Metaphorical Explanations: Depression.

Over the last couple of weeks I've been left alone with myself.

It's a weird thing to say I know, but hear me out: very rarely in my life do I spend such long periods of time alone. None of us really do, the way the western world moves doesn't often allow time for long periods of personal reflection. We are a world made up of having more and making more and doing more, and in a lot of ways that's incredible, but it doesn't leave you al that much time to hang out with yourself.

Now I love being around people, I find it helpful and interesting and exciting. But... I love being by myself. I love getting coffee solo and reading alone and watching YouTube videos with me. I like having the house to myself just to do my thing and hang out. I am entirely happy in my own company. But during this kind of blissful time at home hanging out and focussing on very little: in spending so much time with myself I have noticed things about myself. I have taken a lot of notice of my current situations in life, my health, my relationships with the people around me and how I feel about the people and things that happen to me. It's a strange kind of self awareness, and I say strange because I don't tend to analyse my feelings this much in my day to day, I'd never get anything done. Its something that I think people become numb too purely due to the fact that in our lives we don't have the time to sit and consider, "huh, and how does that makes me feel?". We proceed, we proceed giving a millisecond to thoughts and getting on with the next crisis- that is life. We can numb out certain aspects of our lives, dull the constant noise around us and continue, unaffected.

Depression and anxiety in many ways can be seen as the opposite of this, a hyper-awareness state: spending too much time with yourself and feeling every worry and every pain you feel. I am not advocating a detachment from your emotional self, it's so important to be able to address and understand yourself, but I just don't think you need to feel everything you go through- you just can't, we as human beings are not durable enough to feel every single thing every time our emotions change. Sometimes a little observation can be better than active participation. When you're hyper aware of your feelings those little comments made stick around in your head and explode into huge back stories and opinions you think other people might have about you and what you're doing. Your friend being off with you is the end of an era. Your work is going to overwhelm you, so you never want to go out again, you convince yourself you're sick etc etc etc. In short, you can spiral spending too much time in your own head. You feel sort of trapped after a while.

It's hard to articulate those feelings, to the people around you, even the people who care about you. It's a wholly isolating experience to feel pain and not be able to pinpoint your injury, and worse when you're not sure if you're actually just being crazy and neurotic. It was only a few days ago that I saw something that, for me at least, explained the mindset and mood shifts that come with waves of depression.

'Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows'.

If you haven't seen the film or read the books I'm sorry my loves but this metaphor is not nearly as effective for you as it was for me. But for the rest of your nerds out there listen in as I explain what I mean: In the last book Harry, Ron and Hermione are hunting for horcrux's and trying desperately to stay hidden and together and strong. They have one horcrux the locket, inside a piece of Lord Voldermort's evil soul is alive and kicking, living it's life. Each of those beautiful threesome take turns wearing this locket and it has some weird effects on them all. In this metaphor the locket is a a physical depression, that you can put on and take off.

The locket drains the wearer of energy, makes them angry and hurt and sad, they feel alone and isolated form the other too and are prone to little explosions of emotion- they are caught up in this world of negativity and insecurity and pain, but the second they take off this locket its like they can breathe again and they feel like THEMSELVES. That is what I personally feel is the worst thing about depression: not feeling like yourself, not feeling like you're acting or talking the way you want, not participating in your own life. Life is like this endurance test, how many weeks can you make it feeling this deflated and defeated, this big heavy locket around your neck screwing with your thoughts. You don't sound like you, you sound like a bitter tired version of yourself. You don't feel right, out of sync with yourself and the rest of the world. In terms of the book this caused Harry to get angry, frustrated and Ron got jealous and hurt, he felt so much pain he left people he loved.

It's nerdy and a bit weird I know to compare mental illness to the effects of a charmed locket in a fictional book. I am aware the responses of the characters and the entire world of wizardry to which I'm referring are the figment of a beautiful lady's imagination. But somehow in the world J.K Rowling created, you were dragged through every one of Harry's moods and Ron's anger and Hermione's jealousy. If you were as invested as I was in those characters, you could empathise so much the minute they stopped acting like themselves because of the evil little thing around their neck. You could see them pushing people away and their anger at themselves and everyone around them. 

I don't know what I aimed to achieve with this post, other than to share something I had discovered and thought to be wholly interesting and helpful in my understanding of how depression works and what it is, and to have some insight into it.

