Making 2017 My Year - Prioritizing Self Care

Image: Amovita.com

Well, guys, it's been a while since I write a post about how I'm taking steps to make this year my year. As I write this, I'm finished college, but waiting to sit my final exam. I've got a new job. I'm making real progress in my professional life. I've booked the trip of a lifetime to visit my best friend over New Years in Japan. Things are exciting, and moving forward at a rate I nearly can't fully comprehend. And it's great, I'm thrilled. But I'm also run down.

With that in mind, I'm going to jot down a few little tips for self care, to help to boost you up when you're feeling run down and tired.

Image: eatingdisorderspecialists.com

Take Care Of Your Insides

Looking after your physical self goes hand in hand with your mental health. I've started taking a multivitamin, and it's nice to know I'm making an active, albeit small, investment into my health, whether that's a placebo effect or not. I feel less sluggish. It's an easy way to keep your energy levels going and ward off any little sicknesses that are doing the rounds. A little boost can help a lot.

Go for walks, runs, to the gym, whatever you like. I like to walk when I can, and usually I will use the time to reflect and think. It's good to clear your head with a little jaunt into the world.

Show Yourself Some Self Love 

This is different for everyone, but you should always take time for yourself, at least once per week to just switch off, and do something that you feel will serve you, and only you. Pamper nights are something I try to do even if it's only just to put on a face pack after I take off my makeup. Some of my favorites are the Montage Jeunesse ones that you can get almost anywhere. Cook yourself a nice meal, put on a DVD, and relax while you paint your nails or something of that nature. It's worth investing in yourself, to remind yourself that (even if its only one evening per week) feeling relaxed and taken care of is more important than that email (which can wait, girl, trust me!), or that call.

Self care can be anything you want, by the way, from a pamper night in to a pint with a friend or whatever you like to do. If you want to do the ironing as a self care activity, that's up to you.

Image: cheapandcheery.co.uk

Make Time For Your Interests

Something I've come to learn this year is that if you have an interest that not everyone else does, that's okay. I love going to art galleries. I like the serenity, the creativity, the quiet violence of a surrealist painting from WW2. I don't share that with many of my friends, really, and that's okay. That's extra Me Time, when I go to do that. If you have a shared hobby with someone, that's awesome, do that!

It's okay to have fragmented interests within a shared hobby, though. For myself and my boyfriend, we love to read. He loves fantasy, and honestly, with the exception of LOTR, Harry Potter, and some Pratchett, I couldn't care less about fantasy. I love non-fiction, Sci-Fi rooted in reality, dystopian novels. I'll read biographies of painters and Ross O'Carroll-Kelly til the end of my days, and he wouldn't touch that with a ten foot pole. If you like to read quietly with your other half, do that. Make a pot of tea or coffee, curl up at opposite ends of the sofa and share the quiet together.

Find A Meditative State You Enjoy 

If you had told me last year I would be using guided meditation to ground myself, I'd have laughed rudely into your face. But here I am. I use the Headspace app that a friend recommended to me. That's useful during the day if I feel myself zoning out.

At night, I do something a bit weird, but it works for me, so maybe it'll help you. I go to bed around 11pm every night and I put on a Bob Ross video on YouTube. I let that play quietly in the background and I focus on my breathing, while Bob paints his happy little trees... I'll breathe in deeply but gently, and I'll breathe out quietly. I focus on my breathing for a minute or two, and then I'll try to focus on the weight of my legs, then my arms, then my torso and before I know it, I've woken up the next morning. Since I started doing this, I don't have nightmares, I sleep deeply and unbroken. It's been such a helpful tool. The only bad thing is I never see a finished painting! A small price to pay, really.

There are a million other tips I could write about here, but I'll leave it there for today. 

If you have any other tips for me, please let me know in the comments! 

Amy 

xo 

Getting Myself Grounded!*

A couple of weeks back, I was contacted by Sinead over at Yogandha, about testing out some of her products. When she mentioned to me in the email that they are a combination of beauty and wellness, I knew I was on board. Yogandha is rooted in the belief of the bringing about of instant mood changes by rich, evocative scents. It goes much deeper than just going from agitated to calm, from sad to happy, because there is some serious science behind it - neuroscience, in fact - but I'm not very science-minded.

