Tag: mental health

Yelly Writes

The True Love Test

Yelly

So I watched The Life List on Netflix again, and, of course, I bawled like a baby! I promise no spoilers, especially if you haven’t seen it. It’s the kind of girly romance movie that presents an idealized, pre-packaged view of love and romantic relationships. I’m not a cynic, not by a long shot (I’ve read too many Julia Quinn novels several times over to be jaded), to be cynical about love, even after the implosion of a relationship that I thought would last forever. I do sometimes smirk at the sugar coma sweetness of the Hallmark Channel formula movies. But the “true love test” in the movie had me thinking. In the film, it said that if you could answer yes to each of the 4 questions below, it was TRUE LOVE. 

1  Are they kind?

2 Can you tell them everything that’s in your heart?

3 Do they help you become the best version of yourself? 

4 Can you imagine them as the father/mother of your children? 

The questions make me smile. Because I can hear myself saying to someone at 25, “Love isn’t just a feeling, it’s a decision.” and seeing their look of confusion (in hindsight, that should’ve been a red flag, but I ignored it) and me patiently explaining what I meant.

Love is a decision. It’s a commitment. Because you decide, for better or for worse (whether it involves the permanency of marriage or not), to love this person, in the good and bad days, when tempers flare and patience wanes, when the sickness is disgusting, when the ick is hard to shift and when disagreements happen. It’s a commitment to stay and work things out, even when things get tough, damnedly uncomfortable and when they don’t particularly look rosy. It’s a promise to stay. It’s a vow to work on improving, changing for the better, and growing together. It’s saying “I got you” to this person and really having them, making sure they know you have them. It’s a pledge to stay accountable to this person. It is an unwritten but very binding contract to work through the warts, farts and smarts that come with adult relationships.

Being loved is an intrinsic need because it encapsulates affection, respect, acceptance, protection, and accountability. Every person has a deep-seated need for it, whether they care to admit it. Love isn’t easy but if you have it, wouldn’t you want to hold on to it, nurture it and cultivate it?

@yellywelly

Yelly Writes

Let’s talk!

Yelly

No really. Let’s talk.

Today is World Mental Health Day.

I’ve never shied away from talking about my mental health struggles and the journey I’ve been on – still on to be completely honest but I’m in a much better place now. But I think I’ve shied away from actually properly writing about it.

18 months ago, someone I worked with asked me if I was okay. I did what I usually do at the time and pasted the brightest smile on my face that I could and said that I was fine. It took that someone sitting me down and asking me if I was REALLY okay because, they said, they could see it in my eyes that I wasn’t okay and that my non-okayness was starting to reflect in my work. I’d been in difficult situations before and work was the balm to my soul. I could make work work for me. Work helped me cope. If my mental health was starting to affect the one thing that kept me sane and on an even keel, I had to finally admit that I wasn’t at all well. Whilst admitting you have a problem is a step in the right direction, it can also be a rabbit hole that you can go down and never come out of again. That someone talked to me about counseling, the resources that were available, and offered me the support that I didn’t know I desperately wanted. That person might have just saved my life. 

I did what helped me the most when things started to get on top of me. I read and I wrote. I read about my situation, what I felt I needed to figure out, what my options were. I went online, I read through things, I looked at my options, talked to people who’d gone through the same things. I made a pros and cons list. Then I chose a course of action. I got help. I talked to somebody. I talked to a lot of somebodies going through the same things I was going through, professionals who could help me figure out what course of action to take and sort out the spaghetti bowl of tangled thoughts and emotions in my head. It was a lot of work and it took a lot of tears and it got really, REALLY dark for a while. I’m in no means done with this journey, but now I am properly smiling again, from the heart. 

While I think my love for my family and my faith foundation is too established for me to feel so hopeless for me to consider unaliving myself, I did have thoughts and I knew exactly what I needed to do if I decided to actually do what to me would’ve been the unthinkable. But I think my colleague asking me about how I really was saved me from a downward spiral that I was trying to ignore. I believe that if they hadn’t asked the question, I would have ignored everything until it would’ve been quite difficult to extricate myself from the mental tangle I’d allowed myself to be ensnared in.

We need to be brave enough to ask after people around us. We need to learn that asking the difficult questions are important. We need to create safe spaces where people feel secure enough to make themselves vulnerable. We need to break the stigma and start the conversation about mental health. We might just save a life.

Please, please dear friends, make sure you make YOUR mental health a priority. Make sure you take time for yourself. Make sure you practice self-compassion. Kindness and compassion are important for humanity, but it is equally important that we are kind and compassionate to ourselves too.

It’s okay to not be okay.

It’s okay to ask for help.

If you need it, the meds are there to help too.

Remember that addressing your mental health issues is a journey, you don’t heal instantly. Every step forward is a victory. Take the wins. If you get a setback (and believe me you will, because the work is a habit-setting exercise in the most basic of terms), don’t let it stop you; pause, breathe, find your bearings and find your path, then move forward.

Remember, YOU ARE WORTH IT.

If you need to talk, I’m here.