It just allows it to be a fabricated thing. Imagine depression is a locket you can take it off. The mad mood and the sadness and jealousy and anxiety and isolation of it can be lifted away from you and your body physically, you can return to yourself and life is resumed. You have to be self aware enough to see how it's making you act, and strong enough not to let it win. God knows it will put up a fight (I refer you to when Ron tries to destroy the locket, and it throws every insecurity he ever had right back at him to try and overwhelm him). But once you do it, it's gone, once its off, its off and once its destroyed it can't hurt you anymore.

I find that reassuring sometimes, when I feel like it's winning, I hope you do too.

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.

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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. 

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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.

Riding the Waves.

I was reading over some of the posts I used to have on my old blog, little things about dealing with anxiety and mindfulness and I came across this post about riding the waves in life. This was one of the first times I ever fully addressed anxiety and panic attacks and just kind of wrote something straightforward, giving insight into how it can feel and how to deal with it in small ways, so I thought I'd share it because it's still relevant to my life today. I hope you find it helpful!

Recently I have been checking out the whole mindset of being 'mindful' to help me deal with any issues or anxieties I am having about my school work, social or home life, to try and organize my issues and various situations into more manageable chunks. As someone who does tend to panic, worry and generally get very anxious about stupidly small things, I feel like some of the techniques I use and some of the thinking I've been looking at might help other people in a similar position.So if you are the sort of person who has difficulty dealing with their anxieties and huge amounts of jobs then keep reading...

So here we are with the real talk: Sometimes it gets hard.
Sometimes life gets really overwhelming and real and important, and when that happens, everything seems to happen kind of at once. Nothing important or stressful happens by itself, it is always accompanied by other important or stressful things. I know, it sucks- but c'est la vie!
Sometimes there will be periods of time when it feels like nothing is ever going to be okay again.
Everything goes wrong, everything hurts, and the number of things that need to get done start to have an almost physical presence in your life.


1. Let me start by saying you are not alone in that feeling.
That weight, and that stress- that anxiety that keeps crashing into you like a wave, someone else has felt that way. In fact, many other people have felt that way.
So you should take comfort in the fact that your inability to handle and process everything that is happening to you, is something that we have all felt at points in our lives- you're not alone.

2. Breakdowns are human.
We are taught we need to be strong to be successful, this is not untrue. You need to be strong enough to chase your dreams, to be knocked down and to get back up again.
But it is an entirely human response once in a while, to sit down and feel sad- to be overwhelmed, to be emotional. Letting your sadness wash through you, letting the struggle hurt and addressing the fact you're angry or frustrated or upset is actually very healthy. human beings are not designed to be happy or strong all the time, we are not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, We are flawed, it is a fundamental feature of our existence. It doesn't matter how pretty, or rich, or successful, or funny, or smart a  person is- they will have flaws. They will have too short a temper, be too harsh on themselves, be too harsh on others, fear relationships, test relationships, have issues with authority, have issues without any authority. The fact is no one is perfect, and the acceptance of our flaws and moments of weakness is okay.

3. Drowning.

Being overwhelmed is a horrible feeling- it's like everything you need to and are expected to do suddenly washes over you when you least expect it. You turn your back on the sea that is your responsibility in life and suddenly you're caught up in a strong salty woosh of horrible things. Jobs pile up, and the more there is the harder that wave hits you- and if you let that wave wash over you and drag you down it feels like you're drowning.
In this instance you have to hold on to something that will keep you afloat. This can be in the form of many things, the least healthy but arguably the easiest of which is people: good, kind, constructive people in your life will help you float to the surface of the problems you are having, by giving you advice and support to get you through.
This is highly effective, although you need to be careful how regularly you do this because those people, for whatever reason, may not always be there to bring you back up, leaving you to cope for yourself. So use people to stay afloat very rarely.
Alternative ways to keep yourself afloat include routine: have a set time to do things, go and sleep, make a little time for yourself, for your family, friends, extra curricular activities. But have them in a regular and achievable routine. This will help normalise your issues, or regulate the waves you feel. Organising yourself to the point you know when those waves or that intense pile up of jobs is going to happen will help you to prepare for their impact. Trust me, it helps.


