful and sometimes our own thoughts overwhelm us massively. I guess what I wanted to present was the fact I am in no way perfect, I am not mindful everyday, I still have some days that are really a struggle when it comes to anxiety and negativity. I guess what I'm trying to say is I want to share the fact that we all fall off, you haven't failed because you didn't do so great this morning, or this week. You can fall off that's not failing, giving up and laying on the ground and letting negativity hit you could be failing, so just get up and dust yourself off, grab a metaphorical band aid (little bar of chocolate, a couple of episodes of The Office, maybe cry a little bit to someone you love, or maybe just a little to yourself) and pull it back together so you can proceed with living rather than existing.

The second reason I wanted to write this post is because I wanted to talk about interaction and how the current state of society affects the ways in which we interact- the world we live in now, built on technology and the notion of "social networks", allowing us to be interconnected in ways our parents generation can barely begin to comprehend, is a new world. I wanted to talk about how we are all so connected in so many ways, and yet people are feeling, more than ever before, alone. We can feel so disconnected from each other and honestly, I think in a world where conversing is so convenient and easy, that we've stopped being able to communicate.

Every second of the day we can scroll our way into each others lives. Its a matter of tapping a few screens and we're suddenly, privately, involved with each others lives, the photos from last nights party, that awesome day trip, those crazily cute dates, those new shoes, the fancy new makeup, car, baby... It is easier than ever to immerse yourself in a world that isn't yours, and with this new found power, although it is amazing, we are faced with new challenges.

We can do so much with our interconnected world. We can reach out to total strangers across the world, joined together by a shared love. We can find fans, friends- we have seen over the last few years that fan culture has developed into something bigger and crazier than we've ever experienced before. That's just one of the things we can now do using our connections. People literally create communities, Directioners and Belieber's are a prime example of a community created out of the world we live in. Tweeting, posting, hashtags and fanficiton, today's fans have a bigger voice than ever, a greater connection to their idols.We live in this strange world, where on-line communities, fuelled by the emotions of teen and pre-teen girls that made a few floppy hair lads into some of the most influential individuals on the planet. We have created a world of wealth and power for these boys out of a group of fans so international, so tight knit and at times mildly insane, that we created idols faster than we ever have before. That's crazy.

But here is the thing, in this new world we live in, this free world where we can express ourselves in ways we never could before we face new challenges too. It has become so easy, in the blur of profile pictures and likes and tweets, to lose our identities in trying to establish one. Being online is a way to establish a presence in the world. We are affected emotionally due to our exposure to each other. You can see other people's wealth, happiness, idyllic living situation. You can see the bottom row of Kylie Jenner's shoe collection and hate yourself a little bit, see those fast cars and toned model legs and clear skin you always wanted. You can scroll through Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Pintrest- you could even do it old school and just Google stuff, but we can access images instantly. We live in a world where materialistically we can see everything we could ever want, but don't necessarily have. It has been argued that our society in the west now is also totally consumerist, in that individuals associate the acquisition of material items with happiness. So if we can always see what we don't have, the surely the way we live now can't be healthy for our emotional well-being?

We have lost our ability to talk to each other, exemplified in how most people my age, get really nervous talking to people they don't know so well on the phone. We are comfortable behind a monitor, or our phone screens. We are the children of the text. It is safe, it is secure, we can be whoever we want, sound as confident as we like and no one has to see we're in pyjamas with a tiny bit of custard on our cheek, or that we've watched about 4 episodes of 'My Drunk Kitchen' and the entire first series of Game of Thrones. Talking on the phone requires the ability to interact in a somewhat 'real world' sense with those around us, and it freaks us the hell out.

This was my issue with my friend: we hadn't communicated so we were both left in this rut feeling wholly isolated and weird. The second we resolved our feelings and issues together we suddenly realised how crazy we were for not sharing our thoughts with each other before- because we tell each other a bunch of stuff. We both know how much better it is to talk to each other and still chose to suffer in silence by ourselves- in hindsight crazy, but something I used to do a lot a couple of years ago.