I'm an anxious person. I get agitated and panicky very easily. It sounds like such a little, meaningless issue, but honestly, it can really make my life miserable. I avoid crowds, hospitals, medical procedures of any kind, confrontation with my peers and superiors alike and I'm very quiet - almost shy - when I'm around people I don't know. I have trouble sleeping, sometimes its so bad that I might only get to sleep when I'm with my boyfriend, or if I go to bed way earlier than everyone else. If anyone needs to be a bit more grounded, it's me!

Yogandha Ground contains Sandalwood and Frankincense, blended to create a sense of calm and reassurance, which is perfect if you've any sort of anxious tendencies. I find this scent to make me feel a sense of warmth and safety, as though you're near to someone who makes you feel secure, which is incredibly soothing to me. The scent from the oils is not overpowering, but it's apparent enough to be able to soothe you a couple of hours after you initially applied it.

The beauty of these oils is that they act as a perfume, with beautifully blended scents, but they actually do something to help you!! Instead of making you sneeze, they put you at ease! The rollerballs are tiny, perfect for your handbag, for some calm at any moment. They're also safe to take through airport security, which makes them perfect for travel nerves!

In all honesty, I keep this on me at all times now, I use it to calm myself in the GP waiting room, when I'm travelling (nothing freaks me out more than a packed Luas), and when I'm having trouble sleeping. It's going to be great for those of you who have to step out of your workplace for a few moments breather, for anyone who has to endure the crowd at a wedding or funeral or a bumpy plane ride, it's also going to do wonders for anyone who generally just feels anxious or worrisome.

Yogandha Ground is currently available for €14.95 HERE on their website! There is also a whole range of other rollerballs for a variety of different ends, to relax, to balance, to energise etc.

Have you ever tried Yogandha? Let me know what you think! 

Amy

xoxo

Twitter // Facebook // Snapchat: @redlips_redhair

Yogandha Ground was sent to me for review, all thoughts and opinions are my own. 

Realisation - An Open Letter

_______,

Today I realised something, and I knew it would be only right to address you as the realisation sunk in. 

Thinking your okay does not always mean you are. Up until Sunday, I thought panic attacks would never re-enter my life. I thought that by warning you of their possible cropping up, that it would render them powerless to appear in my daily life. 

Oh, how wrong I was. I told you that I had a diagnosed panic disorder, personality disorder and anxiety, with depressive tendencies. You laughed, acknowledged it, and I thought that by being open it would be okay. No such luck. Sunday morning brought with it eye bags, unease, a tight chest and ultimately a panic attack. I was terrified you would hold it against me. You said you were worried about me. Not to me, I must admit, but I have connections. I thought it would be okay and yet by Monday we had parted ways and your announcement led me to a panic so awful that it took medication and almost 2 hours to overcome. So thanks for that. I haven't been medicated in 18 months. I haven't ever had physical symptoms accompany the mental terror that I know to be a panic. Up until Sunday I knew that a panic attack is a physiological reaction to a situation wherein the sufferer is feeling life threatening danger. It is a mental thing. I know I'm safe when it happens. I didn't know that I would wind up in the back room of my chemists being medicated in an emergency situation. 

But I digress. 

Today I realised that I was not okay then, and I suppose I'm not okay now. But I know that now and I suppose it was because of you that realisation occurred to me. 

So thank you for giving me the opportunity to reflect and from here, rebuild. 

I guess you did me a favour. 

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We Must All Face The Choice Between What is Right, And What is Easy...

This post was originally posted on Mental Health Monday, and I have decided as a means of getting word out about MHM, that I would post this on my personal beauty blog, for everyone to see. I don't condone my actions, in retrospect, but I do believe there is a lesson to be learned.


Do you really know me? If you saw me on the street would you know that I used to starve myself on purpose? Would you be able to tell? I bet you wouldn't. I wouldn't be on for advertising the fact. But its the truth.

