My life at the moment

I know it has been a while since I posted last and I have got new blog posts in the pipeline but instead thought I would update you on some current developments in my life.  These are mainly positive really keeping in the spirit of onwards and upwards.

1. New job

Since coming back from travelling I have been working as a supply teacher.  This has its pros and cons.  The main pro is that I turn up to school do the job and go home. The con is that do not get paid for holidays, sickness or when there is no work about.  Luckily I had a full time cover from May to December in a special needs school being a class teacher.  This was great but when I did not get the full time post in the same class gutted was not enough to describe how I felt.  

I have been applying for a couple of jobs that have come up and finally got an interview which went really well and got the job.  It is working in a special needs school for high functioning autistic students aged 8 to 19 years.  I cannot wait.  It is going to be a massive challenge and sad leaving my current school but I am so excited.  Especially as means being paid through long summer holidays and can plan to do a holiday and some dance related things.  

2. Scotland holiday

Over half term I went to visit a couple of friends in Edinburgh and St Andrews.  Had some really nice days and spent most of the time sleeping, eating, shopping and catching up.  It got really cold by the end of the week but it was great to see people and not worry about work.

3. Wisdom teeth

I had my pre op assessment this week and my operation to have my wisdom teeth out is all scheduled and due to go ahead in a few weeks time.  I cannot wait to get them out as they are causing me so much pain at the minute.  I get frequent headaches and pain in my neck and ears.  

Please follow on my twitter as I am getting used to it more and do post things up more regularly.  Let me know if want me to talk about anything in particular or about my life.  I am more then just a person with depression or left without a Dad.  Will share about life in general again soon but keep a look out for new posts soon. 

5 Steps to wellbeing: Mind and me

When I first started feeling unwell and needing help I turned to the vast network of information called the Internet.  This at times is as helpful as it is unhelpful.  However key Internet sites of mainly charities that work towards better understanding and support of mental health offer some of the best advice.  

My favourite is from Minds Ecominds project.  There are 5 steps to well being to help anyone have better mental health.

As they say "We know that eating five portions of fruit and veg a day can help us to keep us healthy.  But researchers have found that people who introduce the following five steps into their lifestyle can improve their mental wellbeing too.'  

In this blog I am going to discuss each one briefly and how I try to say how I include them in my life.  They are not perfect but they do really help to keep my wellbeing going on a even keel.  It is not to say it will work for everyone but they are little steps that may help.

1. Connect

Advice: Build those connection with the people around you: your family, friends, colleagues and neighbours.  Think of these people as the cornerstones of your life and invest time in developing these relationships.  Building stronger connections will support and enrich your life. 

Me:  This can be a hard one as if your feeling low you may not want to see people or think people want to see you.  I try and do the following. 

1. Make time to see or chat on the phone to friends that are close to me locally and do dinner or just a chat and a cup of tea.

2. For those of my friends that live further try and arrange a weekend at some point to meet up and do something.

3. I try to be honest with how I am feeling with colleagues even though they do not know my history or depressive streaks.  So if I am feeling tired or down I say that to people and now I am starting a new job I will be honest with those around me.   

4. I try and do new activities where I will start to meet new people and build new connections through similar interests.

2. Be Active

Advice: Step outside.  Go for a walk or run. Cycle, play a game, dance.  Exercising makes you feel good.  More importantly, discover a physical activity you enjoy and suits your level of mobility and fitness. 

Me: For this to work you have to choose activities that you like.  If anyone suggests going to the gym that makes me feel depressed before I even get there.  By choosing something you like your more motivated to go and do it.  Also choose something you can see your own progress in.  I comfort eat and so I see the positives of exercise is loosing that weight.  I do the following:

1. Pilates - helps both physically and mentally.  It builds a strong core, builds connections in your body and  you are able to do it on every level.  I started because I had back problems which have just about gone now.

2. Dancing - something I will blog more about but its something I have always done.  I currently do pole dance and I love it because it is a challenge to me and that motivates me to go and get better. 

This does not mean I don't find it hard getting my arse out of the house to go and be active.  I just know if I go I will feel better and it gives me such a buzz when I come home.

3. Take notice

Advice: Be curious.  Catch sight of something beautiful today.  Notice the changing seasons.  Savour the moment, whether you are walking, eating lunch or talking to friends.  Awareness of the world around you, what you are feeling and your experiences will help you appreciate what matters to you.

Me: This is one I probably do not have solid examples of.  I have tried to take more notice of what I eat, what my friends are doing, what music I like.  I try and be thankful for small things that happen during the day.  How the mornings are starting to get lighter and spring seems to be on its way.   

4. Keep Learning

Advice: Try something new or rediscover an old interest.  Sign up for that course.  Take on a different responsibility at work.  Learn to play an instrument or how to cook your favourite food.  Learning new things is fun and will make you more confident.  