4. Physical effects of drowning (ie: panic attacks and anxiety)

To deal with the physical effects of your emotional or mental "drowning"in your worries or anxieties it's really important to think about how the effect you physically. The most important is breathing:
breathing slower and more deeply is going to pull your body out of a sense of panic and shock, and once your body starts to stop freaking out, your head should automatically follow. It's like an anchor. Think about how you're sitting and if it is going to make you feel more light headed. Do not sit paralysed, movement helps to get the blood pumping round your body in a non-panicky way. Make sure you move, but as you do make sure you are doing things deliberately with force and focus: this way you don't feel like you're treading water and more like you're swimming to shore. The more you make a conscious effort not to panic and try to improve whatever situation you're in, the faster these overwhelming thoughts and issues can be resolved.

So there we have it, some real talk about how to deal with anxiety on a small and personal scale. I hope you find it helpful, and I'd love to hear anything you have to say about this or anything else I post!

X

The Happiness List.

Literally a list of little things that can make your day better and brighter! Side note: I am in no way qualified at all to tell people how to live their lives. I'm not psychologist, nor do I have any kind of training into how to deal with people or my own kinds of emotions. This is just a little list of things that makes me personally feel better that I've found on my own, or that other people have suggested and really work to give me a temporary happiness fix or get me into a better mood for the day ahead. I guess it's a list of pick-meups really, and I hope you find they help even a little bit to try and shift your mood the way they do mine.

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1. Opening your windows- it doesn't matter the temperature of the day, even if it's cold open your windows for a few minutes and let in some fresh air. Air your little face breathe in some oxygen that hasn't been circulating around your room for 12 hours. I actually really love breathing in fresh air as it rains or after it's rained. Everything is washed and fresh, it's like everything is new. Newness and fresh starts are really important if you're trying to figure out your own feelings in your own head.

2. Drinking a lot of cold water- This is a weird one because y'know, you need water to live and stuff, but water is one thing that I, one: take for granted every single day, and 2: forget about. I so often forget to drinks and make myself tired and dehydrated and basically fizzle out. I never realised how much I really neglect just keeping my body hydrated and it honestly makes such a difference. When I  make a conscious effort to sip water and keep a bottle near me (because c'mon, everyone hates that feeling that your body is sloshing because you downed a whole glass of water- it's better to sip) it improves my levels of energy and efficiency so much in whatever I'm doing.

3. Go for a long ass walk- Walking has always been my mother's remedy for stress relief when it came to me. During the last 3 years when I've had prety serious exams to pass I tend to get pretty damn anxious, I tend to not leave the house and end up gaining weight, losing sight of what is important and generall losing the will to live surrounded by notes and post its and cue cards and posters and... you get the idea. So, if she was home my mum would drag me out of the house for a "quick walk" to "get my circulation going" etc.

It was good for me on many levels, firstly because it allowed me to experience the outside world, two it meant some of the weight I was gaining could be lost in a productive and non-damaging way from my body, thirdly walking always clears my head. Also, I cannot emphasise enough the quality of fresh air and the positive affect it seems to have on me. I never tend to end walks feeling worse, I feel better and brighter. My mum calls it "brushing the cobwebs away", and really that's what it is. Ideas and thoughts and systems in my brain that are kind of stale get a tidy up, the cobwebs and unnecessary junk gets blown away in the wind and my mind is kind of cleaner by the end of it. Mother nature, my personal mental cleaning lady.

The pace at which I walk is usually a pretty good indicator as to how I'm doing: when I walk super slow it's usually because I'm exhausted or just generally don't want to be somewhere (that's usually how I start walks) if I'm walking super fast I'm anxious as hell and trying to work out a zillion things at once- if m pace is slow and steady I tend to be my most productive, making mental lists, taking things literally and metaphorically one step at a time. I think it's really important for me personally to keep that kind of steady pace in the way that I walk. think and generally live my life.

4. Catch up with someone you love. Okay, with this little pick-me-up comes a word of caution. The idea of catching up with someone you love is totally great, chatting, maybe getting things off our chest, discussing life and having a positive experience in general. However it can sometimes be easier said that done. Sometimes people who suffer with anxiety or depression, or for that matter any other kind of mental illness can find their own thoughts and mindset hugely isolating. Things and people lose their appeal and the habit of shrinking away from interaction becomes a norm. Breaking out of this mindset, talking and communicating is so healthy for your own well being. I tend to like quickly messaging my best friend on Facebook or a text or something but sometimes I also like to email my Grandma- I know I'm a baby. But I love my Grandma insane amounts, she's a hilarious and lovely lady and I know she likes to hear from me. I just send her updates about my life and ask her about hers, she lives across the world so it is really important and really nice for us to stay in touch like that. Again doing that makes me feel grounded and the interaction makes me feel wanted and also gives me perspective.

