Finding Hope10 Things That Are Helping My Mental Health in Lockdown
Posted on June 13, 2020
I think probably most of us can say that we are struggling mentally in lockdown. I certainly am. I seem to be swinging wildly between overwhelmed, depressed, and anxious with no warning as to when the ground I’m standing on is going to change. It’s exhausting and kind of makes me feel sick all of the time. So I’ve put together a short list of things that are, if not helping, then managing my mental health in this emotionally turbulent time.
- Talking about how I’m feeling – I’m in lockdown with my Mum and talking to her about my anxieties and how I’m struggling with my mental health has been helpful, even if it can, in the moment, be really hard and make the emotions feel more acute. But after all this time, my Mum is very skilled at helping me with my mental health so when I get into such a state that I can’t think properly, she’s very good at helping me through it.
- Keeping a diary – I always keep a diary but I’m finding it particularly useful at the moment. Emptying my brain and getting all of my thoughts down on paper lifts a little of the weight I feel like I’m carrying. It just makes me feel a little bit lighter, like I can breathe more easily, and that’s invaluable right now.
- My cats – Obviously my cats have no idea that we’re in the middle of a pandemic so they’re just continuing to do all of their cat things: playing together, chasing bugs in the garden, playing with their toys, and sleeping all snuggled up together. It’s a good distraction and a very mindful one. Everything they do is entirely in the moment and it’s hard not to smile when you look at them, something I’m finding hard at the moment.
- Favourite Films and TV Shows – While getting sucked into a new TV show is a great distraction, I find that I don’t always have the concentration to keep up with new characters in a new world with an unknown storyline so I’ve been watching a lot of my old favourites, especially ones from my childhood. They’re familiar and comforting and distracting, making everything feel just a little bit less scary.
- Video calls with friends and family – I hate not being able to see my family and friends in person, hate not being able to hug them and just hang out with them for no particular reason other than just being together, I’m very grateful for video calling. I’ve spent a lot of time talking and catching up with my favourite people and although I sometimes find it draining (I think, to an extent, the level of video call use just serves to be a reminder of how different everything is), I’m just really pleased to be able to see them at all. I miss hugging though. I really miss hugging.
- Reading Fanfiction – As I said with watching films and TV shows, I’m finding it really difficult to get into new books. I just don’t seem to have enough concentration to stick with new characters and settings and so on. But a technique I’ve used for a while when it comes to anxiety is reading Fanfiction. I love that you can get so many new stories but with familiar characters and overall themes and story arcs. If you’ve ever felt like a book, movie, or TV show didn’t do a good enough job with a story or that they left out something really important or you see the characters in a completely different scenario, then I highly suggest looking into Fanfiction.
- Playing an instrument – I’ve spent a lot of time at the piano over the last couple of weeks. It’s something I’d hoped to do during my empty semester but coincidentally, it’s been really good for my mental health. I love the sound of the piano (I find the lower octaves especially soothing) but I also find that playing takes up all of my brain. I often sit down to play a couple of songs and then realise that I’ve been there for over an hour. Learning new songs and figuring out new chords and progressions just pushes everything else out of my head. It’s a nice break from reality.
- Time away from social media – I’m definitely guilty of spending too much time on social media at the moment, terrified to miss out on important information (I absolutely do not trust the government to be giving us the full story, ever really but especially right now). But that’s leading to a lot of fear spirals so I’m trying my hardest to spend real time away from my phone and social media, checking it once a day at most. It’s complicated since part of my job involves the use of social media but with the disruption to the music industry at this time, I’m not too worried about that right now. My mental health has to be my priority.
- Decluttering – This is another thing I’d hoped to do during my empty semester and, depending on my mood, it’s not always possible but when I do feel up to it, I’m finding that going through my things and creating space in my room seems to create space in my life and my head too. I can’t do it for long periods because I start to experience decision fatigue and get really indecisive but creating order and having some control when I feel so out of control has been both satisfying and soothing.
- Preparing for my next university module – Something I was worried about before the pandemic was being prepared for this next module in my Masters degree, which involves a level of musical theory that I’m not sure I’m comfortable with at this point. So I’d wanted to do some work on that and my attempts at this have actually been good for my anxiety: focusing on a completely separate anxiety has been a good distraction and preparing for a future post-pandemic has been good for my mental health too. It helps me remember that this isn’t forever.
It’s also worth mentioning that I have an anti-anxiety medication that I take as needed, which is pretty much all the time right now. My psychiatrist is aware of this and supports it. This has been hugely helpful and has halted many a panic spiral for which I’m really grateful. Being constantly overwhelmed by anxiety is exhausting and only makes it harder to cope with everything going on.