Me: A lot of this comes under being active for some things.  I have decided to take a new direction in my teaching career so I am always learning new things about special needs, disability and autism.  I am enjoying learning how to cook new things from scratch without adding jars of sauce or packet mixes.   

5. Give

Advice:  Do something nice for a friend, or even a stranger.  Take time to thank someone. Smile.  Volunteer your time.  Join a community group.  Look out as well as in.  Seeing yourself and your happiness, linked to the wider community can be incredibly rewarding and creates connections with people around you.  

Me: Sometimes it is just little things like I agree to help a friend with something or have a look on internet for something they need.  At work I help those that may not have the ICT skills or share things I have created for my class.  I have also volunteered with GirlguidingUK for the last few years and love being a leader and giving a chance for other girls to develop skills outside of traditional education.

I know that at times even doing one of these things can feel too much when you are really low but they can help in small ways.  Being active might be as simple of a walk round the block or a game on the wii but it may give you that little encouragement to try more.  Connecting might be texting a friend or having a coffee after work with someone.

Do you think any of these would help you to feel better?  

Getting help: me vs NHS

I recently managed to start grief counselling but it has been a long time coming and a lot of the frustrations I feel about how I feel and dealing with my Dad's death is about how I have not been given help and the fight to get help.

When my Dad died I was 24 years old.  An adult supposedly.  How we were treated by the Police at times was disgusting and horrible.  Were we offered support? No.  I know through a previous experience when I was teaching that if I was under 18 there would have instantly been a team of support around me.  Educational Psychologist recommending the best ways to support someone with teachers, counselling given on a short term basis to the child and all matter of other things.  So at 24 years old getting no help I was just expected to cope.  

Did I cope? No.  Do I cope now? Just about sometimes.  

I only had 3 months until I went travelling so I knew there was no point getting help to start with and being away at times was the best for me then.  However coming back I knew that I needed to get support and help as those friends who had been there for me, still were but I knew I needed more professional help.

June 2012 despite trying to keep my head above water I just sunk into a black sea of depression and despair.  I ended up going to see my GP which was one of the hardest things I have ever had to do.  It takes so much energy just to compose yourself and talk about it that afterwards you feel drained and exhausted.  She said to ring the service in Derbyshire called Rightsteps which you can self refer yourself for help.  At this point I was unsure what I really needed as it was a mixture between help with the grief and the depressive feelings.  

I called Rightsteps, a massive step as I hate using the phone, and I could not get a face to face appointment in the evening so instead settled for a telephone appointment.  I knew this was not really right for me but I just put up with it and waited the 3 weeks until it was my time.  When it came I spent at least an hour answering a lot of questions to in the end be given the choice of self help stuff or self refer myself to a charity for grief counselling as its not a service they provide.  This was the end of June 2011.

I put off referring myself to the charities that help with grief counselling for 2 months and finally summoned the courage to email one of them in August.  Did not hear anything back so just carried on coping until things came to head after splitting with a guy I was seeing and feeling like falling down the big black hole again.  She was very empathetic and really wished she could do more on the NHS.  She decided to write a letter to the same charity I had been trying to self refer to.  

I got a phone call within a week of the letter being sent and an appointment to be assessed for a couple of weeks time.  Unfortunately I was to ill to go to this due to getting pneumonia so I had to wait another 2 weeks to have this assessment.  At this assessment my frustrations about lack of support were evident and the counsellor was really supportive in saying that now I was on their books I would not be forgotten about.  I have managed to get a volunteer counsellor just after a month of that assessment.  Finally some help February 2013.  

I know others that have got help much quicker but they have been more severe having both self harm and suicidal thoughts neither of which I really have.  But if I did not get help in some way I could see myself continuing down that path.  Why not help me now when I am asking for help?  If I had a physical illness would I have had to wait so long to get treatment?  Would I have had to rely on a charity to give me that treatment?  I do not know if my depression is based sorely on grief or if it depression.  I have no idea and probably will never have that.  The doctors at the minute are trying not to see it as depression as when I asked for more help they gave me sleeping tablets I asked for but were reluctant to give me anything else before this counselling started.  

I know counselling is going to help with some of my feelings.  Writing this blog has already helped because a lot of my feelings are around frustrations and anger I feel in particular in getting help.  I know I am not the only one out there that feels like this.  The NHS is there for all and I know it is stretched but at the same time is our mental health not as important as our physical health?           

One thing I found on the Internet which helped me back in June and I still dip and out of is the mood gym programme.  It has simple exercises similar to CBT looking at how you are feeling and why.  It can be done at any speed and it saves the work as you go along.  It is definitely worth a try looking as it is not trying to give you answers but help you find answers.  It is easy to create an account and use and like I said you can do as much or as little as you want at any time.  It has sections on feelings, thoughts, unwrapping, destressing and relationships.  It has tests on anxiety and depressive feelings so for me it gave me validation that I was feeling highly anxious and depressive not just making them up.

Have you got help quickly or still waiting?  Did you manage to get it through NHS or relying on charities to fill the gap?