Sometimes though, it's hard because people do not seem to have the time, they're busy or doing something else, caught up in their own lives. It is easy to feel hurt or brushed aside when people don't seem to have the time for you and to that I say two things. Firstly, do not be hurt if someone can't interact with you right when you want them to. I know, you need consolation or affection, you want a quick fix of human interaction to make you feel like you belong and you exist and you are recognised, that is normal.

But sometimes people really may not be able to talk or pause for you right when you want them to- everyone has their own lives and they may need their own time, but that does not mean that they do not care for you and does not mean they will not help you when they can. Secondly, good positive people in your life who make you stronger and lift you up will make time for you. Whether that be dropping what they are doing to speak to you or hang out, or telling you "I can't talk right now" but then making plans to be there for you when they can. People who do not make the effort for you in any way at any time are likely to be negative and toxic people in your life, and let's face it, with the state of the world and our minds the way they are, who need negative energy bringing them down and making them feel alone? Not you.

5. Fresh sheets- these are my ultimate ready made happiness. Fresh sheets straight out of the dryer made up properly on our bed are an ideal way to be as supremely comfortable as is humanely possible. Not only will they feel great, they will smell great too, and you're a lot likelier to get a better nights sleep in a bed you're comfortable in.

6. Mindfulness breathing- I discovered mindfulness some time last year when my anxiety was really at it's very worst. I didn't personally want to resort to pills or even therapy although I do completely value it's advantages and would completely support a persons decision to try either in order to get their head in a better place. I will write a post about mindfulness and the way I use it in my life another time because honestly I could yack on about it for hours. What I mean by mindful bre\thing is kind of like meditation. I take 5, 10, 30 minutes out of my day, however much I need, I take the time to sit and kind of meditate. I usually use a quieter space where I'm by myself and make myself really really aware of how I feel physically.

I sit in a comfortable position and just breathe, I don't let myself think of a single thing that would bother me and just really focus on individual parts of me. How me toes feel on the floor, the temperature of my arms, the weight of my shoulders. (Stretching anything tat is tense and held really helps with the process too.) I do this for long enough for my heart rate to slow down, my skin to get less hot and my head to prioritise what actually matters. I find it a really helpful thing for avoiding panic attacks especially, it just makes you aware of your physical position. During panic attacks people can experience things different depending on the severity of the panic attack, symptoms can vary:
- Shortness of breath or hyperventilation.
- Heart palpitations or a racing heart.
- Chest pain or discomfort.
- Trembling or shaking.
- Choking feeling.
- Feeling unreal or detached from your surroundings.

I find mindfulness can really help you avoid reaching the point of a panic attack and also allowing yourself to be brought back down from one too. Mindfulness just slows everything down, lets everything return to normal again.

6. Escapism using the internet, ie: YouTube. Okay, this is again another technique for finding a little pleasant space and peace that I would advocate but with caution. When dealing with a negative mindset and energy in your life it can be really helpful, as well as a bit of a reality check, to use a little escapism. The internet if perfect for this, and especially youtube. YouTube stars have really made it big in recent years as the platform continues to grow and develop into something new and innovative, inspiration and influential. From a young age I found a lot of comfort in watching Vlogs, people like Zoella, Sprinklofglitter, PointlessBlog and Caspar Lee were staples of my tween years, and I never really grew out of enjoying vlogs.

Currently I absolutely adore watching the Michalack's Sunday vlogs- Stef and Hannah and their baby Grayson just have a weekly vlog that they put together completely beautifully, complete with silky montages and glorious music every Sunday and for some reason this beautiful little family's weekly world makes me feel so calm when I watch. I think it gives me perspective on my own life, as well as additions to my Spotify playlists... My little Sunday night routine after a stressful week and thinking about the Monday ahead has been, for a while now, settling down at night in bed with a nice drink and watching the Sunday vlog before I go to bed. It puts me in a good mood, it always has a good message, and they are just always done so well- you can tell the amount of work and passion that gets put into the videos and the appreciation Stef and Hannah have for what they do and the platform they have. I may even have to write a blog post about these beautiful creatures soon, but also I don't want to look like a weird stalker girl and write about this little family too much either!