People in my life, all of whom know me pretty well, will know that I am a big fan of my food. As a kid, I was the only person I knew, of my age, who would willingly eat a salad. My mother has even told me the stories of when I was maybe four, sitting on her knee in a cafe with her friend, helping her eat a giant plate of salad. We used to share salads when we went shopping, I remember them vividly. One plate, two sets of forks.

I don't know how or when I started skipping meals, but it certainly wasn't to be thin. I only say this because it will aid me getting my point across: I have been stick-thin since my puppy fat dropped off, around the age of 3 or 4. My family found it an unmitigated nightmare to get me clothes that fit. Being tall and thin as a child helps nobody, especially when the clothes are sold by age, rather than size!

I have never skipped a meal to aid in weight-loss, that much is true. I did so because I thought I deserved to be punished for the bad things I did, the bad person I was. If I had a fight with my boyfriend, I wouldn't eat til maybe, dinner the next day to punish myself for "being a shit person", as I rationalized it.

I hated myself for being weak (and to me being weak was my anxiety, my panic attacks, my constant battles with depression), for making people miserable, and so, I would deliberately skip meals to atone. I have lied to everyone at some point, maybe even you, the person reading this. "Yes, I had breakfast!" was the most common lie. Breakfast is the most important meal, so the old adage goes, but to me, it was the meal that I would deliberately skip, because it was easy to. When lunch came around, it was again, very easy to be really busy until the hunger went away.

At the worst of my self-inflicted punishment, I was working off maybe one slice of toast for a whole day, plus coffee or tea and my anti-depressant medication.

I ate alone, or I didn't eat at all. There was no middle ground. My family are well used to me disappearing with a plate of something to my room. It's never questioned. I can't abide eating with people, though. I make an exception when I'm out with people, but generally, if you pay attention, you may notice (at shoots, for example) that I will eat my lunch before everyone else, and then wander off to do something while everyone else is laying into their food.

In my head at the time, starving was the only way I could be punished for being the awful person that I felt I was. If I made someone feel bad, I would make myself feel ten times worse to, as I saw it, even things out.

Passing out in my back yard was the last straw, or the second to last, as you'll understand in a moment. I gave my mother the fright of her life, after I skipped two days worth of meals, on the third I got up to make something, because I felt ill and that was a warning sign, only to feel dizzy and go out for air. I don't remember anything after that until I was being rushed to the GP for an emergency appointment. It was brushed off as a drop in blood sugars. I had to have my blood pressure monitored every day for a week but nothing more. I went home and had a salad.

The next time I passed out, I did it in the kitchen, after another "punishment" session. I remember eating soup, sitting on my kitchen floor, when I came around. I think my mother was less fazed by the second collapse than the first because I wasn't hauled off to the GP, this time around. But two faints were enough to tell me to get my shit together. Mam was scared the first time. I was scared the second time. 

Its only been in the past few months I've been eating properly again. It's been oddly tough, and I do slip into old ways on occasion, but mostly its been a conscious effort on my part. I still eat irregularly, but the irregularity is usually based off genuinely not feeling hungry at that moment. As someone who lied about food, day in, day out, I can admit right here that I was good at looking like I was eating, but when I was alone, I was doing everything possible to avoid food. These days, I make a mission of having food. If I do skip breakfast, I will pointedly eat a big lunch, and I love a good dinner now. Chris and I talk about this from time to time and he will usually be the voice of reason, my conscience on the outside.

To this day, I don't believe I have, or have had an eating disorder, though, I'm sure there are plenty who would disagree because I always try to eat alone. People may not even believe me when they read this as they may have seen me hoovering down a bowl of pasta, or chomping down a wrap. 

I still eat alone.

Let me know if you have had any similar experiences, and if you have, have you overcome them? If you are struggling, I am here to talk to you.

All my love,
Amy
xo

Mental Health Mondays!

Let me just introduce the idea here. There are 4 Mondays in a month. There are 4 bloggers in this Co-Op. We're gonna take one of the Mondays each. And then we're gonna post about something related to Mental Health that takes our fancy. It could be a personal experience, or it could be an opinion.

Participating in this Co-Op are Myself the odd time, Kayliegh, Siobhan, Natasha and Hannah.