Helpful links:

Yelly Writes

Mea culpa

Yelly

Things you do, when you’re home, alone and recuperating from a bout of Covid, is listen to music…or at least I do! Possibly much to the chagrin of my neighbours, I blast my music out and occasionally warble out loud and pretend I can sing. One of my favourite songs is All Mine by Shedaisy

My favourite lyrics are:
My loss
My lonely
My mistake
Mine only
Mine all, mine all

This song used to fill me with a lot of regret and latent sadness. Because when I used to listen to the song, it just felt like I was accepting status quo and the blame for something that wasn’t entirely something I could control. It felt like I was paying lip service to myself, the people around me and the entire universe and saying “yep, it’s my fault!” because it was expected of me, and that I was going to be blamed for it anyway. I think my rebellious subconscious nature objected to this acquiesence and was trying to stage a strike against just accepting the blame completely and accepting the full weight of responsibility.

These days, I’m completely happy to raise my hand up and say “Yeah, I f*cked that one up – all on me!” because it is all on me. I have no one else to blame but myself. My personal landscape has changed and I am now in the driver’s seat of my life. Well, okay, the somnolent Christian in me knows that I’m not really in control because God has a plan. But I am allowed choices and the choices I make, while possibly crap and not in keeping with what He has planned, are my choices and I am actually prepared to face the consequences of those choices. Because the choices were mine, I was not coerced, gaslit, forced, or bullied into making those choices.

I know I need to gain a better grip on the steering wheel of my life and the intention is to do that. I know that the renovation isn’t going to be quick, because there are so many horrible habits I need to unlearn, so many learned responses I need to decondition and so many thoughts in my head I need to silence. I need to have better conversations with myself and I need to stop the self-sabotage. I need to stop hearing A’s voice naysaying in my head.

I am definitely a work in progress and in no way nearing completion. But at least I am not working towards a blueprint of me that I have control over.

Yelly Writes

A belated birthday post

Yelly

My birthday was a few weeks ago but I didn’t celebrate it with a birthday post, like I usually did, because I was working on my birthday (that hasn’t happened in a while either!). As it happened, one of my uni friends was in town from Chicago and we met up for dinner (where I met his partner and his nephew at Din Tai Fung in Covent Garden – I know, random!). So I did have a birthday celebration of sorts. But apart from the virtual birthday greetings from people who actually remembered, my birthday passed relatively uneventfully., which I think I now prefer. I’m not ashamed of the aging, because really you’re only as old as you feel (most days, I think I behave way too immaturely anyway!), but with everything that’s happened in my life in the past 18 months, I think quietly celebrating was the mature thing to do.

I had a doctor’s appointment last Friday to discuss my most recent blood tests. Funnily enough, I’d completely forgotten about the appointment! I was quite fortunate that I’d seen a reminder pop up on my phone (maybe the forgetfulness was a sign of aging?)! I had about 15 minutes to get dressed (I was taking my sweet time having cups of coffee, mindlessly scrolling and posting morning stories on Instagram) and get to the GP’s surgery (it’s probably a 10-minute leisurely walk). I managed to get to the surgery with a few minutes to spare, thank goodness.

I’m a worrier and tend to overthink so by the time I’d checked in for my appointment and sat down in the doctor’s surgery waiting room, I’d already written the day off as a toughie day solely on the premise that I’d completely forgotten about the doctor’s appointment. I’d also had a spectacularly difficult week so I thought it was par for the week’s course! The doctor was late (which was a blessing on some level because I hate making people wait – I’d rather do the waiting!), and normally, I’d be okay with waiting, but I needed to be back at my desk to start working at 9AM because there were so many things I had to get done on a Friday so I was clock-watching.

I was also a tiny bit worried about the blood test results because I was trying to get my hbA1C levels to a good place. I was on a good trajectory, but I tend to self-sabotage especially when things in my life are stressful (and the last few months had been stressy). I’d been doing pretty well because of the weight loss (10,000 steps and 4 liters of water a day!) and I knew that that would put me in good stead, but I also know me…so as usual, I was prepared to hear that my blood glucose levels had gone slightly up (hoping for the best but prepared for the worst?). I mean it would be disappointing, but I also knew that I could deal with it. I just had to work a little harder for the next quarter (I’d been considering something fun like a step class…?).

I really had nothing to fear. The diabetologist had very good news. My hbA1c levels were still going down, my kidney and liver functions were excellent, and my cholesterol was in a very good place. All in all, I got a virtual gold star for my efforts. I was told that if I kept working at it, and I maintained my sugar levels, we could start considering tapering off some of the medication that I was taking (I’m no longer on insulin and exenatide injections so that was a major achievement!). I was told to keep doing what I was doing.

So my week from relative hell did actually end on a positive note (I also had a lovely time in the park with friends, celebrating a friend’s birthday later).

I’m allowing myself to enjoy the fact that I do feel a lot better about myself these days (not just physically, although I feel a lot better about my body – I think I’m a heck of a lot stronger mentally and emotionally as well). I actually like the person I see in the mirror because I actually recognise the person looking back at me. It’s been a long time since I’d seen her.

