Creating a Crisis Box

It's not a secret that I do suffer with severe anxiety and depression and often when I'm suffering with it really badly I don't really know what to do to keep myself busy and to get rid of the anxiety or help control the low mood. I've had anxiety and depression for a long time but handling it is something I'm really not good with at all. A friend of mine suggested making a crisis box. This is something I had heard about before but not really thought much about it since hearing about it, but as this really worked for her it made me want to see if it was something that maybe I should try too.

A crisis box is a a technique you can use to help distract you from the anxiety or depression you're feeling. It's basically a box full of things that will de-stress you, cheer you up, and distract you from any emotional distress you're feeling. It basically gives you a place to go when having a crisis and helps you with the crisis and hopefully prevents you from harming yourself or whatever.

So over the past week or so I've been putting together my own crisis box for whenever I'm feeling stressed, panicky or in a really low, depressive mood. This should hopefully help me control my emotions and make me feel better. I've had so much fun putting it together and thinking of things that could help me de-stress and calm down, and I have things that will stimulate me in lots different ways, so I thought I would show you my box and maybe give people a few ideas if they wanted to put together their own crisis box.

The photo above is my box, I got it from Paperchase for £8.50 which I thought was a pretty good price. It's technically a gift box but I'm using it as a storage box for happiness. I'll put the link at the end of the blog if you're interested in getting the same box.

My friend had already given me a few suggestions of what to put in the box itself so from her own and I thought a few of my own and this is what currently is in my box:

• Peppermint tea
• Cross stitch for kids
• Play-doh
• Candles
• Plasticine 
• Bubble bath
• Creme eggs
• Colouring book for de-stressing
• Mindfulness colouring book
• Activity books
• Make your own crochet bag charm
• Make your own felt owl bag
• Face masks
• Hair masks from Lush

As you can see, I've got things that will help me relax like a face mask, or a colouring book. But then I have other things that will be stimulating for the scent, like candles or a bubble bath. I also have things that will keep my hands busy when I'm considering self harming such as the cross stitch or play-doh and then I have a few bits to stimulate my taste buds like the chocolate and the tea. 

I haven't actually used it yet, but when I do I'll probably write another blog post about how it goes or if it helps me. But I'm really hoping this makes a difference in my life and I did enjoy making it and thinking about what I could put in there. It made me a lot more aware of what I need to do when I am panicking or in a low mood. 

I hope this gives you lot a little insight to what a crisis box is and how it could help you if you're going through the same thing. I'm not an expert on them but seeing as I have made one recently on some good advice I thought I may as well write about my experience creating it and the sort of things I have in there, and maybe it's inspired some of you to create your own to help you too.

Stay awesome.

http://www.paperchase.co.uk/maps-flatpack-box.html

Living With Seasonal Affective Disorder

For those of you who don't know, I was diagnosed with Seasonal Affective Disorder or, SAD when I was 16. I think it had been going a lot longer than when I was actually diagnosed with it, but it's something that not many people know about or understand what it does to you, so I thought I would try to explain what it does and how it affects my life.

When I was 16, I was referred to a service called CAMHS (Child and Adolesant Mental Health Services) and during my initial assessment, this was one of the things we discussed at length with the psychiatrist at the time. We spoke about my depression in general and then how much worse it got during the Winter/Autumn. We talked for a really long time about it all, and she told me, among other things, that I was suffering from Seasonal Affective Disorder. 

SAD is a type of depression that comes and goes with the seasons, usually it starts in Autumn when the days get shorter and tends to improve and almost go away during the Summer. Usually the worst months are December - February as that's when the days are the shortest. Some of the symptom of SAD that I suffer with are:

• Feeling stressed or anxious
• A persistent low mood
• Tearfulness 
•  A loss in pleasure with activities I would usually enjoy
• Being less active
• Feeling sleepy
• Feeling less sociable
• Finding it hard to concentrate

I'm also one of the few who have what's called a manic period as well during the time I feel depressed. These manic periods are when I feel much more sociable, happy and far more energetic, but obviously this goes away and I go back to the low moods and other symptoms. 