As I said, I don’t know if these things are helping or just maintaining my mental state but honestly, I think the only thing that’s really going to help my mental health is life returning to somewhat normal: being able to continue our lives and do the things we love to do without a thick fear of being infected. I want to feel safe again. I want to hug people, go back to university, go back to the gym. Maybe I’ll write a post about all the things I want to do when it’s safe again.
Mass Observation – A Day in the Life of UK Lockdown
Posted on May 13, 2020
On the 12th of May every year, the Mass Observation Archive asks people to keep a diary for a day in order to capture the everyday lives of people all over the UK. This year, 2020, is the 10th anniversary but we are also living in the midst of a global pandemic, making this year a unique one, to say the least.
I’m a dedicated diary writer and have been for years so this is the ideal project for me. I love the idea of so many people’s experiences in one place, the idea of collecting as many versions of one day as possible and trying to build the fullest picture of it. So I was very excited to take part in this day, even if I’ve recently been floored by one of the most awful periods of depression I’ve ever experienced.
Some important things to know before reading this: I am autistic, struggle with depression, anxiety, OCD, and Borderline Personality Disorder. All of the symptoms get worse under stress. I’m halfway through a Masters Degree in Songwriting. I’m really struggling with the Covid-19 pandemic (particularly when it comes to my anxiety, with the fear that my loved ones will get sick), self isolating with my Mum, separated from my three other parents, my brother and my friends.
I slept badly, waking up at eight with my alarm. I’ve been trying to keep to my pre-lockdown routines and on a normal day, I would’ve gotten up and got to work on something but I had a throbbing headache, probably due to the restless night. So I buried my head under my duvet and tried to hide from the light coming in through my curtains.
Being a part time Masters student means I have an empty semester from yesterday until the end of September and I had all of these plans: practice the songwriting skills I’ve learned this year, establish a recording space at home, and get back to swimming, to name a few. But then the pandemic happened and we went into lockdown and all of my plans went out the window. I’m terrified all the time. Everything feels pointless. I can’t focus on anything. And my creativity – my ability to write songs – feels completely blocked. I’m stuck in this frozen state and I just feel like I can’t breathe. I feel like screaming and crying and hyperventilating but I feel like if I start, I’ll never stop. But even distracting myself is hard. I just can’t make myself care about a TV show or whatever. It all feels too big, like there isn’t enough space in my brain for anything other than this howling fear. And this has only been made worse by the government’s most recent, incredibly unclear statement about easing the lockdown. The idea that the government think this is acceptable when hundreds of people are still dying every day makes me sick with fear. I didn’t vote for them but I at least thought they cared about the people they were governing.
The only thing that I’ve found actually helpful in distracting myself is reading fanfiction. It’s something I’ve found effective as a relaxation technique over the last year, dealing with my wildly fluctuating mental health, starting my Masters, and this pandemic. It’s easier than reading a book because I’m already familiar with the worlds and the characters, which is a relief when I’m constantly exhausted by all this fear. Escaping into a comforting world is just that… comforting. So I spent several hours doing that, reading through old favourites from my teenage years when I first discovered fanfiction. It just gave me a break from everything. As much as possible, anyway.
Eventually though I got up and went downstairs. I thought that maybe working on one of my anxieties would help my overall level of anxiety so me and Mum went out into the garden to do some filming for a music video. My original idea is now impossible with the lockdown, which has been very upsetting because I was really looking forward to it, so I’m having to come up with something new, something that’s been difficult and frustrating because the original idea felt so perfect. I’m not super happy with the current back up plan but I need something. So me and Mum spent several hours filming [I’m omitting some bits here because I don’t want to give away the video if this is what we end up using]. I have absolutely no energy at the moment so I was completely exhausted by the end of it, even though I don’t feel like I actually did that much. I ended up falling asleep in the comfy chair in the kitchen, sleeping for a couple of hours.
I woke up, stiff and uncomfortable and just as anxious. Apparently trying to work through an anxiety didn’t help. Maybe I didn’t solve that anxiety, maybe all of this is just too big.
I had a shower and then settled on the sofa in the living room. There are so many things that I could be doing with my time but I just don’t have the motivation, the emotional energy. I just can’t see the point – what does any of it matter when hundreds of people are dying everyday, when people are losing loved ones, drowning in unbearable grief? It’s in moments of quiet that these thoughts overwhelm me and I feel my throat start to close up.