Escapism is not always a good thing though, and like everything else in life needs to be done in moderation. Using YouTube as an outlet or for inspiration or comfort is in no way a bad thing, and so many people use it for such. But an overattachment or obsession is totally unhealthy. There is no way that fans or viewers can live vicariously through their favourite youtubers. it's impossible and irrational and it's also just not very healthy to be obsessed with how other people live their lives because you forget to live your own. I guess what I'm trying to say is escapism is good in small doses but in large quantities it can be destructive because you can lose yourself in the midst of your great escape from reality.

Hello there!

Well hi there people of the internet!

This is a just a quick little introduction post to start up this little blog that I've been thinking about for a while now. I figured as I am putting myself out there on the internet I may as well offer an explanation as to why, and give a little background about it.

My name's Fatima, and this is just a little blog of posts about lifestyle, positivity and general happiness. It's a little space I wanted to create for myself and other people that is exclusively about living life as the best and happiest person you can be, because I think that there isn't very much space in, my life at least, for an area that exclusively dedicated to building a positive mindset. I've had a couple of other smaller blogs over the last few years, more personal ones where I would post about things like beauty products I loved or items I was massive fan of. However, I never really had that much of a theme to my blogs and tended to gravitate towards writing random posts about things I enjoyed, things that inspired me or things that were particularly relevant in my life. I ended up writing a product or beauty review once in a blue moon and writing slightly more personal things instead, so I figured if that's what I enjoy and what I'm best at, that why not fine tune that and create a space for myself that is devoted to that alone.

Over the last couple of years I have grown up much more than I ever thought I would, I've hit the highest and the lowest parts of my life, and, as everyone else does, worked through them and figured things out for myself. I am not in any way a finished product, I really don't think anyone ever is. But I wanted to start this little blog after looking over my old ones with that glorious thing we like to call hindsight: this funny little thing where you are older and wiser with more experience, capable of making better decisions (and mistakes). I looked back at a lot of what I used to write and realised that blogging was such a creative outlet for me to put out some kind of message or feeling that I had going on, and really helped me to sort through my own head by putting things into words

So, I decided to continue doing that this summer and really use this blog to create a space of my own and have a little voice in the world. Even if 2 people see this, and one of those is my mum I still really enjoy putting down what I think and feel (I'm a narcissist like that). So, here we have it: a collection of my thoughts and feelings about life, sprinkled with advice I want to give, or have been given and want to share, to try and put out there into the world for people who need it.

I think it's normal for people's teenage years to be the "best years of your life" in hindsight. You grow and you flourish and you become your own person, your own identity- and you're young enough to enjoy it with relatively little responsibility. But the people who look back at their teenage years with a beautiful nostalgia do not understand. In this world teenagers face very different challenges to the ones our parents faced in their youth- we live in different ages. Our parents never worried about how many likes they got on instagram or if the cute guy they're talking to is a catfish (hell, my mother still doesn't know why the show is called Catfish, and I've explained about 40 times). Our parents did not have the kind of exposure we do to the outside world in this digital age, that is both a blessing and a curse in this world. We have this incredible capacity to be interconnected and surrounded by people all the time, we have a space to express ourselves and be heard, but equally a space to be judged or brought down, or hurt. We have all had our own struggles and I think it's important for people to address them, but rather than using them to feed a negativity and a mindset that could hurt us, to instead address an issue and deal with it.

I guess the reasons I wanted to start writing this blog was to promote a happy mindset and lifestyle for myself and other people without sugar coating life, without painting everything like a rainbow and baking brownies of joy (and no, I don't mean weed). I think it's important to identify issues, I think it;s damaging for people to ignore things and internalise pain or suffering or struggle, but I think its also damaging to wholly express it on a constant basis rather than dealing with it. The thing about energy, negative of positive is that we create it and it can either consume us and lift us up or consume us and drag us down, with this in mind, that's how this little blog came about, to help fine-tune the good energy.

SO after the longest introduction post in the history of life, here it is: my little blog of positivity. I hope you find help or comfort or encouragement in it, because I know it helps to see things like this sometimes.

I hope you enjoy it!

Love, Fatima x