As I have other forms of depression as well as SAD, my depression is amplified so much more during the Autumn/Winter months. The depression is hard enough to deal with but then with the SAD on top of that it can get almost impossible to deal with. It can sometimes get to the point during those month where I almost try and hibernate. I take a step back from everything and I try to be on my own a lot of the time, which isn't always the best thing to do because then I get even more upset and down. It can really be a struggle to get out of bed and go to lectures, and then be able to concentrate in those lectures. It's almost as though everything that's being said to me just goes over my head. I get so restless and anxious about it. I also tend to get more irritable with people and my fuse is so much shorter than it would be normally, so I can take my frustration and depression out on other people which really isn't fair at all. 

There are treatments that you can have for SAD, I personally decided not to have any just because I feel like I can just about manage it without doing anything. One of the treatments is to do with lifestyle you attempt to get as much natural sunlight as possible, exercising frequently and trying to manage the stress. Another is called light therapy and you basically have this special light that stimulates your brain and tricks it into thinking it's natural light. You can have CBT, which is cognitive behavioural therapy which is basically counselling, and you can also take anti-depressants for it. Personally, I do prefer to just try and get on with it, even if it is really tough on me. I feel as though, for me, SAD is just an add on to my other issues, and the other mental health issues I suffer with are what I need to focus on and try to get better from. Having SAD on top of the other issues is so difficult because they get amplified during the Autumn and Winter, but for me, I would rather focus on them. 

Now that the days are longer and there's more light in the day, my SAD is starting to go away for the Summer which I am so happy about. I've been in such a bad place the last few months due to so many different factors so hopefully with this problem gone, I can begin to work on getting myself back on track.

Stay awesome.

Self Harm (Trigger warning)

This blog post is going to be all about my experience with self harm, how and why I begun self harm and the different ways in which I did it. Massive trigger warning on this post, I'm not going to put any photos up because I think that wouldn't be helpful to anyone, even though I have a load, but I am going to go into detail about this topic, so if you think it's going to trigger you, please don't read this, I know how hard it can be reading something about self harm. 

The first time I experienced what it was like to cut your skin, not on purpose, but my first experience of it was when I was 11 years old. I was shaving my legs and my hand slipped and I cut myself on the razor. I was crying at the time and I remember the feeling of shock, but then oddly enjoying it. I watched the blood drip down my leg and I got this weird sort of satisfaction from it.

The next time I self harmed properly was when I was 15 years old. There was something bad going on with the boy I was seeing at the time, and I had a huge argument with my mother because my brother bullied me. I was doing GCSE Textiles at the time, and there's this thing called an unpicker which you use to break thread if you've made a mistake. I took that and cut two long cuts into my arm. It didn't bleed, but I just remember it being so sore and hurting so much, almost a little like a burn. I didn't care about how much pain I was in, it was just a distraction from what I was feeling at the time. I covered it up for a week or so while it healed, I didn't want anyone to know what I had done.

I thought it would be a one off and that I would never do it again, but that wasn't the case. I got into a really low mood a little while later and I cut again with the unpicker but more times and deeper. It bled and I got some satisfaction from the fact it bled, I watched it roll down my arm and it was enjoyable for me. I promised myself I would never do it again though and that it was just a silly mistake. How wrong I was.

Within a month, I had become addicted to self harm. I would cut every single day, I took apart pencil sharpeners and used the blades from that, I would buy pencil sharpeners with the intention of only using them for self harm. I had stashes of blades all over my room, I took a blade to school with my in my blazer, just in case I had the urge to do it in school and sometimes I would go to the toilet during a lesson and cut. I would also burn myself sometimes, it wasn't my most common form of self harm, I was mainly a cutter, burning had a different sensation for me.