Relationships have suffered. The way that we go about getting each others attention, what is regarded as romantic has changed drastically. We rely on likes and comments and that kind of validation to make us feel a sense of love. I'm not even going to discuss how social media and popular culture has affected the way adultery and treatment of women is viewed because that's a whole other ball game. But I think it's important to see that we have led ourselves into a world where the way we treat each other is depicted all over the place, expectations of relationships and trends etc #RelationshipGoals are going crazy! We need to stop viewing romance and love as this thing to check off a list. We need to stop using other people's relationships as our structure of how to live life. The whole point of love is that it's a feeling, the spontaneity of the thing is what makes it special, what brings people together- and we're losing that. We're not communicating with each other, people don't call t tell you goodnight, and a text can be misunderstood, tones are misinterpreted and it's hard for genuine emotion to be expressed and understood.

Material consumption is on a NEW LEVEL because companies have gone beyond advertising. Instagram has done their job for them, we see images on social media every day of the bag, the shoes, the jeans. Blogs and Tweets, statuses from celebrities, beautiful girls, "ballers"- we see the material life that so many of us dream of. We see a life someone has. We see a life we want, the things we want, and consequently strive to buy and achieve. In some ways this is a very good thing expanding the idea of meritocracy and competition in society to achieve this idyllic lifestyle- but it also means trends and fashions become an obsession on new level. Girls in shorts, plaid shirts and Timbilands after evry Chris Brown video, Chanel bags selling out after Kendall Jenner gets a new one- I mean jeez the Kylie Jenner lip challenge! We are so disconnected from the real world trying to be like that, trying to achieve this materialistic equilibrium that we believe will bring us bliss. It's crazy.

I'm not sure what I wanted to achieve through this post other than to address the issue of becoming disconnected from the world around us and the communication issues it leads to. I guess it's just something that concerns me, because as social creatures we need each other, and it's important that we know that: other people feel the same way we do. Other people go through similar experiences to ourselves, other people understand or are there for us or want to listen. Honestly, it got to be a bit of a rant in the end and I started to sound like my wonderful Grandma about half way through, so I think I'm going to stop and leave it there- but those are just my thoughts. We need to remember the importance of real interaction, how to stay connected with each other on a human level, because there's a good chance we can forget how to do it.

Feeding negativity.

So there's this natural thing that people do when they fall into that really strange and lonely cycle of negativity. When our own heads overwhelm us and everything really does feel like you're the only person around, it feels like nobody else cares, like nobody else wants to hear about the craziness and emptiness in your head- and it's a very weird place to be. The thing that people do is this: they take their negative experience and mindset and they start to feed that negativity.

We can fall into this loop where loneliness or sadness, anger or nothingness becomes what we know and what we're used to. For example, if we're used to being alone we will cancel plans and stay in all night thinking about those plans. We will take personally the "seen" messages and resent ourselves or other people for our loneliness, falling deeper into a negative mindset.

That's just one example of how people feed negativity. Negativity in any form, bad energy or karma or flow, or whatever label you want to give it, can be fed on the smallest things that we do- we can be our biggest obstacle. Why? Because our brains are amazing. We have the capacity to build ourselves into this incredible human being using our own heads. We can decide we are beautiful, we can decide we are confident and capable and that we can achieve whatever limits our own brain puts on us. Successful people do this a lot, they believe they can so they do. Our brains are our biggest enablers.

Equally, our brains can be our greatest obstacle. We can convince ourself we are alone, that we are less than, that we are sad or chubby or inadequate. We have the power to reduce ourselves into darkness, make ourselves feel small and insignificant.



It's so easy to feed a negative mindset- you have a bad day, a bad experience with a person or you make someone upset. you're stressed about work or school and you come home and crash. Your body is in overdrive because you're anxious or stressed or sad and therefore you feel this heavy tiredness. You don't want to move, you don't want to eat good food and socialise and go forward, you just want to it and be sad and soak it up. You want to watch trashy TV and wonder about Kim Kardashian's issues more than your own, you want to binge eat crappy food and scroll through Instragram and feel NEGATIVE.

