** WARNING THIS BLOG POST IS AN ANGRY, CONTROVERSIAL AND OUT THERE POST**
Last night I went to bed early in pain with my back, this morning I woke up refreshed and relaxed until I looked at my phone and saw the disgusting news about the Mental Health talks last night. I am sure you have all heard what happened or at least one of the ten versions that are going around. To say that I am angry is the biggest understatement of the century. I am outraged, I feel like I have gotten a kick to the stomach and to be honest it will make me think twice about even bothering to vote in the next election. Like everything, we will never know the truth about how many TDs showed up and more importantly stayed for the full duration + of the talks yesterday because there are so many different facts and figures being thrown around. To be honest it doesn't mater whether there were ten/ fifteen/ twenty/ thirty TDs there last night, they ALL should have been there to discuss what is one of the biggest issues in Ireland at the moment. 1 in five people will at some stage suffer from a mental health issue, whether they are young, in school, in college, in work etc., no matter what the circumstances, it is a huge problem in this country at the minute. The only way to stop it from getting worse and from happening to 2 people in 5 is to talk about it, encourage people to talk about it, encourage people to not be ashamed about their mental health, to offer support and to offer ways to help. The people who SHOULD be setting an example and doing all they can to help the people in this country is the government, well the TDs who are fighting like children to form a government. I don't know why I am so surprised that barely a third of them showed up because 8 weeks after the general election they are still trying to form a government. There is no doubt in my mind that if they were Irish water talks every single one of them would have showed up, since when is water more important than an illness that has been known to kill people!! It is hard to tell how many people were there and who they were as each report I have read tells a different story. However what I did read about the current minister for health completely upset me as i read although he was there for the beginning of the talks and opened the talks, he left during the talks so he could go to the other meeting which was about forming a government. Now which genius decided to schedule the two meetings at the same time? As I have said if it was another topic it would have it's own time and day to make sure that every single TD could make it. Surely the minister for health could have suggested a different time for this meeting, surely he should have done so as it is technically his job to fight for mental health and put the health of the public first. Of course forming a government is extremely important but surely one more day wouldn't have mattered seen as they are taking their time after all, especially after the recent news that they are REDUCING the amount in the budget allocated to the mental health services and issues in the country. This time last year I was told that the treatment I required was not available to me due to a lack of funding and they are trying to reduce it even more!! Surely there is another sector that they could maybe reduce slightly instead of people's health and essentially their life!! Last year, without the right treatment, my anxiety and depression worsened and to be honest if it wasn't for my Fiancé, my amazing and strong parents, my sister and my close friends I honestly would not be here today, it is the strength of the above people that got me to the place I am today. What about the people who don't have this kind of support system around them and now they may not receive the treatment they require? Please tell me why we are bothering to vote if we are not being listened to?? Niall Breslin, aka Bressie, asked people last night on Twitter to write to their local TDs to ask if they were at yesterday's debate, I have emailed them and I hope you all do aswell. Whether you have suffered yourself, whether you have a family member or a friend who has been through the mill with mental health or you know of someone who has, please please speak out, ask questions and demand answers because unless we all come together on such an important and serious issue they will NEVER listen and we will never live in a fair and equal society that our fore parents in 1916 fought for. Please please spread the word, encourage people to talk about it and ask the questions that demand answers!! All my love as always, Em XX
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Hi Everyone, Wow, it has been way too long since I typed that!! My last post was the start of March, MARCH!!! You may have seen on Facebook that the lack of posts was not by choice, it was due to the fact that my laptop stopped working out of nowhere and it had to be sent to the "laptop hospital", as my mam called it. To be honest, before my laptop was sent off to be fixed, I never realised how much I relied on it. Between using it for assignments, wedding shopping and research, shopping in general(despite the fact I don't even have €5 to my name) and most of all for Netflix, I use it for everything. I felt like I was missing an arm those few weeks without it, sounds dramatic but the feeling was real!! On a serious note, it wasn't until the past few days that I realised what I missed the most about not having my laptop. As sad as it may sound, I missed being able to blog so much, way more than I ever would have imagined. Before I went away on my holidays, I felt as though I didn't need to blog as much as I used to, well not for me anyway. I felt like it didn't give me the same sense of freedom and release as it originally had. I felt a lot stronger, more self aware and most of all a lot happier that I have ever felt, especially in the past two years. The main reason I continued to publish the odd post or two was because I knew I owed it to you guys, the people who have supported me since day one. I know the blog doesn't have many followers, but that doesn't matter to me. What matters to me is the fact that a handful of people read every single blog post, that people