Only one person knew when I first started self harming and that was the guy I was sort of seeing at the time. He eventually told our favourite drama teacher and she got me counselling at school. At my first session she realised how suicidal I was and called the Deputy Head in, my mum was called into school and I had to explain everything to her. We went to the doctors and I had to show her my self harm scars, I could see my mum wincing in the corner of my eye, the sad thing was it wasn't that bad at the time for my standards. I was referred to CAMHs, (Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services) but it didn't get better as soon as I went there. If anything it got worse for a little bit. All of my blades got taken away, but I got new ones the next day so it didn't really make a difference.

It was really hard for me to open up and talk about everything that had been bothering me, my counsellor Julia, was amazing and made me feel very comfortable and safe with her. We talked about some pretty traumatic things and I found it so difficult to talk about it all. Talking about it then made me think about all the horrile things going on in my head which then cause me to self harm when I was by myself. She would ask me every single week if I had self harmed, and most of the time I lied and said no because I felt too ashamed which looking back was silly because she's use to that sort of thing.

People at school were starting to notice as well, they would grab my arm and I would wince or say ouch, I had to wear shorts in some PE lessons and they would see the scars on my legs. I would just tell them it was cat scratched but they all knew it wasn't. They just felt awkward if they pushed the subject further. I did confide in my close friends about it though and they were very concerned with it.

At the time I didn't really see anything wrong with it. I just wanted to feel something rather than nothing, I wanted to get rid of the emotional pain but physically hurting. It did work, but it was so destructive. Sometimes I would carve horrible words into my skin, thing people had said to me before, things like slut, fat, die, and I essentially scarred myself for life with those words. But I felt like I needed to do it and I enjoyed it at the time even though afterwards I would feel so awful.

I think the time that I realised I needed to stop was when I cut four times on my upper arm. The blood ran all the way down my arm, and it bled for hours and I mean hours, my blood just wouldn't clot for some reason. I thought I would have to go to hospital and get it stitched up or something. Luckily it eventually stopped and that's when I realised I had a problem. It was the first time I really admitted to myself that I needed to get better and beat this addiction. Before, I didn't realise that I was doing anything wrong so I didn't see the need to stop. These cuts were the turning point for me.

It was a huge fight, one that I'm still fighting. But gradually, with the help of Julia, and with me being more honest with myself, the times that I cut began to have more time in between. I started self harming properly when I was 15 and I stopped doing it all the time by the time I was about 17. I still had moments of weakness but it was no where near as bad as it had been.

I was clean for about a year, then I came to uni and had a panic attack on a bus, I scratched the skin off my fingers. When I went home, I asked all of my friends to take away anything sharp in my room, but they forgot to take my knifes out, which I didn't realise for about an hour. So I self harmed again and for a month or so, I was back to self harming. I didn't get the same satisfaction out of it that I had done previously so I stopped again.

The last time I self harmed was 9th April 2016. I am not proud of it. But it happened.

The way I look at it now, it's probably something that will always be in my life and it's something I will never be able to escape from. For several different reasons. Every time I'm naked I see the scars I put on myself,  I look at my legs and see the words I carved into my body, I scarred myself and did it all to myself. Every time I have a new partner I have to explain that I'm an ex self harmer, because the scars are so visible. I'm always asked about my scars on my upper arm because they're raised and so obvious. The thing I'm most upset about is that if I ever have children I would have to explain to them why their mother felt the need to hurt herself. That breaks my heart quite a lot. It's the hardest thing about all of this. It almost makes me not want to be a mother so I don't ever have to have that conversation.

Self harm, in any form, is not okay. If you are self harming you do need to get help. I'm still struggling with the addiction of it right now, I am living proof of what can happen. I don't want anyone to look at their body and hate the scars they put on their own body. I will probably do another blog post about methods to deal with self harm later on, but right I feel like I've written enough. This is my own personal experience with it and everyone's experience with it is completely different. Honestly, if you are struggling with self harm, you need to get some help so you can eventually stop. It's not a healthy behaviour, it's not something to be ashamed of, but it's not something you want to be doing at all.