    

Sorry for the silence - more posts soon!

Right the last week its been a bit mad applying for several jobs, an interview and just surviving life.  However next week is half term for me as a teacher and I am off to Edinburgh and St Andrews to stay with friends.  They both have uni work to do so I am going to have time to write about a few things that are bubbling up at the minute including my start to counselling last Friday, valentines day and other things.

Please follow me on twitter for more updates and links to other sources of information or blogs.

Introducing my Twitter - @adandelionmind

So I am new to twitter but I wanted to use it to connect my blog and a place where I could share things quickly without using facebook at the minute.  I have started to understand the power of twitter and more importantly how it works.

My name is @adandelionmind if you want to come on over and have a look (there is a handy link on the right hand side of the blog).  I have found it interesting a place to be to connect to some new places of information and support just by following Time to Change's twitter feed.  A lot more useful then I ever thought it would be especially as I personally use facebook a lot.   

One example is finding the website mens minds matter which is specifically about men's mental health and research they are carrying out.  They need more men to go and take the survey on their newest research so go and have a look.  I want to write a bigger post on men's health and mental illness through my personal experiences of family and friends but I have no time at the minute as preparing for interviews and sending more job applications of.   

Time to Change - Unfriend survey findings

Time to Change recently published this advert about how mental health affects those from a survey they carried out. 

Like Time to change say you do not need to be an expect in mental health to be a support.  By being silent you make things worse - inaction is an action.  The five little pictures at the bottom are five little tips about helping those that might need help.  They are simple things that may work to help someone even in a small way.

For me the biggest shock was the fact 73% said it was not their responsibility.  Being a friend means supporting and helping others no matter what.  If it was a physical illness I bet 73% of people would think it was their responsibility to help not to stand by and let that person struggle.

The mountains of South America and finding peace

This time last year I was sat in a little hostel in El Chalten, South Argentina going walking for the day and then watching my first ever Superbowl final with Americans in the hostel.  

Sunset on my first night in El Chalten. 

View of Fitz Roy after a long but amazing trek. 

This post is about when I went travelling the way walking in the mountains of South America helped me to find a little bit of peace and a place to grieve.

My Dad always encouraged me to follow my dreams and the part he most wanted to see in my trip was South America.  South America made the list for me as I wanted to be in Rio de Jenerio for Carnival but also to walk and trek in the mountains.  Me and my Dad never set firm plans for him to come out and travel with me.  In fact not much of the section in South America leg of my travels was set in stone until the last minute.  However it was the only section of the trip my dad was interested in joining up with me to do but then never got to do.  

Many times in South America I felt his absence especially because I was doing a lot of walking and trekking, something my Dad loved to do.  My Dad died 3 months before I left the UK and I left even though I was still in pain from that because I know my Dad would not have wanted me to cancel or delay my trip I had worked hard for.  However once South America came it was a lot harder then I was expecting to deal with some of that pain.

The mountains became my spiritual place.  A place to remember, to think and to reflect.

The Incas believed that to be at the top of a mountain was to be close to the Gods.  To be able to please the Gods they left children as sacrifices at astonishing heights which have survived in one piece and can be seen at different museums in South America.  Of course this is all speculative, a very simplistic explanation and many would have various different opinions and arguments about what the Incas believed.  I am not a religious person and have not been for a long time but the mountains became another place for me.  Being in these places at heights of up to 4000 metres was a very moving experience and spiritual place to be.  A place to be at peace, a place to remember my Dad.  I hardly spoke to anyone about the pain I was carrying apart from a select few but the mountains I did not have to say anything.    

The picture is me climbing Villarrica Volcano in Pucon, Chile.  It is the highest point I got to as I was struggling due to still being ill and my guide turned me and a couple of other walkers around.  Before this picture I stopped for a rest stop with others and I just sat and cried.  I had found the climb a lot harder, I do not really like walking up its the hardest part for me but I found it mentally tough.  One of the other climbers, not even from my group asked if I was ok and I replied something along the lines of yes but also missing my Dad because he died just over a year ago.  The man was probably old enough to be my dad heard my story and truthfully replied that he was sorry for my loss and that I made him cry himself.

Pucon was the first place I told somebody fully and truthfully what had happened to my Dad and the pain I was carrying deep inside me.  It set the story for my South American adventure meeting people weeks later or friends of friends from that hostel in Pucon.  Meeting some very good people made my trip in South America.  

This photo was taken on the second day of my trek in the Lares Valley in Peru near Cusco. We had slept at 3,800 metres above sea level and climbed up to just over 4,000 metres and over the top of a ridge.  That climb that morning was tough.  I usually do not like walking with my ipod on but that day I needed something to get me up the mountain and Queen was the choice that day.  The relief and achievement of getting there and the view the other side was amazing.  I know my Dad would have loved to be there and would have been very proud.

The mountains and walking are a place to challenge yourself, to push your limits both mentally and physically.

A place to remember and relfect.  To be away from everything.