recovery, recovering, recovered?

This was a completely unplanned blog post, but I thought that it could possibly be useful for at least one person, so I hope you enjoy reading it, and please feel free to leave a comment on what you thought of it, or maybe a suggestion for a future post.



I started my recovery just over a year ago, and I didn't notice any changes or improvements for a very long time, so I felt like nothing was getting better. But I kept at it, with the hope that things would eventually get better... I'm so glad I didn't give up.

When I was at my worst, I took an online depression test to have an idea of how bad things were for me. A score of 54 or above indicated severe depression. I was at 87, and the highest possible score is 90, so you can understand that things were pretty bad for me. I was already diagnosed with severe depression at the time, and I know that the online test cannot diagnose me, I simply used it to see how I was doing.

I retook the test again today and got a score of 1. It would have been 0 if I slept like a normal person, but I spend much of the night awake or wake up very early, but I'm learning to work around this and use it to my advantage.

My score on the test left me with a simple statement saying that I 'seem to accept the ups and downs which are a part of normal everyday life', and I really think that is true. I am learning to cope more with happiness, and really enjoy it, and with sadness, and learn to work through it.


Some of you may be wondering how I was able to go from severe depression to 'depression unlikely' in a year and a bit, and to be completely honest, I'm not sure as I had been suffering with depression for a lifetime, so it wasn't an easy change, but I can guess:

• I escaped situations in which I was being hurt. For me, school was a huge problem because some people just suck, I won't go into detail. But now that I am away from them, and at college, I'm coping so much better.
• I have matured. I don't know whether this is due to me getting older, or due to me just figuring out that I have to learn to cope with things, but I have definitely matured, and so the way I deal with a negative situation is now so much better than is used to be. 
• I have removed negative influences from my life such as friends who I could never really consider to be friends. Doing this has made me feel a lot more free to be myself. 
• I now have a new focus, I'm focussing on my academic success rather than what's going wrong in my life. I am trying to make the most of the situations that I have, not feel bad about what's gone wrong. 
• But the factor that I think helped me to recover the most was my determination. I told myself I was going to recover. I told myself I wasn't going to give up. I told myself I was going to be happy, and so I have been working to achieve my goal from day one. It's not always been easy, but difficult does not mean impossible. I have changed my whole life around just so I can give myself the best opportunity to recover that I can. 

I don't consider myself to be 'recovered' yet. I still have a very long way to go, but I know that I am working in the right direction, and so I am proud of myself for what I am doing. And in case you're wondering, I feel fantastic. Instead of being shadowed by pain and mental torture, I'm now finding the light in almost everything I come into contact with. I never believed I would feel like this. But if I can get to where I am now after a lifetime to depression and other mental illnesses, anyone else can too. You just have to remind yourself what you're working for.

I'm sorry that this post has been unusual, but I just wanted to share some of my success with you all, because I think that it's important that someone is able to show people that recovery really does work, because I never had anyone to look up to when I first started. 

Have a wonderful day! 

the belief of others

Self belief is something that I have always thought is important. Self belief gives us confidence and generally makes us feel better about ourselves and what we can do. But, something what is almost equally important is the belief of the others around us. It's good to believe in yourself, but if no one else believes in you, you begin to doubt yourself, and thus start to lose self belief.

Obviously you can't force people to believe in you, as that's their decision, but you can find people who do. Your family may not believe in you, but your friends might believe in you and help you out every step of the way. The best thing to do is to listen to those who actually do believe in you, and pay less attention to those who doubt you.

What I often find works well, is doing exactly what you want while believing in yourself all the way, and allow others to watch your success and slowly but surely begin to realise that you are more capable of doing things than they ever imagined. Belief from others is similar to respect in the way it is earned. It is not automatic, but you have to prove yourself worthy of it first.


At first, I don't think anyone truly believed that I would be able to stop self harming because in the past I have failed to stop myself, even after trying really hard. I didn't believe in myself to begin with, but now, over five hundred days later, I have proved myself wrong, and shown everyone else that I am so much more capable of recovery than anyone ever imagined. Because of this, I now have people who genuinely believe I can do anything, get through anything, achieve anything, and I think my hard work against tough urges and proving myself to everyone is what has allowed people to believe in me.