Stay awesome. 

Art Subjects

Today I had the most horrific conversation with an 11 year old child at the place that I work. He had asked me what subjects I did for my A Levels, to which I replied: Psychology, Photography and Drama & Theatre Studies. Three very different subjects, but still quite similar and all that I really enjoyed studying and had a fantastic time studying. The reaction I got from this child has seriously shocked me. He said to me and I quote:

"How can be photography be an A Level, all you have to do is click a button? It's not academic at all."

I bantered with him for a little about it and tried to explain that it was so much more than just pressing a button, and I had to write essays for it and spend so much more time on it than I did for psychology which he considered to be more 'academic'. But it really got me thinking about the messages we're sending to our kids. 

This child is only 11 and has already been brainwashed into thinking that doing an arts based subject is somehow a second class qualification. When I asked him what he considered a proper A Level was he said maths, English and science. This is just the sort of nonsense this Government has been churning out the past few years. Our own Educational Secretary, Nicky Morgan, has been quoted in saying that taking arts subjects could "hold them back for the rest of their lives" and that "The subjects that keep young people's options open and unlock doors to all sorts of careers are the STEM subjects." 

I'm sorry Nicky Morgan, but you couldn't be further from the truth. Over my school career, I've been good at so many different subjects. When I was at Primary School, I was in love with science and was completely set on being a vet when I grew up. But from the age of 11, I realised that I had a different passion, and that was acting and drama. So for my GCSE's I took Drama, as well as Textiles, Business Studies and French, then for my A Levels the subjects I mentioned earlier. I still had a love for science, maths and English, but it just didn't appeal to me as much as the others did and still do.

If it wasn't for acting, I know for a fact, my anxiety would be so much more worse than what it is currently. I would be a complete recluse if I hadn't got into acting. When I'm on stage, I have no fear, no anxiety, I feel as though I'm at home. Throughout my extremely difficult time during GCSEs doing Shakespeare Schools Festival, and going to my Drama classes were something that kept me going. When I was doing my A Level photography, it allowed me to express some of the inner turmoil I was feeling. If I'm completely honest, I had to do so much more work for photography than I had to do for psychology. If I hadn't taken photography as a subject for A Level, I would have never had the opportunity to photograph my brothers wedding and take some amazing photos in Kenya and Tanzania. The A Level has given me so many skills I could use later on, and that's what qualifications are meant to do.

I'm not trying to put down any subject, because if you're passionate about it and you love it, there should be no problem. Study it if you want to! There's no point in doing something you really don't like or don't want to do. I think doing a degree in maths is just as much work as doing a degree in acting, or photography. I think we should celebrate that people are different and interested in different things. The world would be such a boring place if there were no actors, photographers, fashion designers, engineers, teachers, doctors and actors. 

Surely we should be teaching our children to do the subjects they love and are passionate about rather than berating their choices. If I had a child and they wanted to study all arts based subjects, I would be whole heartedly supportive. Likewise, if I had a child who only wanted to study maths, or science subjects I would completely support them. 

I still cannot believe that this attitude towards the arts is even prevalent in children. As a society we should be bringing each other up, not putting everyone down. So whether you want to go to university, want to go do an apprenticeship, want to be a cleaner, bin man, fireman, actor or study photography at A Level, we as a society, should celebrate the fact that we've achieved something and done something we love. 

I've included some of my photographs from my A Level photography coursework just to prove, I didn't just click a button. Apologies for the rant, I just thought it was an issue that I needed to address and I couldn't ignore it any more after it was brought up to me by a child, spurting ignorance of adults who simply do no understand.

Stay awesome. 

When Life Gets You Down You Know What You Gotta Do?

I know how hard life can be and how easily you can want to give up. I've been there. I've felt hopeless, I felt worthless and I've felt like I wanted to end it all. I've also tried to end it several times. It's hard to imagine, if you've never been in that place before, how it feels when you're so low you want to end it all. I want to stress that attempting to end your life and not being successful is attention seeking in anyway, if anything it's a cry for help, and a cry to get better. 