We don't know each other at all except for being bloggers from Ireland, (with exception to Kayliegh who I know pretty damn well :D ) with an interest in removing the stigma from mental health issues, because to be totally honest, Ireland is an awful place to have any kind of MH problem. Waiting lists, waiting rooms and not enough focus on the person with the issue. Enough is enough. If we want to get people talking, we must lead by example, and just talk.

Hopefully the running order will look something like this, with the idea being that every girl has her week, and that will allow her 3 weeks to think of a topic, write it and then post it.

Last Monday of June

1. Amy 

July

1. Hannah, (topic)
2. Kayliegh, (topic)
3. Natasha (topic)
4. Siobhan, (topic)

August

1. Hannah, (topic)
2. Kayliegh, (topic)
3. Natasha (topic)
4. Siobhan, (topic)

I will personally be retweeting everyone links and adding them to a master list (which will go like the examples above, but with the topic beside it too) so we can keep a data-base going of our works! :D There will also be a twitter hash-tags #MentalHealthMonday and #MHM so if you tweet your links, we will be able to be found. Twitter's a jungle most of the time! I'm gonna start this on the last Monday of June, just so you get the idea of what we're doing here. And girls, if you're heading off or need to swap, don't hesitate. I'll fill the gaps myself, and the rest of the time, I'll just comment (probably really long comments cause I find myself rambling off more often than not!) and publicize you guys as much as I can!

I really just want MHM to be an outlet by which we can speak up about the social stigma attached to conditions like Depression, BiPolar, PTSD, etc, and to struggles like Self Harm and Eating Disorders. Maybe we can be the group that makes people realize there is no shame in asking for help, there is no shame in being weak or broken, and the is help out there for everyone.

Some useful links for you if you do need to reach out:
Pieta House
Headstrong
Grow
Aware
Mental Health Ireland

I hope you guys are ready to make a difference!
See y'all the first Monday of July!!

All of the love,
Amy
xoxoxo

This Time, It's Personal... **trigger warning**

“The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.” L.P Hartley

Everyone has a past. Its a universal truth that most of us are embarrassed or ashamed of what occurred in their past. Most people hate the pictures of when they had an awkward hippie phase, or maybe a horrible, ill thought-out haircut that took months upon months to grow out. In my more serious posts, I touched on bullying because of my hair colour and also on anxiety. 

I love blogging about beauty, don't get me wrong, but every so often I have to remember that this blog was created so I could have a place to write thing that would help me, and in turn help others. So I'm going to reclaim that for a while. 

Please remember that what follows is personal and maybe I shouldn't be sharing this, but someone out there will get solace from this, maybe. If I help one person, then it will be worth the anxious feelings that hitting that little orange "publish" button will bring.

When I was 18 or 19, I went to see Paramore in The 02 with my boyfriend at the time. Everything was going amazingly and we were after making friends with some people from Northern Ireland in the queue. We got in and were standing around in the crowd surrounded by around 10,000 people. I was in front of Himself, and I don't really remember what preceded my breakdown but I have been told that I turned my head to look around and I was in tears. I snapped back into the world around me then and I started to freak out. I remember it vividly, painfully. I started to freak out and He had to push me out of the crowd as I hyperventilated, cried and screamed. I was having my very first panic attack. I couldn't control it and for that very reason I was terrified. What was happening to me??? I was brought to a Medic and all I remember was being asked had I taken drugs. No way. Never have, never will. I was taken into a medical room and made to sit down as they attempted to bring me out of my panic. They gave me water and asked me questions. I answered them all in a pretty harrowed, hiccuping voice, from what I remember. Then they gave us seated tickets to get me away from the crowd and let me go out to the ushers when I was able to be up and functioning properly. 

That was the start of two or three awful years for me. I went downhill rapidly after that, sometimes having up to two panics a week, which would vary from mild shaking and quietness, to full blown screaming and hysterical crying. All of these panics were accompanied by thoughts that the world around me was falling asunder, that I was losing control of myself and my life. I hated myself for being weak. There was an awful couple of weeks during the following summer, where I was really low, and I just didn't know how to reach out, or who to reach out to. As if that wasn't bad enough, I was being made to feel awful by others because I didn't know how to cope with my own feelings. It was Hell. 