find comfort in knowing that they are not the only ones feeling the way they do and that they hopefully realise that everything will be ok. I felt like I owed it to those people to blog as much (or as little) as I could but I knew deep down I wasn't doing no where near as much as I should have. What happened? Why did blogging fall on my list of priorities? To be honest, I used the excuse of not having the time, and although I will admit that I have been swamped since January, maybe looking back now I can see that I wasn't making the time for the blog. I felt like I had conquered all I needed to. Yes I am miles and miles ahead of where I was just 6 months ago, I am back working, back studying, enjoying life, making exciting life changing plans and most of all having fun, but does this mean I will never need some help and reassurance ever again? The answer is easy, no I don't sure I am better so I will never feel that down ever again, tis is what I thought was the answer, as straight forward as that. The truth is, I knew the real answer I was just afraid to admit it. At the same time that my laptop broke, the counsellor I have been seeing the past three months to work on coping techniques etc., was away for a month, which meant that I was in the big bad world by myself. The first two weeks I thought I was doing brilliantly. One thought that even crossed my mind about ten times or so was that maybe I didn't need counselling any more. Maybe I was 100% better? The last two weeks were the complete opposite. Everything that could go wrong went wrong. My mood was the lowest it had been in months, I was extremely paranoid and once again I could never relax or sleep. All of the sudden my life seemed to go from one extreme to the next. The balance that I had worked so hard to obtain was gone, vanished right before my eyes and it felt as if I would never get it back. Sounds dramatic? Yes I know, but that is what it felt like, sorry what its FEELS like to be in that bad place, every single tear, every single bad thought is magnified and your mind races to come up with all of the possible negative outcomes that may happen. What made everything change? What happened, I was feeling better. There is that phrase again, feeling better. No matter what is wrong with us, whether we are suffering from a bad cold, a stomach bug, an infection or even a bad hangover, we always use the term "soon I will feel better. What does that even mean? What does feeling better truly entail? We use it to compare one extreme from another, from feeling extremely sick to feeling 100% well again and back to yourself. Take a bad stomach bug for example. At the beginning of a bad dose, we have to rest up, be careful of what we eat and drink yet we have to try and maybe take some vitamins/ tablets as prescribed which will boost our immune systems. The next few days are crucial as we must allow the bug to run it's course yet we have to slowly build back up our strength by eating small amounts and drinking plenty of water. Once we start to do this, we may get bursts of energy from time to time which leads us to maybe going back to work or college. We feel back to ourselves and ready to go on about our daily lives as normal. However in some cases, a few day later, we start to feel ill again, due to the fat we didn't completely recover, we relied on small bursts of energy to make us believe we were better, ready to go back to normal. Now think of the same actions just regarding mental health issues. Would you take immediate care of yourself? Would you take the time out to try and nurse your mind back to health? For some reason or another we look after our physical health much quicker before our mental health, in most cases we ignore our mental health, push it to the back of our minds. Maybe it is because we can see a physical illness a lot more than a mental illness, or so we think. Imagine, however that you did look after yourself regarding your mental health. Imagine you went for help, went to your GP, exercised, ate healthy foods, practiced mindfulness etc. You started to feel better, you went back to work, started meeting with friends and going back to "normal life" but all of the sudden you started to feel low and miserable again. Similar to having a stomach bug, you feel slightly better and then all of the sudden you feel unwell again, never one hundred per sent better. That's when I realised there is no such thing as feeling 100% better no matter what case you are looking at. No one can EVER feel happy, well, amazing and positive all of the time, it isn't natural to be that happy all of the time. We are human, we have bad days, hours, even minutes. However, we have this fixation on feeling 100% better all of the time, one hour of a low mood and we automatically feel like everything is crashing down and that everything has gone wrong. Yes I know it sounds dramatic (again!!), but think about the last time you felt down, did it go from one bad day to two or three? Did you get worse as the days went on? Did you feel like it could only get worse? We need to stop think that feeling 100% amazing all of the time is achievable and real, we need to realise IT IS OK to feel down, it is OK to feel stressed, it is OK to have different emotions in the one day however it is how you deal with all of these situations and emotions that make all of the difference and that turn a bad hour to a great and positive day instead of a bad hour turning into a terrible week. So for the rest of this month I reckon we all strive to maintain an easier life, not a perfect life or feeling 100% better because neither are possible. What is possible, is working a little bit each day on ourselves, towards a happier us, to doing something small for ourselves whether it is doing some yoga exercises, or going for a run or playing some music, and listening to our minds and emotions and most of all remembering that no one is perfect, but we are working on a happier and easier life for ourselves! As always, Lots of love, Em X |
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This page is to keep you all up to date on where I am on my journey, what I am up to and general chat! Archives
April 2018
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