I'm sure you've all heard about the suicides that occur on the Golden Gate bridge in San Francisco.  Around 1600 people have jumped there, with the fatality rate of the jump being around 98%. Only around 26 people have actually survived the jump and there's always been these stories about their jump. I'm not completely sure if it's true or not but I thought I may as well mention it. Apparently, half way through the jump the survivors realise that everything they thought was a problem could, in fact, be fixed. Maybe not easily, but there was a solution to the problems and the emotions that they were feeling. 

I often this of this when I'm in a really bad place. If they realised that everything that they were going through could be fixed... Maybe my problems could be fixed too. I get so down thinking that I can't do anything to solve my problems, sometimes I just feel like I want to run away from them all. I tend to give up easily. My giving up can involve self harm, running away from my problems, attempts at suicide, panic attacks and generally feeling completely hopeless. 

I have suffered from depression since I was 7 years old. That's 13 years, which is a really long time. And throughout that time I have wanted to give up more times than I can count. I remember when I was 16 and doing my GCSEs, I was self harming, not eating, barely sleeping and was in an awful place. I never ever thought I would get out of the rut I was in and I would never get better. I thought I would fail all of my exams and I would never get to university. Here I am 4 years later, I may not be completely better, I probably never will be, but I didn't fail my exams, I passed them surprisingly well. It can get better, maybe not to the point where you are normal but you can get to a point where life is more stable. 

Whenever I think of how bad I feel or how down I am, I always remember a certain scene in Finding Nemo. Marlin is about to give up, and good old Dory tells him "When life gets you down you know what you gotta do? Just keep swimming". And that's such an important message. I know Finding Nemo may seem like a silly example as it's just a Disney/Pixar film, but it teaches such an amazing thing. Marlin against all odds rescues his son and he never gives up, even when it seems impossible. I think that's maybe what we need to try and do. Never give up and just keep swimming. 

Stay awesome. 

Consent (Trigger warning)

This is going to be a really difficult blog post for me to write because it is so sensitive and close to home for me. I didn't really understand fully what consent is until a good friend of mine pointed out that at times I didn't give consent to have sexual relations with someone. It's so hard to write these words right now so please bear with me if this blog post doesn't really make sense or isn't as well written any of my other ones. It's just a really hard topic and so weird to talk about. 

The definition of consent is:

Noun permission for something to happen or an agreement to do something.

Verb give permission for something to happen.

In terms of sexual relations, it is giving permission to someone to have sex with you or do sexual acts with you. This includes just touching private parts of your body. It is so important to have consent when doing any sort of sexual acts. Sex is all about enjoyment and being close to someone, sharing an intimate moment and that moment is not enjoyable when consent isn't given.

When I was taught about rape I always pictured someone forcing me physically, dark alleys, strange men, crying, having my drink spiked and so much trauma. It's only recently that I've realised rape isn't always the way you would typically picture it. There are obviously cases like the ones I've described but sometimes it can just seem... almost normal. I was reading an article about some of the statistics of rape and it said that only about 10% of rapes are by strangers, the other 90% are by people the victim knows.

Rape is when you say no, or cannot physically give consent, and a person proceeds to carry on with the sexual act. If you're half way through sex and you don't feel up to it any more and you tell your partner to stop and they carry on, you are no longer consenting to that sexual act. If you are too drunk to say yes and give consent yet they have sex or do sexual acts with you, that's not okay. If you cannot remember giving consent or engaging in any sexual activity, you probably didn't give consent. Even if you have had sex with a person before you need to give consent every single time you engage in any sexual activity and if you cannot give consent you are being taken advantage of and it shouldn't happen.

