An update on me

Jox

Here's a good book about procrastination - if you want to pm me I will post it to you

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Eat-That-Frog-Important-Things/dp/1444765426

Tabbytabitha

Jox wrote: »

Here's a good book about procrastination - if you want to pm me I will post it to you

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Eat-That-Frog-Important-Things/dp/1444765426

That's a very kind offer but as it's available from Amazon as an e book, that would probably be cheaper than the postage.

Jox

Tabbytabitha wrote: »

That's a very kind offer but as it's available from Amazon as an e book, that would probably be cheaper than the postage.

The offer still stands

danandjens_worldtravels

I don’t want to continue the conversation, but I’ve been thinking about this for a few days given what the OP and others have said and think it’s a useful analogy that may help Dekapace to think about his issues from a different perspective. If not, that’s fine too.

It’s not soley for Dekaspace, it helps me a little to clarify my own outlook on life too, the analogy applies to us all. So here goes I hope it’s useful and helps.

Maybe think of life this way.

Life is you travelling along a road, sometimes it’s muddy and wet, sometimes uphill, sometimes down. It can be windy and twisty and you can go round in circles, other times it’s flat and wide with the wind at your back and the a warm sun on your face. You don’t know the destination, you just have to enjoy the experience.

Now, the exercise, good diet and good food, good friends and good thinking are all tools, they are aids to help you navigate the road. So good diet could be a pair of roller skates, you skate along faster and easier. Exercise and fitness could be good boots, so when you go through the muddy patches it’s a little easier to keep going, you don’t get bogged down and end up it for too long. You need as many tools as possible to make the journey easier, pleasant and fun. At times of difficulty you can rely on your tools, your aids to keep travelling.

You also have packages given to you to carry, they can be small ones which you tuck under your arm and have no real consequence to you, or larger, heavier ones that hinder you. Think of your past experiences, your health difficulties as these packages. You need to find ways of carrying them so they do not hinder you, like putting them in a backpack. They are still with you, but are manageable. Some you can just set aside by the road and move on, walk away from and not allow them to burden you. For others you may need some help and support to unpack them and see what’s inside. That big box that fills your arms and blocks your view of the road can be made into smaller manageable packages or put aside and left.

Now, this is where the two ideas come together, because we cannot deal with one thing at a time, our lives are complex and multi dimensional. Sometimes you use the tools to help you not only along the road but with the packages.

If positive thinking is a bike, you can carry the big box on it for a while, it’s no longer blocking your vision or making you tired. The positivity/bike will get you to a point where is okay to put the package down and take a look, to get help to deal with it.

Do you see how you need to work on all aspects of your life a little at a time all the time? Don’t not do the exercise/good thinking/good food until you feel better, begin the exercise now and it will help you to carry the packages you’ve been given until you can get help to unpack them and make them not impact on your journey.

dekaspace

danandjens_worldtravels wrote: »

Do you see how you need to work on all aspects of your life a little at a time all the time? Don!!!8217;t not do the exercise/good thinking/good food until you feel better, begin the exercise now and it will help you to carry the packages you!!!8217;ve been given until you can get help to unpack them and make them not impact on your journey.

Thanks for your insight, but the thing that has frustrated me in the past is that I am trying, but people keep expecting me to push more and more where im finding the balance, to me MH is the huge thing that needs tackled which if my "good" in life is out of 10 MH holds 5 points of that, where the other 3 might give 1 point each and the final 2 are more bonuses for interconnecting MH with diet, exercise etc.

Im trying not to overwhelm myself whilst not sliding further into issues, before I ate the subway chicken flatbread every day I was eating more junk food, and before that I was drinking a lot of sugary soft drinks, and I didn't leave the house for a week or more, gradually im leaving house every day, changed to diet drinks, subway instead of junk food/take away but the mental health side is still getting worse, and one bad day can make me so drained I might ruin a whole week of eating well, exercising etc.

So im taking small steps, and even though I slip up the damage isn't as bad and can recover back a little quicker.

I suppose you can call that me not enjoying the experience, I do think back to when I did have a night out maybe once a fortnight or once a week at peak, I may of had 2 takeaways per week but they were tiny, I was happy with dead on 8 hours sleep and physically pulled myself up from bed, now I don't know if its because anything good that has happened since then has occured during a period I wasn't able to savour it whereas on a modern "normal" day i.e one where I feel like can do something like go for a walk those good things don't happen, added with when I have a slightly good day by modern standards my brain is all over the place, wanting to go for a walk, watch a movie, go for a meal, play a video game, go on a bus journey, I think best way to see it is an adrenaline sort of rush though Im not feeling energetic just not drained and I get overloaded with things so either do nothing, or overdo one thing like i'd go for a meal, then find a lovely old fashioned bakery I didn't know about then want to try a small cake as haven't had one in long time. if I manage to hold off eating it and store it at home when that nice feeling goes be it that evening or next day all that cake becomes is like wasted money to me, similar reasons to why I have a freezer full of food I don't eat as once the urge to buy is out of system I lose the craving for a good meal or just cooking.