Don't be embarrassed, don't feel like by stating this stuff I'm trying to call you out on your flaws because everyone does this. Sometimes it's good to feel sad and binge and feel a little sorry for yourself BUT it is not acceptable or healthy to let yourself do this every time something bad happens. The same way an alcoholic responds destructively to hardships in life by picking up a bottle of wine, tequila with breakfast, vodka midweek to soften the blow of work on Thursday morning... people who allow themselves to be consumed by negativity feed it through their actions. You sleep when you need to be productive, you miss out on hanging out with your friends, socialising networking, living your life!? By choosing negativity, feeling sorry for yourself as my mum used to (quite harshly) put it.

The act of choosing negativity can affect people badly in many ways. You have to think of happiness as a total choice that you're in control of. You can choose happiness. You can choose to let those little things get to you and ruin your day or you can pick yourself up and get on with it. You are the only person who can truly control how you feel, you have the capacity to identify and control your emotions, so why not do it in a way that improves your life?

When you're trying to have a less negative outlook on life, appreciate what you're doing and remove yourself from feelings of unhappiness, loneliness or just plain emptiness it's really important to be able to identify in your own mind where and how to make a change. Once you can identify your moods, your triggers and your actions you can then make changes that will enable you to cope better and handle your day to day challenges more effectively.

Life is never going to be perfect, and it's also too short to lie to yourself and think that there is an end goal of a perfect life. t's just not going to happen- you can plan every hour of your days for the rest fo your life, throw money at it, clothes, cars, homes at it, but you will always no matter your situation, face stressful scenarios. You will no matter your walk of life be hurt, be stressed, be anxious or angry or scared at one point or another in your life, we're human, it's an unfortunate side effect of our own condition. You just have to do the best you can to lead a fulfilling and happy life.

This is a list I wrote when thinking about how I tried responding more positively to panic attacks. I used to be at my most productive an optimistic about an hour after I had one, it was this weird time where I was kind of exhausted but also kind of relieved because although often whatever I had been anxious or stressed about was still most likely an issue, after I had a panic attack I tended to rationalise, to plan and organise myself. It's a weirdly ironic time to get a sudden wave of optimism but there we go. Below is a list of things I think are helpful in tying to avoid feeding negativity.

...

1. Recognise your behaviour.

When I get into that weird negative head space I've noticed I have a lot of reoccurring behaviour and now that I know what I do when I allow myself to be negative I can recognise it in myself.

I tend to avoid any kind of social interaction. I get sad and lonely and then proceed to make myself feel worse by not messaging anyone or texting anyone to hang out or chat or converse in any way that would improve my mood. I tend to avoid going out and making plans, I convince myself they're going to be a disaster, that people would have a way better time without me and that I am not wanted or needed, therefore resulting in a lot of time spent on the floor of my room trying to find an excuse not to go out and convincing myself I am totally alone in this world that we live in. Looking back on this behaviour in a normal everyday mindset of a fully functional and currently happy person I can see how ridiculous this kind of thing is, but the thing is it happens and it's important no matter how ridiculous your behavioural traits to identify your behaviour and take steps to avoid doing these things.

I listen to really sad or angry music. There's a song for everything, when I was 13 I had my first "boyfriend"- his name was harry, he liked my Facebook profile picture and we held hands a lot. He subsequently broke up with me by text. In fairness I wasn't actually that upset about the break up as both being obscenely awkward with each other it was probably for the best- sorry Harry. I listened to Taylor Swift 'Fearless' album for a week straight and then got over it, it was perfect break up music. I tend to gravitate towards music that fits my mood, if I'm going through a tougher day then you can usually tell by my Spotify playlists. If there's a lot of old school Paramore and loud sad songs then chances are I'm feeding the sad/ angry thoughts in my head and angrily laying on my bed while my laptop plays loudly. After a while I start getting a little too into the songs and the shoutiness and the lyrics and get all resentful and upset- more than I even was before? If I can feel myself doing that I tend to stop or switch the track to something less heavy or more positive.