Yelly Writes

It’s foggy out there!

Yelly

You know when you start something new, it feels like you know nothing, you’re completely inept, you feel slow to respond and everything just makes you panic?

Yeah, that was never me.

I always said that I thrived in challenging situations and, as long as it was a learning environment, I would excel. It was something I was proud of. It was one of my strengths that I always counted on. Adversity never really properly phased me. I would always say to people that I would want to be thrown in the deep end so that I could figure out what I had to do. I would eventually start swimming (and I can actually swim in real life!). I could always adapt and adjust. I was quick to do that. I was good at doing that.

Until recently.

I’m still trying to find out exactly when things became difficult when I couldn’t depend on my ability to think. Because surely, there were signs. There must have been a starting point for this descent into this unfamiliar landscape enveloped by crippling uncertainty. In the past 9 months, I would find myself answering questions with “I don’t know!” and for someone who always “knew” this was a terrifying place to be. How could I not know? How could I not figure it out in my head?

Especially during this time, when I was the only person I could count on, how could I not know things.

I’ve been trying to read up on this and every time I type what I’m going through (I guess you can call it my symptoms), Google just keeps coming up with brain fog. Brain fog is generally characterised by confusion, forgetfulness, a lack of focus, and mental clarity. I’d add anxiety, terror, and self-loathing to that list but I guess those are my specific symptoms.

Brain fog is real and is acknowledged and apparently is caused by stress, nutritional deficits, lack of sleep, hormonal changes, medical conditions…if this was a tick box exercise, I’d say I can tick all the boxes

I’ve finally decided to seek professional advice about it. Because saying “I don’t know” no longer works. The more I say I don’t know, the more terrified I become. I cannot not know. I need to know because I can’t function like this anymore. I am never one to make excuses for my shortcomings. I’ve always admitted to mistakes. I am usually the first to say mea culpa. Saying “I don’t know”, to me , is a cop out.

The doctor’s appointment can’t happen soon enough!

Are you going through something like this? Do you have advice? Do you have any short term quick solutions? Any kind of help is welcome!

I really just want to know who I am again!

Yelly Writes

Bon Retour fellow working folk!

Yelly

So did you go back to work this week? How was it?

To be fair, I was okay. I had a better state of mind, and whilst I was battling some sort of viral infection, I felt okay about going back to work. I think it helped that I was working from home this week and only had to roll out of bed and walk to the work desk I set up in my living room (there was such a huge mindset shift in having a separate workspace area, as opposed to having my desk in close proximity to my bed, let me tell you!).

Apparently, post-holiday blues are now a recognised thing. According to verywellmind, post-holiday blues usually refers to the short-lived mental distress, anxiety and sadness after the holiday season. I’ve always just used it to refer to my reticence about going back to the daily grind. Of course there were days when I really could not face going back to work – the whole getting up, getting in the shower, getting dressed, commuting to work and sitting at my desk was a bit much to contemplate after the holidays. Of course, like everyone else who had a job, I did the adult thing, dragged myself out of bed and sternly gave myself a telling off (verbally, in front of the mirror and mentally, still sometimes in front of the mirror).

After reading through several articles, there seems to be an agreement amongst mental health professionals that the holidays can have an effect on a person’s psychopathology. In the run-up to the holidays (especially Thanksgiving, Christmas, Hannukah, Kwanzaa, Diwali), there is the frenetic energy of preparing for it, all those tasks on your to-do list to get things done for friends and family, for all the meals, for the gift-giving, treats for visitors and the children. Then there are those days that you are enveloped in feel-good feelings where you are loved-up, relaxed (or in a contstant state of stress as family or social situations can be stressful!), or marinating in dopamine-producing experiences.

Then of course, there is the huge thump of a landing once the holidays are over; you are back, right smack in the middle of the daily grind. the days are grey, damp, cold and depressing, and everything that made you happy might not be around you anymore. I love Margaret Wehrenberg’s suggestions on Psychology Today for beating the post-holiday blues: to start with, it’s the mindset shift that whatever you’re going through is a change in stimulation and, more often than not, it’s less stimulation so you need to get used to that (so be kind to yourself and allow yourself to adjust); then it’s physical activity (which I think, in my case is finally unpacking completely and finally finding all my comfy sweats because apart from them being comfortable but presentable lounge wear, they’re also warm!); following that you go through a “looking forward” exercise – not resolution-making or massive life goals-setting (because that’s just daunting and you don’t need daunting whilst dealing with the blues!), just planning or thinking about something that you want to do in the new year (in my case it’s getting a lovely tea set and ingredients so that I can invite my friends over and have tea and cake with them in the new place); and finally, you steer clear of any holiday-related reminders, like watching Christmas movies because the post-holiday blues is a rabbit-hole that you don’t want to, like Alice, want to inadvertently fall into.

It’s going to be a difficult few weeks for all of us, perhaps more for some than others. Be kind to yourself (it’s a reminder that has almost become a personal mantra) and if things become difficult, remember to talk about it. I am reminded of a meme that I often see on Instagram: if you’re not speaking out, you’re storing it, and that gets heavy.