I have proved myself, and now they know exactly what I can do... they truly believe in me.

feeling alone

Whenever anyone makes a change in their life, big or small, it can have an impact on them or those around them. This is something that I have noticed a lot, particularly recently, as I have been making changes in my life.

Part of growing up is finding out who you are, and we have to be wrong a few times before we figure it out. This means that we have to try all sorts of different styles, ways of behaving, and having different types of friends. These changes often highlight who an 'untrue' friend is. They're someone who will only be friends with you while you do a certain thing, dress a certain way, etc. and then will want nothing to do with you when you change.

As I have made some huge changes in my life, I have noticed that more and more people I considered friends are starting to abandon me. This is because I previously had negative friends who would spend all their time telling everyone how bad their life was, but as I am wanting to get better now, I have had to make changes and this has made them stop wanting to be friends with me.

I feel as though these changes that I am making, although very positive, are causing people to not know what's going on with me. It could be considered that, as it is a recent change, they're unaware of whether its temporary or permanent. But, this is also the time that I need their support the most.

Because of this, I have felt alone a lot over the last couple of weeks, and like I have been abandoned by people I considered to be friends. It's becoming quite tough to remain positive when I'm not entirely sure who I could call a friend anymore and who is just a memory of my past.

As time goes on, and I get more comfortable settling into my new, and far more positive, way of living, I will either regain my old friends, or make new ones entirely. I just know that I will have to keep going, and fight my way through to be the person that I want to be and not change for anyone.

changes to my twitter account

Some of you may have noticed that I have slowly been making a few changes to my twitter account. Many of the people who have noticed these changes will have noticed because I have unfollowed them, and I feel like I owe you all an explanation about what's going on.

For a couple of months, I had been considering deleting my twitter account for various reasons, but the main reason being that I didn't feel like it was benefitting me at all to have it. After thinking a lot, and asking a few people what I should do, I decided to keep my account, but change it.

Part of the change is including unfollowing everyone, and then re-following people who I am friends with, or who have positive accounts. I am doing this because there have been so many times that I have gone to have a quick look at my timeline and then I'll see something triggering or upsetting, and I have decided that enough is enough and that I need to put myself first in my recovery.

I have a few more changes lined up that I may possibly make, however I am not completely sure yet, and I will still need to think about it a lot before doing anything.

I have made major changes before (complete account change including username and what I tweet about, all without warning to anyone) and that has actually been a very good choice for me, but I feel that I am ready to make the next steps forward in my recovery.

I am still currently in the process of unfollowing people, but I have a list of people that I am going to re-follow. I hope that people will be understanding of the reasons behind my choices and continue to support me through my recovery.

lists

One way that I manage to control my anxiety is by making lists. These can be lists of things I need to do, things I need to take with me, or just lists of what are bothering me. Making lists helps my anxiety because I am able to physically see wheat I need to do, and I can cross off completed items, again giving me physical evidence of what I have or haven't done.

I tend to make one list every weekend, and that is a list of things that I need to do. This weekend was no different. I am so far up to date with what I had written on the list- and yes, the blog post was on the list, except I had planned to write it on Friday night, but didn't have time. 

I'm writing this blog post for two reasons: firstly I had no idea what to write about, but secondly I feel that others with anxiety, or who like to be organised, may benefit from trying to make lists. 

The important thing about making lists for a specific time period, like a weekend, is that you have to be realistic about what you want to achieve. You shouldn't write down loads of things and then be disappointed that you didn't get them done. Often it's best to start small- write one or two things and get them done, once you've done those things, have a rest, and then consider adding another thing to the list.

This weekend I had a list divided into three sections: Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Both Friday and Saturday had three things on each list, and they were quite big things to do, which took me a while, but Sunday only has one thing to do. That's because I have decided that Sunday will be my rest day this weekend, as I wanted to get everything I needed to do out of the way as quickly as possible. 