I get pissed off at every little thing, and I mean everything. Messiness is my biggest thing when I am upset or anxious. Now here's the thing, I am not a particularly neat freak type person. I don't need to have my room at right angles at all time, there is clean laundry on my bed, my desk, piled in the bottom of my wardrobe. Make-up and hair products litter my floor on a fairly daily basis because even if I put them away they all seem to creep back out of their box when I'm flailing about trying to get ready to go somewhere. I like my room to be clean, like hoovered and dusted, and I couldn't be one of those people who leaves food in their room but I'm not crazy about cleanliness. That is until I'm stressed or upset. I get really  mad if theres plates and cups out of the dishwasher, I hoover with a little bit of craziness if the carpet isn't looking s good. I tidy things into boxes with what my mother has pointed out is a very very serious face on and I get mad at every member of my family for not keeping the house in pristine condition. I now kind of know when I'm getting a little crazy and wiping surfaces with a little bit of malice... I'm nuts when I'm anxious.

2. Productivity makes every person feel better.

The reason I started this blog was to have a positive creative outlet where I could be productive in a way that would benefit both me and other people. I write a lot of little things just in a journal and stuff too, I've always liked writing and being creative, it's always been something I find so satisfying and calming. I tend to find when I am angry or upset I get really fidgety and I need to occupy my time with something. When I redirect my negative energy I tend to get a lot of shit done if I'm honest. I plan a couple of blog posts, my room gets tidied, I cook, I make to do lists- all that kind of stuff is a good and productive use of your time that not only occupies your thoughts and prevents your obsessing over your anxieties but also helps to organise your life and reduce stress in other areas.

3. If you can't help it, limit yourself.

Sometimes even when you are recognising your own behaviour, it can be really difficult to stop what you're doing and return to this normal clam place. Even if you can hear your own thoughts taking a turn for the more depressing side or more anxious side, it can be really difficult to pull yourself together out of that mentality. So if you really can't help but worry or stress or feel sad or lonely- it's totally normal, and acceptable to feel those things, sometimes you need to feel that way for a while so you can process things and THEN move along with your life. So, instead of stopping yourself immediately, limit yourself. Say "I am going to give this 10 minutes more of my time and then I am going to get on with my life", or "I will listen to 2 more sad songs and then get some clothes on and go out after some Beyonce", or "Screw this, I am going to chat to my best friend after I mope about for half an hour max". Do not let your bad moment and bad mood continue through your day, you can have a bad couple of hours, or hour, you can have a bad morning but don't let your mood ruin your own day because that is a slippery slope into being in a bad mood for a couple of days, or weeks, or months.

4. Find out what your quick fixes are. Mine go a little like this...

• Music, the cheesier the better- I tend to swing over to the Taylor Swift, One Direction side of thinks to reaffirm my shocking and mildly irritating belief in love. Then I usually follow with a little Beyonce or Rihanna to remind myself I'm strong and sexy and cool as hell. (I'm not but damn do I feel like it after a few tracks.
• Comfortable clothes- wear something that will make you feel good, that you know you look damn fine in and just put it on. Do your hair or your make-up just for yourself and you don't even have to go out. Just feel good in what you're wearing.
• Funny Youtube videos- vloggers, comedy videos, cat videos, whatever makes you smile!
• Socialising- you won't feel like it but I promise it will help. Make plans to hang out with a friend, talk to them about your worries or don't. Get a coffee, have them come over, make some food, chill out and just talk and interact. I swear it helps to talk to people, it helps to not be alone sometimes even if all you want to do is be by yourself. 

...

Every single person in this world deserves to be happy and feel accepted and at peace with their life, every person has the right to live their life to the fullest and experience some level of self fulfilment and joy. Life is not always easy, sometimes it will be a real struggle and we have to cope with those times as best we can- how we handle the tough stuff is what makes us who we are, not our reactions to when life is smooth sailing.

Everyone has the capacity to make themselves happy and live a happy life, you're not only deserving but capable of creating that life for yourself. But, you have to choose that life. It is so so easy to feed negativity and allow it to consume you for days. It's so scary how many days you lose to negative energy, where it feels like you're just floating day to day trying to feel more than emptiness but
it can be so so different, it can be so much better. So don't lose days to that kind of mindset, life is too damn short to lose days over anything, you have to be able to see this bigger picture and make yourself a life you are proud of and happy to lead.