Creativity
3 Steps To Overcoming Mental Health Stigma (Guest Post by Zoe Thompson)
So much progress has been made in raising awareness and ending stigma around mental illness in recent years. In a changing society, people often ask how they can do better. Although we still have a long way to go, mental illness is generally more accepted than it used to be. As a person who suffers with mental illness I like to educate others about it when asked. So how can we overcome mental health stigma?
Read MoreSuccess & Wonder
I’ve noticed over the years that one of the concepts which seems to come up a lot in conversations at bars, dinners, or hang outs, consistently seems to be success. When people you’ve not spoken to for a while ask how you are, and ask about work, there’s this hidden, unspoken question hanging in the air.
“How successful are you?”
Read MoreAll Shall Be Well
“The unknown is the only place where we find out what we’re truly made of.” – Josh Radnor< Today I received some perilous financial news. Not for the first time recently. And yet today, in the midst of uncertainty and difficulty, I feel free. I feel all shall be well.
Read MoreI’m Still Here
I’m lonely.
I’m sitting in a coffee house during my week off work, on my own, online. A few login issues on my laptop have done their work with my head for today. When your brain is like mine, it only takes little things to wind you up and frustrate you to extreme proportions.
I used to think it was immaturity. Now I know it’s just how my brain works.
And now I’m writing, sitting here, alone. I’m lonely. But I’m still here
Read MoreBeneath The Clouds
I was sitting at my desk recently at work, busying myself with whatever was important that day. I always listen to music at my desk. Music takes me into my own world, it isolates me from all around me, which helps me focus a lot better.
But it also takes me into my dreams. The best music stirs our imagination, it moves our soul, it connects with our story – and our true self, buried in layers below the conscious self.
I don’t recall what music I was listening to at this moment, in truth. But it doesn’t matter.
My mind went on a journey.
Read More(Not) Deficient
Today I received a letter from a medical professional. It read that they believed I was on the autistic spectrum, and recommend I take formal tests to confirm this. It wasn’t a formal diagnosis, but it was as close as you can get without one
And my first reaction, despite my better judgement, was that something inside felt deficient.
Read MoreAirbrushing
In my last post I wrote about mundane I deemed my own life to be. That wasn’t an emotional, depressed assessment. In a way it disturbed me more because it wasn’t. I’d gone beyond emotion, pity, despair, to just acceptance.
But I have this habit of airbrushing the good in my life. The good I do, the good I experience, the joy of life. I’m an Enneagram 4, and it’s part of my make up to do this. I fail to see the good in my own life, whilst emphasising the good in the others.
But my life is so much better than I made out in my previous blog.
Like today
Read MorePrisons
When I returned to blogging, the whole thing was write a bit about our lives. And if I’m honest, that’s always freaked me out.
I’m terrified to write about my actual life. I don’t have kids. I’m not married nor do I have a partner. I haven’t got the life I desired, I’m not settled into a life. My story isn’t the story of most of my peers. And if I am honest with myself, I still feel deficient because of it. I still feel less normal. Like I belong less. That I have less value.
And if that sounds like a self-pitying, depressed statement, I can assure you it’s not.
This is what something in my soul has told me I am. Deficient, less than, not as valuable, not wise, mature or normal enough to find the life I still desire, unable to commit, unable to be a grown up. It’s a story I’ve told myself. A prison story.
Read MoreReclaiming My Life, One Story At A Time
How long is it since I wrote for just the love of it? It feels like years. I’ve been writing to build a career for so long, the love just died. Betrayal and failure got their hands on my writing gift and tore it down. The love just died.
But here I am again.
Read MoreWriting From A Sofa
I’m sitting here on my lunch break, showing up to write. I’m trying to find the fun in writing again. The simple joy of writing my life.
As I write this on my phone, delving inside myself to try and find the words, it strikes me how scary this can be.
Maybe one reason people stopped sharing stories is because we stopped valuing them. In the world of social media we are all performing, we’re all on show, we all have to be perfect.
So showing off our mundane lives seems to become less valued, even shamed. I get really scared showing my bare naked self. Scared of feeling lesser than, deficient and insignificant.
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