My relationship ended the following February/March and I was surprisingly fine with it for about a week. Then I crumbled even further. Now while I say that, I in no way blame him, nor was it the definitive reason for my further demise. This was when I started to think really dark thoughts. I was listening to a lot of really depressing music which now when I think back on it, was glamorizing self-harm and suicide. Now while I have to just plainly state that I have never ever physically harmed myself, I can fully admit that wallowing in my dark, depressive states was mental harm. I was always listening to music that dealt with death, suicide, blades, alcohol, and a lot of negative imagery. I was hurting myself indirectly. I can admit that now, but back then, I was spiralling and could not see it. While I can understand the mentality and the place you have to be in to want to take it out on yourself, in order to have physical pain to focus on rather than the mental anguish, I just could never understand the action. Its a big jump from theory to practice.

I met Chris not too long after my previous relationship, having known him for a while just as casual hello's, as he's a close friend of my Ex. He doesn't know this (but I believe he reads my blog) but I thought he was the instant fixer. He made me feel beautiful, he made me laugh, life was looking up. But I was fooling myself. Things with Chris were getting more and more serious and I was so happy with Chris, but I was getting worse to a certain point. I would cry on the bus home because I didn't want to be alone. I was aware of how much better I felt when I spent time with people, but you have to go home sometime, and its in those moments you see the difference. I still didn't know who to reach out to or how to do it. Many nights were spent crying and feeling like I was coming apart from the inside out. I would spend hours on MSN and Facebook Chat to Chris and my best friend Aine talking. Aine (I love you, you ass kicking bitch!) gave me plenty of pep talks when I opened up. I told her about feeling so low I thought about suicide. She went ballistic. I cried and cried, typing away to beat the band, and for a while I would feel better. Time was rapidly passing. Chris spent many a night talking to me over video chat and IM, helping me to muddle through my feelings. It helped, and I love both Aine and Chris for helping me. 

We went to Kerry for a week during the summer of 2011, and as is the case when 11 people in their late teens go off on a holiday of boozing and debauchery, there was drama. It's not my drama to talk about but it really set me back. Ho hum, that's just life I suppose.

Through Chris I met another amazing friend (and I love you too for the record!), Kayliegh. She and I weren't close at first, but we had common ground in our struggles and we played a lot of cards together in Kerry, and when Chris went off to Donegal and Spain for a month two summers ago, we leaned on each other a lot. I hadn't got my boyfriend and she hadn't got her best friend. We literally talked every day. Somewhere in there we formed a firm friendship that I am grateful everyday for! I don't remember who persuaded me to, but I eventually went to see my GP and told her about my panics. She was not helpful in the slightest. I was advised to buy a self help book and see how I fared with that. I read it. It did not help me. So I went back and suddenly there was a new GP in her place who was amazing! She referred me to a Psychiatrist. I was bricking it and it did take about 2 months for him to get to see me, but it was the first step to recovery. I had thought day in, day out about dying up until I went to see my doctor. Now I was getting in control. 

When I went to see the Psychiatrist, Dr Paul, I was terrified. Was I being silly? Maybe I was over-thinking my problems? Did I even have problems??? Time to man-up, as they say! So in I went, answered a myriad of questions about my family and my relationships, my life, what was happening in my life, and how I had learned to cope with my panic attacks. I answered every single question with blunt honesty, and after 90 minutes in Dr Pauls office, I was given a basic diagnosis. Anxious Avoidance Personality Disorder. What a sigh of relief I breathed! I had a problem, it had a name, I could work on it. I was asked to come back to see a Clinical Psychologist. She was amazing. Like a lifelong friend, I just opened up to her and spilled all of the worries and hurt out. She took notes, told me she'd see me again and work on getting me a space in an Anxiety Support Group. I was thrilled. Things were looking up. 