Lists may be a helpful tool for you, or a completely useless waste of time, but unless you try using lists a few times, you'll never know. 

a random positive post about what I personally like about education

A few days ago, I wrote a post about some flaws that I have found in the education system, and I was aware that it was a truly one sided debate with a brief conclusion given to the positive opinion, so I thought it was only right for me to give an alternative point of view from my personal experience of education.

I have had a positive education, and throughout my life I have been recognised for my academic intelligence in various subject, and this is something that I have loved. I always used to enjoy receiving extra work from teachers, simply because the work for people my age was too simple for me at the time. It's no wonder that I was the top of my class across most subjects. Along with my academic intelligence, I would bring a positive attitude towards learning to every lesson, and it is for this reason that teachers have told me that I'm a 'dream' to teach. I have always had a desire to learn and obtain new knowledge, I don't know why, but I enjoy it.

Over the last few years, I have discovered that I have an ability to retain information which is considered to be above average, and because of this, I have been able to achieve amazing exam results without revising. I only really started revising for my exams last year when I sat my AS exams, but my revision did start four days before each exam, and as you can imagine, I had a lot of information to fit in my mind as I studied four subjects. But, despite this lack of revision, I did exceptionally well in my exams, achieving very good grades, and now that I am in my second year, I am going to be taking my A levels this year, and I have been informed by two of my teachers that I am on track for an A* in their subjects.

As a result of my obvious ability to achieve high grades in exams, I have been encouraged to go to university next year, and have been told by my form tutor that I will find it 'so easy' to get the highest level of qualification possible for whatever course I choose. I have decided that I will not be going to university next year though, as I have decided that I would like a break from education for a while.

One thing I do know about education is that not everyone has it as easy as me. I am incredibly lucky to have such an ability to achieve excellent results in exams without even really trying, but I know that many people do not have the same gift as me, but as many of my friends have proved, with hard work, dedication and getting support that you need from teachers in revision, you can do very well in exams, even if you are not considered to be the brightest person. One of my friends got an E in one of her mocks last year, and she was trying her hardest to do as well as possible. Her teacher told her that if she revised extremely hard, she might scrape a pass (grade C). On results day, I was incredibly proud of her, she had put in hours and hours of revision, attended extra sessions at school, and she must have completed every past paper there ever was for that subject. She got an A in the exam, and completely shocked herself and her teacher. But she is my proof that if you work hard enough for something, you will achieve it.

I do truly believe that education is such a wonderful thing and I am so thankful that I am lucky enough to be able to enhance my knowledge in areas that I enjoy. While there are some bad aspects to education which frustrate me, I will never stop being thankful that I have a right to be educated.

my problem with being open about my life

Sometimes things happen in my life that I don't really want to talk to anyone about. These things are often unpleasant or just not nice to hear about, and for that reason I tend to avoid telling people unless I trust them. These things don't happen regularly, but when they do, and I tell someone, I will only tell them if I think they will understand how to handle it.

Occasionally my trust is misplaced, and I find myself opening up to someone who just wants to shut me up so they can focus on what they deem to be important. And this is swiftly followed by me feeling let down and usually taking some time out to myself to prevent myself from feeling worse. 

There are lots of things in my life that I have never told anyone, because I'm just not ready yet, and there are other things in my life that I have told one or two people about, because I trust them and believe it's important for them to know what's going on for me so they can understand that my behaviour may be different for a certain period of time. I tell people these things, not to ask for advice, but to make them aware of what's happened.


One thing that I don't like is when my feelings are just ignored. It takes a lot for me to open up about something, and anyone who knows me well is completely aware of this, so to have my feelings invalidated by someone merely because they don't want to hear them is hurtful to me. For my problems, issues, feelings, to be reduced to nothing by someone else is unfair, especially if I take time and effort to make sure that I listen to them and help them when they need it.

Sometimes all someone needs is for someone else to listen to them and not silence them, so that the person knows that someone out there cares. 

finding who we are

Trying to find who you are in a world full of people who will criticize you is very hard, especially now that there are so many options of who you can be, and I have noticed that people can live their entire lives not really knowing who they are.