This is something that I didn't personally realise and thought it's perfectly acceptable and it just really isn't. You need consent every single time you engage in any sexual activity and your partner needs to respect you enough to stop when you say no, or when you're not into it any more. And just because you're in a relationship doesn't mean your partner is entitled to sex whenever they want it. Consent isn't always saying "Yes, I want to have sex with you" but it's being aware of how your partner is feeling and if they're into what you're doing too. If you have to convince them they probably don't want to do it as much as you do. Sex is far more enjoyable when both parties want it.

There is no world where it's okay or acceptable to take advantage of someone in a sexual manner. And this is also about women taking advantage of men, not just men taking advantage of women. It's simply not acceptable and it's never the victims fault. You could be walking down the road stark naked and it doesn't give anyone the right to abuse you sexually.

I don't think I've quite covered everything properly here but I hope some of what I've said has made sense. I've put a link below to a website that can probably explain everything way better than I can. I hope you can appreciate how hard this has been for me to write and I really hope some of it does make sense. If this helps one person understand all of this better then that's all I want.

Stay awesome.

http://rapecrisis.org.uk/

Body Confidence

I really think that this is something that every single person has trouble with. No matter what gender, race or whatever, every single person has had some problem with their body that they feel they need to fix or change. The body confidence I'm going to be talking about in this blog is to do with weight, not to do with facial features or hair styles or anything like that. 

I had a really knock with my body confidence over the last year or so. I was in a relationship and I suppose him and I just got really comfortable and because of that we just kept on eating bad food. This caused me to put on about 3 stone without even realising it. The first time I really noticed it was when I went to go and buy a new pair of work jeans and the size I usually got (12) just didn't fit any more. It literally broke my heart. To add insult to injury I went to the sexual health clinic in Carmarthen to get a repeat prescription of the pill and the woman there told me that I had to watch my weight otherwise they would have to change my pill. I've been on the same one since I was 15 so there was no way in hell I was going to let that happen. 

For a long time I felt so awful about my body. I stopped wearing jeans because I refused to buy any new pairs in a bigger size because I wanted to be able to fit into my old jeans. I felt like buying a new pair would be pointless as I planned to lose all the weight I put on, and a little bit more as well. I literally felt like I couldn't wear anything because I was too fat, and I hated how I looked in every single thing that I wore. I never felt pretty, or sexy or even slightly attractive. I honestly felt disgusting. I would never believe any compliments anyone would give me and would try and cover up most of my body.

In September I decided it was time for me to start trying to get fit and lose the weight I put on in the first year of uni. I bought a Fitbit to measure my steps and count calories, I bought a 28 day Bootea detox tea. Since September I have managed to lose two stone, so I only have one more to go which I am so happy about. 

I went back home for Easter and I thought I may as well try my old jeans on and guess what? They fit! It was the most amazing feeling ever, I also fit into a pair of jeans that I had never fit in. I couldn't believe it. I stood in front of my mirror stark naked for a long time and just stared at my body. I remember looking at my body previously and just staring at my fat. But now, I look at it and see how far I've come. I lost weight and I did it in such a healthy and effective way. 

I think the most crucial thing about being body confident its knowing that you are doing the best that you can with what you have. You have curves? Perfect, I'm sure you look stunning. Your thighs touch? I'm know you're beautiful. You're a size 6? Wonderful! 

It doesn't matter what size and shape you are as long as you're being healthy and you're happy. Your body is a temple and what you put into it is what you get out of it. When I was eating bad food, I felt bloated and all funny. But now I'm eating more healthier and I can see a world of a difference. I have so much more energy and I'm loving how my body is looking. 

It's all about celebrating your dress size no matter if its a 6 or a 26. It's also about not putting other people down to make yourself better. Look at yourself in the mirror and look at what makes you beautiful. Focus on the features you like the most, not the ones you hate. Learn to love yourself. Others love you for who you are, you need to try and learn to do the same. 

I've rambled a lot here, but my point is. LOVE YOURSELF. You are beautiful, no matter what your body shape is. I am sure someone finds you attractive and thinks you're absolutely stunning. And that's because, you are.

Stay awesome.