Honest question is that more mental health or not? It can come under diet but I think in that case the diet is more fallout from mental health as my body and mind are basically switched off from emotions, like I have said in past its only then in evening when my body crashes I suddenly run to kitchen and raid cupboards (not pigging out) hence why when I do eat I kinda pig out as when my body is screaming out for energy my brain interprets it as hunger.

I have tried eating during the day, and at best it makes me mildly more energetic during the day but still crash in the evenings.

Sorry for a long response there!

EDIT in case anyone things thats negative not meaning it to be just giving honest outlook on my life, I am slowly bettering my diet and pattern, im looking at ways to improve my life, I am chasing up social work, looking at short term work to improve my confidence and prospects, getting myself up earlier and out of house longer etc.

Jox wrote: »

The offer still stands

I'll leave it but thanks for the offer I will get a digital version or get it from library

Ames

I think the problem is you say 'mental health' is the problem, but it's not. It's lots of little problems. They're all interconnected, but there isn't going to be a solution to 'mental health' because there are going to be lots of solutions, at least one for each of the different problems.

That's what the analogy above was saying - you're carrying a huge box labelled 'mental health' when really it's just a container full of lots of smaller boxes.

Which is all a good thing. It means that you can take out one tiny box at a time and address that, it's the 'eating an elephant' idea - you can't sit down and eat it all in one, but you can tackle it a bite at a time.

littlegreenparrot

I get that you find it difficult to maintain good habits, and many of us do. The problem is that it is circular, mental health issues mean we neglect ourselves, so we feel worse, so we further neglect- so it spirals. I'm not judging, I've been there, as have many others.
It is perfectly possible to know you are not doing yourself any favours, and continue to do it.

You have made progress, and that's great, but it sounds like there is a way to go.

The problem with waiting until you feel like it, is you might not, so you have to find ways of tricking your brain. You don't want to overwhelm yourself, so choose one thing at a time.

Please take or leave these suggestions as you see fit.
I get the impression that your brain is a bit overloaded, so write a list.

Think of healthy habits you could achieve. 1/2 hour walk every day. A piece of fruit with breakfast and one as a snack, replace some of the diet drinks with water, have two portions of veg with dinner, whatever.

Then pick one of them and do it tomorrow. Write a note and stick it on the fridge door as a reminder, and do it ever day for a month. Then pick the next thing. They become habits you don't need to think about, and the improvement of physical health often helps you feel better in other ways.
You also feel good because you have have set a goal and achieved it, another plus.

Please realise I am not having a go. At one point during very stressful teacher training my goal was to cook something every day my mother would recognise as dinner. I set that after realising that a) I felt crap and b) I had pretty much eaten toast and biscuits for 3 weeks. It is very difficult to treat physical and mental health as separate.

dekaspace

Probably more how I define it than anything, things like diet, exercise, routine all matter but if my starting position out of 10, with that being normal, they would boost me to points where I would feel adrenaline, if my starting position was say 4 then whilst they might boost it to 5 maybe 6 that is still a low value, and then only "temporary" of sorts

I;d rather deal with the root of the cause for my low mood whilst maintaining it not getting worse, once that root cause has support I can then make large steps to improve, sure a lot of it might be psychological but I see something like, when my life is improving then doing things like going to the gym will be of greater psychological reward as then I am both noticing the improvement, and due to the increased mood far more open to the idea that my life as a whole is improving.

The negative thing that you have discussed in the past would be like me attempting things, seeing little difference if not getting worse so my brain associates it as small to no reward on its own, id rather spend my physical and emotional energy fixing the thing that has the greatest reward so smaller rewards come as bonuses.

Not to say I don't notice or attempt smaller things but im both trying to not overwhelm myself by doing too much too soon,

Overall we can be saying similar things but im just bad at wording things or just different ideas of what brings the most reward, to me small differences won't do much to improve, but makes things more managable, it seems to be what our ideas of small are that are different, I think changing individual things in diet and cutting down bad things to a minmum helps with the shock rather than to say as of tomorrow only eat the most healthy foods, im also trying to do it to a point where the change comes natural whilst also fast enough that if I slip up its not going to undo it all.