For the first few years of our lives, who we are is controlled by our parents or those who care for us. They tell us what we can wear, what we can do, who we can be friends with, and so on. As we approach our teenage years, we slowly get more freedom to be who we want to be, but it is also at this time that peer pressure rises and people wanting to be 'cool' or 'fit in' can sometimes get in the way of them being who they really want to be.

Clearly we don't all know who we want to be instantly, and it often takes a lot of experimenting to know what kind of person we want to be, what kind of clothes we want to wear, what kind of hobbies we want to have. But to me, it seems like at the same time we should be trying all sorts of things out, we allow our peers, and sometimes the media, to condemn us to fit into a certain stereotype and dictating how we should look, behave and what we should like to do.

I know plenty of people who have become a victim of this, and feel under so much pressure just to fit in, but ultimately who is it for? It's certainly not for themselves. I think that we should all be encouraged to be ourselves more, and I know that this is the same thing that everyone says, but it's something that I truly believe in. Our identities should only be chosen by us, and we should be able to feel comfortable and happy with exactly who we are, not who we should be.

The next time you have the choice to be yourself, whether it's when wearing something, starting a new hobby, whatever, just remember that your happiness and comfort with what you are doing is far more important than what anyone thinks of it.

comments now enabled

I have decided to enable people to comment on my blog posts now if they wish to- either anonymously or not. I will admit I don't completely understand how it all works, but I thought I would give it a try, after 100 successful blog posts, I think it's about time I allowed others to comment if they wanted to.

Have an amazing day!

putting myself first

I think the last couple of weeks have been pretty good for me. This is because I have been learning to focus on myself first, and put others second. Although this may sound selfish, it's a vital step forwards in my recovery and one that I have struggled with for many years.

I always thought that putting others before myself would be better, because at least that was they would be helped. But looking back now, I can see that many people have used and abused my kind approach towards others and it makes me feel like a bit of a fool really. Obviously I haven't just stopped and become self centered overnight, but I have been making slow and stead progress towards putting myself first and looking after myself more.

Over the last month or two I have slowly but surely been getting people who are negative influences out of my life- these are people such as 'friends' who only spoke to me when they wanted something, people who never bothered to listen to me or how I was doing, and people who expected me to help them though absolutely everything regardless of whether I wanted to or not. 

Since getting some of the most negative people out of my life, I feel like I am more free. As silly as it sounds, I feel like I don't have to worry about when they next speak to me and what they were going to try to ask me to do. Of course, none of them took it well to begin with. I can understand it's not nice to be told that you're hurting someone and that they want you out of their life, however I did say it in the kindest way possible, but after the way they had all treated me, I really shouldn't have cared at all.

I'm very glad that I decided to take yet another positive step forwards in my life and focus far more on myself, because I know that I am making good progress and I can actually start to see it now. 

six months of vegetarianism

On the first of April this year, I decided that I would like to try vegetarianism once again. I had tried once before a few years ago, and struggled to complete a month, but since the start of this year, I had been trying new types of food and eating more of a variety, so for that reason I thought that I was ready to try to be a vegetarian for a while. Initially I had only planned to do it for one month, then for three, but as soon as I hit those goals, I thought I would increase it to six months and then consider what to do after that. 

I have found that since becoming a vegetarian, I eat far more healthily and generally feel a lot better about eating. I have really enjoyed it, but I have felt tempted to eat meat a few times which was difficult as I have been eating meat for my whole life and all of my friends and family eat meat, so the temptation was always there, but once I make a promise to myself, I don't tend to break it.

 

I don't think anyone believed that I could be a vegetarian for longer than a few days and I have been told by many of my friends that they didn't think I'd make it over a month. One of my friends is trying to convince me that being a vegetarian is stupid and that I should stop, which is a bit frustrating, but she is entitled to her own opinion. 

Over the next week or two, I'm going to consider what I'm going to do next; whether I'm going to continue being a vegetarian, or whether I am going to start eating meat again. And if I do eat meat again, whether it is regular or just once a week or once a month. I'm not going to make any decisions until I am completely sure, but it just gives me something to think about.