In the meantime, I couldn't get through a weekend with Chris without breaking down somehow, into hysterical tears and spilling my guts. One weekend I told him about how low I had been feeling. I felt like the worst failure in the world. What kind of person was I to be attempting to have a serious relationship with someone?? I obviously didn't deserve to be loved. I was unlovable. I was awful. Maybe I should just die and stop bothering everyone with my stupid head problems. I didn't know what to do. Things felt like they were going from bad to worse. Somehow, Chris took it all on board, and continued to persevere in helping me get through. It wasn't the worst thing I had told him. Imagine your other half telling you they had thought long and hard about how to kill themselves and feel as little pain as possible. I did that. Imagine seeing your other half in hysterical tears telling you they want to die. I also did that. I was put on medication after medication, until I found the one that fit. Then I stayed on that for a year, and slowly things picked up. The tablets were doing their job, thankfully, and I was slowly learning to be happy. 

I came off those tablets a year ago, or so. I just forgot to take them and slowly I was off them. I was terrified of what Dr Paul was going to say during our next session, but he was fine with it. He reminded me that medicating was only going to do half of the work, and I had to step up and do the other half. Time to be strong. After being told I could stay off the tablets, I was pretty scared. Was I going to come crashing down? Would I cope OK? Having recently been diganosed also with Generalised Anxiety Disorte, now only time would tell. I would still talk to Kayliegh, I would still have my arse kicked by Aine, I would still cry over stupid things, but I knew I had to be a big bold 20 year old and be brave. 

For the first few months after I got discharged from Dr Paul's Mental Health Clinic, I was still really liable to slip and wallow in my own self pity. That wasn't helping but this time I knew it. I decided that I was going to help myself be happy. I was going to kick all my bad habits and that was just the way it was going to be. I would be Amy 2.0 if it was to kill me. I deleted people off Facebook who I knew weren't good for me, and I forged new, wonderful friendships! I even cut all of my purple hair off and embraced my ginger self! It was hard, and every day I wanted to give up, but I am absolutely not a quitter and life is there to be lived, so I was going to live it, and fuck anyone who said I was doing it wrong!! 

I can't remember the last time I wallowed. I especially can't remember the last time I panicked. I started this blog and suddenly I was feeling like this amazing, fabulous Super-Amy! I had an outlet for my negative energy, and it had the scope to help someone else. I was going to do what made me happy, and that was just the way it was going to be. If anyone said anything negative, suddenly I was able to deal with their comments. I had been budding during the months prior to this, but now I was in full bloom. 

Amy from 3 years ago is so far removed from who I am now, and I couldn't be more happy, or proud of who I have become. I know now that I was damaging myself, I was making my own life miserable, and in doing so, making other people miserable and hurting them. I felt like shit, all the time, and that wasn't okay. I want to say that during my year of rising out of the darkness, there have been setbacks, hurdles I've had thrown out in front of me. My ex told me he lied about loving me and led me on. I knew for a long time that our relationship was toxic, that we were bad for each other, though, I know because he told me once I'd be unattractive with my natural hair color. The only one who was unattractive in that exchange was him, with his manipulating words. My friends have told me about their problems which I was too blind to see myself and its made me feel like a failure, as a friend. But life moves on and all you can do if grow and mature. At the age of 21, I have more knowledge of my own strength that many don't attain til their 40's. 

This might not have been the most coherent post, but the misery of that time in my life mushes it all together in to one big black, tear-stained blob. I can't thank Chris, Kayliegh, Aine, and all the rest of my friends enough for helping me get through. I absolutely love every single one of you more than you will ever, EVER know! 

If this post helps one person, then it will have been worth it. While I'm not proud of my past, I'm proud that I came through it. I'm proud of what I learned, and in some ways, I'm grateful for the experiences I had, because they shaped me. I'm the  new and improved, confident, brave Amy, and that is definitely something I'm grateful for. If you find yourself in the dark, please remember what Dumbledore once said...

“Happiness can be found, even in the darkest of times, if one only remembers to turn on the light.” Albus Dumbledore (Harry Potter and The Prisoner of Azkaban, J.K Rowling)

I hope you mined some kind of wisdom from my demented, probably overly honest ramble.

All my Love,

Amy,

xoxo