MENTAL HEALTH AWARENESS WEEK 2020 POST SEVEN | A ROUND-UP OF MHAW & A VLOG

We made it!!!! Day Seven!!!

I’ve thoroughly enjoyed producing all the content for I’m NOT Disordered on this years’ Mental Health Awareness Week and I hope you’ve all liked it!

In case you’ve missed any of the posts, here’s the links to each one:

DAY ONE | THE IMPORTANCE OF KINDNESS:

http://www.imnotdisordered.co.uk/2020/05/mental-health-awareness-week-2020-post.html

DAY TWO | READING AS KINDNESS:

http://www.imnotdisordered.co.uk/2020/05/mental-health-awareness-week-2020-post_19.html

MENTAL HEALTH AWARENESS WEEK 2020 POST FIVE | ACTS OF SELF-CARE AS KINDNESS

self-care

[sɛlfˈkɛː]

NOUN

1.       the practice of taking action to preserve or improve one's own health

 "autonomy in self-care and insulin administration"

2.       the practice of taking an active role in protecting one's own well-being and happiness, in particular during periods of stress

"expressing oneself is an essential form of self-care"

There are so many forms of self-care that I had considered separating them onto each day of Mental Health Awareness Week (MHAW) but then I had my other ideas so here they all are in one post. One post about how important each act of self-care is, how I practice and benefit from them, and tips for you to utilize them too!

Sleep

I don’t know about anyone else, but my sleep pattern has gone to complete… poo since lockdown began! I guess because I’ve felt as though I’ve not had any real need to be up and to go to bed and a specific time. Before lockdown, my sleep wasn’t the greatest, but at least I had commitments to motivate me to wake up and go to bed at an acceptable hour! Reasons to set my alarm. Now though, it really doesn’t matter if I sleep through the daytime and have all my energy at night. I think that as long as I can be awake when I need to – like for my phone call appointments with my Community Psychiatric Nurse (CPN) and Support Worker, then that’s all that really matters.

MENTAL HEALTH AWARENESS WEEK 2020 POST FOUR | TV & MOVIES AS KINDNESS

“Every time I go to a movie, it’s magic, no matter what the movie’s about”

Steven Spielberg

Similarly, to reading, watching movies or TV series can be a brilliant form of escapism! For a lot of people, it’s much easier to get lost in a storyline where it’s visual because you’re not really having to use your imagination and create images from what you’re reading. This can also mean that movies can be more engrossing and powerful than a book. They can really bring forward different moods and emotions depending on the type of movie; comedy, horror, romance… they each can have a different impact on your mental health. So, choosing to watch a comedy when you’re feeling sad and low, can be an act of self-kindness.


So, I thought I’d use this post to talk about my ten favourite movies that cover different aspects of kindness…

(May contain spoilers!)

Honey

“I found something that I truly love, that truly makes me happy. That’s a million times better than something that makes you rich.”

Chaz

This dance movie features a lot of acts of kindness towards others with the main character – Honey – organizing a fundraising project for a dance school. I think the storyline is made more wholesome because it’s set in a low-income area of America where gang violence is prominent, so the acts of kindness are even more prominent when considering the environment and background. It really illustrates that kindness shouldn’t face any barriers in so far as race, income, location etc.

MENTAL HEALTH AWARENESS WEEK 2020 POST THREE | SPENDING TIME WITH OTHERS

“If you live to be one hundred, I want to live to be one hundred minus one day, so I never have to live without you”

Winnie The Pooh

The abuse started whilst I was in High School and when I began acting out at School because of the pent-up frustration of keeping it a secret, I quickly lost my friends. To them, I was either being a drama queen (a phrase I hate!) or a rebel. Either way, they found my attitude and behaviour annoying and I began getting bullied by the people I had once called my friends. Unlike a lot of people, I spoke up about the bullying straight away and unlike a lot of occasions, the telling off they had from a Teacher actually got through to them and the bullying stopped. 


When it did, I felt so alone and was desperate to build new friendships, but I was also very cautious too. I had the thought process that I didn’t want anyone getting too close to me because it would make it harder for me to hide the abuse from them and it felt as though – for so many reasons – telling someone wasn’t an option. I was also worried because the person who abused had built a relationship with me first and I’d trusted and respected him (the Police labelled this grooming), so I was nervous that building that sort of friendship would make me vulnerable for them to hurt or upset me. 

MENTAL HEALTH AWARENESS WEEK 2020 POST TWO | READING AS KINDNESS

“Once you have read a book you care about, some part of it is always with you.”

Louis L’Amour

Welcome to the second post in the Mental Health Awareness Week (MHAW) series of blog posts. Today, I want to talk about how reading can be an act of kindness towards yourself and in connection with that, I thought I’d share with you my favourite books which cover kindness…


I’ve always enjoyed reading – to the point where my teacher at First School wouldn’t give me reading books for a long time so that the other pupils could catch up to my level! When I was little, I really loved the Sheltie book series because I was absolutely obsessed with horses, so I saw reading as a way to indulge in my hobby and passion. Seeing reading as a brilliant and enjoyable way to learn about something I was interested in, really motivated me to continue to read when I was younger. 

MENTAL HEALTH AWARENESS WEEK 2020 POST ONE | THE IMPORTANCE OF KINDNESS

“Be the reason someone smiles. Be the reason someone feels loved and believes in the goodness in people.”
Roy T. Bennett, The Light in the Heart

For the first time since they began hosting Mental Health Awareness Week (MHAW) twenty years ago, the Mental Health Foundation made the decision to change this year’s topic in response to the Coronavirus Pandemic and subsequent lockdown. Originally, the theme was set to be ‘sleep’ but it has now been changed to ‘kindness’ with the Foundation’s Chief Executive saying that “now more than ever, we need to re-discover kindness in our daily lives.”

Originally, for the ‘sleep’ topic, I’d planned to feature a questionnaire with a number of different people every day for the entire week and although the change in theme meant having to scrap my brainstorming and ideas, I was pleased with the decision to focus on ‘kindness.’ I mean, in all honesty, I think it would have been a bit ridiculous if the Foundation hadn’t responded to the Pandemic which is having a horrific impact on a lot of people’s mental health. There’s always the possibility of three different attitudes with negative things; you can either block them out and pretend they aren’t happening, or you can accept them as real and put all your attention and focus on them, or – finally – you could find the balance and recognize the negative whilst also refusing to forget about the positives in life. I think that in their decision to change the theme, the Foundation got the balance right and acknowledged the impact the Virus is having whilst also putting focus on something positive.