I dived back into fanfiction until dinner snuck up on me. Me and Mum ate in front of a Lucifer rewatch – for some reason, it was the only show that didn’t make me want to scream. We watched until we were both falling asleep, until the cats were crawling all over us for their pre-bedtime snack (otherwise they do their level best to wake us up at five in the morning). So we fed them and headed for bed.
It’s hard to admit – maybe because I’m twenty five and feel I should be stronger than this – but I haven’t been able to sleep without my Mum with me for weeks now, possibly longer. All of my mental health stuff is worse at night, particularly my anxiety. It just builds and builds until I’m in a panic attack or worse, a full autistic meltdown. Having my Mum with me, feeling her heartbeat and hearing her breathe, makes things just okay enough to fall asleep, although sometimes it takes a sleeping pill too.
If you’ve been keeping a diary or still want to jot down some thoughts about yesterday, I really encourage you to do so and send it to the archive. The page is here, in case you’d like to submit or learn more about this and their other projects.
When You Feel ‘Too Much’
Posted on February 10, 2018
As I’ve said before, I struggle with how powerful my emotions can be. When I’m happy, I feel like every cell in my body is glowing; when I’m upset, it feels like my chest is collapsing; when I’m angry, I feel like I could destroy buildings, and when I love someone, if I could take on all their pain myself, I would do it in a heartbeat. These feelings can completely overwhelm me, making it impossible to think rationally and I’m often left absolutely exhausted afterwards. Occasions like these are closely linked with my autistic meltdowns but they also do occur separately. Over the last couple of years, I’ve gotten better at managing this so I thought I’d write down some of the ways I do this (of course there are still times when something emotionally difficult just comes out of nowhere but we can’t control everything so we work on the things we can).
Allow myself to feel everything – I think it’s so important to actively feel and process your emotions. Ignoring my emotions does me no good. So I let myself feel them and let them settle and usually then, I can feel what the right thing to do is.
Prepare for events I know will be emotional – When I know an event is going to be stressful or upsetting or emotional, I seriously think about how important it is that I attend. If I don’t need to go and I can see that it is going to negatively affect me, I do consider not going. There’s nothing wrong with protecting your mental and emotional health. If I either need to go or think it’s the right thing to go, I make sure that I’m prepared for it. I make sure I have everything I need, I plan the elements that I can (like travel arrangements) to minimise stress, and I do some of the other things on this list. I also factor in the number of people. Big crowds of people can really stress me out so it is something I consider when deciding whether or not to do something and then how I handle it.
Create a safety net – Again, when I know something (an event or period of time) is going to be stressful, I take certain precautions. I’ll arrange an escape plan ahead of time in case I need it or I’ll arrange to have someone I know with me. Most of the time, I’m fine but that’s usually because I know I’ve made these plans and so I’m not worrying about what will happen if something goes wrong.
Build in time to recover – I am easily exhausted, especially at the moment, so I allocate time before and after an event to make sure that I’m as rested as I can be before it and then to give me recovery time after. I struggle with the reality of this: I get very frustrated about tiring so quickly and wish I could jump from one event to another like many people I know can. But even when I’m raging and swearing about this, I do it because I know objectively that I need it.
Writing or journaling – I’ve written about this before but I’m such a believer in writing down your emotions. For me, it gives me somewhere to put them so I don’t have to carry them around with me. I can leave them where they are and move on. It also makes them more manageable because I’ve put words to them; they’re no longer an intangible mess overwhelming me.
Therapy – Talking about how you feel is invaluable and having someone who is professionally trained, someone outside of it all who can look at what’s happening objectively is even better. I’ve been going to therapy for three years now (three years today in fact!) and having that safe space where I can talk about anything is so important to me. I wouldn’t be where I am now without it. I might not be alive without it.
Specific amounts of medication – Certain medications I have taken have had a little leeway about them and my psychiatrist trusts me to use my judgement with them. For example, when I know I’m going to need as much energy as I can get or have really needed some sleep to recover from something, I have increased my sleeping medication temporarily to make sure that I sleep well. Of course, this is something you only do with the guidance of your healthcare professional.
It does still happen. I do still get completely overwhelmed by how I feel but I am better at managing it. I guess these things just make the experience easier on me and everyone else, and less stressful than they were before. Despite all of this though, the strength of my emotions is something I really value about myself. Everything matters. I care with everything in me. It’s hard but ultimately, I wouldn’t want to be any different. Life is bigger this way.
Finding Hope 