Its also why I think I need someone (in real life) to collect my thoughts and give me a individual clear goal for every day rather than say months if not a year or two down the line it needs to be broken down into daily steps rather than "do this by X time"

I don't know if that makes my previous responses clearer. because to just give end goal with some suggestions how to reach it enters my mind as just words and my brain says I have already done that, it needs to be given clear instructions so the small amounts I try make sense to my mind rather than my current way of doing things which is throwing myself into the deep end then panicking then giving up, which in itself is a combination of severe anxiety, noticing that what I have achieved to that point is non existant, then feeling its better to scrap that and start something else.

dekaspace

littlegreenparrot wrote: »

I get that you find it difficult to maintain good habits, and many of us do. The problem is that it is circular, mental health issues mean we neglect ourselves, so we feel worse, so we further neglect- so it spirals. I'm not judging, I've been there, as have many others.
It is perfectly possible to know you are not doing yourself any favours, and continue to do it.

You have made progress, and that's great, but it sounds like there is a way to go.

The problem with waiting until you feel like it, is you might not, so you have to find ways of tricking your brain. You don't want to overwhelm yourself, so choose one thing at a time.

Please take or leave these suggestions as you see fit.
I get the impression that your brain is a bit overloaded, so write a list.

Think of healthy habits you could achieve. 1/2 hour walk every day. A piece of fruit with breakfast and one as a snack, replace some of the diet drinks with water, have two portions of veg with dinner, whatever.

Then pick one of them and do it tomorrow. Write a note and stick it on the fridge door as a reminder, and do it ever day for a month. Then pick the next thing. They become habits you don't need to think about, and the improvement of physical health often helps you feel better in other ways.
You also feel good because you have have set a goal and achieved it, another plus.

Please realise I am not having a go. At one point during very stressful teacher training my goal was to cook something every day my mother would recognise as dinner. I set that after realising that a) I felt crap and b) I had pretty much eaten toast and biscuits for 3 weeks. It is very difficult to treat physical and mental health as separate.

I actually quite agree, its just I am bad at wording things, I do think everything is connected but its just I think things like bottling up emotions, or getting over anxious at things, and other things like if I sleep in and have a panic attack, or one night I couldn't sleep so have a choice between going to college or whatever all plays into the mental health side.

But a lot of that is physical I know but a lot of the physical is a side effect of the emotional, like me being too tired to relax so I end up doing nothing which then means when I go to bed I can't sleep, a good book at bedtime used to help me relax and give a excellent nights sleep but I am too tired to read it, the messed up sleep messes with my body clock which then makes me tired.

So interpretation can say its all physical but then the tiredness and low mood is emotion in the mind vicious circle.

Its a chicken or the egg.

But the emotional if you don't want to call it mental health is that when I do attempt something I throw myself into it at the expense of something else, when I did try gym last year before I broke my arm and hand I remember going for 2 hours, basically pushing myself further and further on the treadmill as I enjoyed it even though my chest was thumping and I could barely stand, my legs were almost jelly at end then I came home and just started at wall all night meaning I didn't get to bed to 8am.

I need to rewire my brain process which I see as mental health which means anything I gain from physical isn't lost, and if its small gains at first my brain doesn't give up. again emotional.

EDIT again, well what I do notice is that on a day off if I don't leave the house again just going to town for that food makes me less knocked out, more just mildly drained, except if I just go to the shops and literally just window shop as that feels like a waste of time to the brain, the food is the "reward" and a goal and makes my brain think I have done well to get a discount, a bargain and not needing to cook at home (though you could say that means by not cooking at home im not active, I never know when to end a loop!)

Ames

The biggest thing I've found that helps is to make a 'to do list' every night. It's mostly really basic things - brush my teeth, open the post, have breakfast. Every time I tick something off I give myself one point (important things like hospital appointments get two points), and when I have 500 points I buy an ornament in a range I collect.

This helps in three ways.

Firstly, when I go to bed I've been reminded of all the things I've achieved that day, instead of dwelling on 'but I didn't do x'. That helps to stop the spiraling negative thoughts that stop sleep.

Secondly, when I've had a bad day, I've drawn a line under it and can start afresh the next day.

Thirdly, looking at the collection of ornaments shows me clearly how much I have achieved and gives me a boost.


For you it might break the pattern of your brain not seeing any benefit in doing little things, because you'd be working towards rewarding yourself with something.