chooserecovery - Tumblr blog

[chooserecovery]

unclench your jaw

[chooserecovery]

I’m constantly torn between “if it’s meant to be, it will be” and “if you want it, go and get it.”

[chooserecovery]

Art therapy

[chooserecovery]

cleaning with ADHD is a nightmare. it’s an endless cycle of finding a half-finished chore and stopping the one you were already working on, then remembering that something else needs to be done and getting started on that, then finding half-finished chore and

[chooserecovery]

on the validity of recognizing emotions

[chooserecovery]

“Don’t say maybe if you want to say no.”

— HPLYRIKZ.COM

[chooserecovery]

i made a 6 week summer plan!!

i’m going to following along roughly with this plan myself!! i’ve got big goals for self-improvement and detox this summer and i just want to start autumn afresh with big goals and hopes for the future!!

all my love ~

[chooserecovery]

Self-Care On A Budget!

Hey, you! Are you struggling with disability, mental illness, or just need some self-care? Are you tired of seeing posts recommending expensive products or days at the spa that you can’t afford? Well strap on in pals, here are some ways to practice self-care that won’t hurt your wallet.

Go for a walk. 

Take a hot bath or shower. 

Explore in the nearest pretty area to you: a cool area of a city, a stream by your house, a forest nearby, anything you find interesting. Take photos of the things that catch your eye. 

Watch a movie or TV show you enjoy. 

Read a book: find a free version online or check one out from your local library.

Go to a nearby dog park and look at/pet cute dogs. 

Take a nap. 

Clean your room/house/apartment. 

Eat some candy. 

Lush on a budget! You can make your own bath bomb and face masks, or purchase face masks and scrubs for cheap at your local Grocery Outlet/Aldi’s/Walmart/Winco/other cheap/bulk grocery store. 

Hang out with friends.

Draw, sketch, or paint. 

Listen to music— maybe have your own dance party! 

Meditate. 

Cook a recipe! Some things you can make on the cheap: 

Step up your ramen! Add chopped veggies, meat, or whatever you have in your fridge in with your Top Ramen. Take some of the free hot sauce from a local taco chain and add it to your ramen for a spicy kick!

Rice and beans, rice and beans! You can’t go wrong with rice and beans. Experiment with seasonings to make it to your liking, or buy some cheap tortillas to make some burritos!

You can get Rice-A-Roni for less than a couple of bucks! Buy chicken in bulk and freeze part of it, then add chicken to the rice to make a filling meal!

Sandwiches! If you have bread, some kind of protein, some veggies, or anything edible you can put between two slices of bread, eat that! Slice your bread up fancily or toast it to add some flair.

Watch some youtube videos. 

Do yoga. 

Reorganize your living space.

[chooserecovery]

i’m 18 years old and i have an autoimmune disorder, depression and anxiety as well. the combination of the 3 is so overwhelming and life altering. my body and mind don’t feel like they belong to me. i had to take a semester off of university and move back home because my illness is so disabling. i feel like i’m stuck within myself and i don’t know what to do.

Hi anon,

  I’m sorry you’re dealing with both physical and mental co-morbid illnesses/disorders. I can’t say I know exactly how you feel, but I also struggle with both physical (IBS) and mental illness. It can feel exhausting; you have constant medical needs due to your physical disorder, whilst also struggling with mental illness, which can be just as draining. It’s hard to feel in control of your life when both your physical and mental well-being aren’t healthy.

 Although dealing with both mental and physical illness can be draining and exhausting, fortunately, there are a host of things you can do to make your life a little easier. If you took a semester off university, I’m assuming your university is aware if your disability. Have you tried contacting them and inquiring about online classes? If your disability has you homebound, you can possibly take online courses if you have regular access to a laptop or computer and the internet. This way, you can still complete your university requirements whilst taking care of your physical health needs. In addition, completing online courses can give you a deserved sense of accomplishment, which can help with your depression.

 Some other things you can do for your depression and anxiety include talking to a therapist our counselor and/or seeking a psychiatrist or medication. If you feel like most of your depression and anxiety result from your autoimmune disorder, seeking out a therapist or counselor who specializes in patients who live with physical illness may help alleviate some of that stress. If you feel like your depression or anxiety stem from somewhere else or you can’t find a specialist in your area, generalized therapy may also help you. (Good) therapists will often educate themselves on the other medical illnesses their clients are dealing with. In addition, if you feel like antidepressants or similar psychiatric medication would help you, I would suggest seeking out a psychiatrist. Make sure to consult with your doctor to make sure that neither your autoimmune disorder nor the medications you take for it will interact with psychiatric medication. 

  Sorry this was so late. I hope you get a chance to read this response!

Bree

[chooserecovery]

Hey if you’re struggling with mental illness, I just want you to know that your small victories are victories nonetheless. If you take a shower, eat a meal, or even text somebody, then I am so proud of you. One small step forward is still one step closer to recovery.

Getting better doesn’t happen over night, but you are well on your way.

[chooserecovery]

Many people can suffer from an eating disorder, size doesn’t determine it!

[chooserecovery]

Hey, guys, I’m really sorry, I should have done this sooner but I haven’t had access to Tumblr for a while.

Bree and I are both swamped with offline obligations, and haven’t had time to manage the blog. I don’t know when we’ll be free again, so I’m going to close the inbox for now.

I know that a lot of you are still waiting for answers and/or are dealing with your own issues right now. Even though we can’t personally be here for you, we still highly encourage you to reach out to people who can help you with your problems, be it a support group on- or offline, a family member, a professional, whomever you can reach. There are a lot of resources out there for pretty much every problem that exists, and I promise you that you are not alone in what you are going through and you can find support to help you through it.

Although not great for long-term management of anything, if you are in a crisis right now and need to talk, here’s a list of hotlines you can call, or if you’re in the US you can text the Crisis Text Line at 741-741.

We wish all of you the best, and we hope that we will be able to return soon. Thank you guys for being here. Please keep yourselves safe.

--Luke

[chooserecovery]

Hi, School is literally killing me. I’m really anxious about every test. I expect a lot from myself. I’m depressed lately, my life is = school. My happiness depends by my marks, and I have crisis before I go to school, sometimes I skip classes because of my anxiety. I don’t know what to do, I just want to enjoy my teenage and not to be constantly worried.

Okay, listen, it’s good that you want to do well, but no matter how much you learn, there is going to be some part of you saying that you could have done better. And it sounds like it’s at a point where it’s having a pretty serious detriment on your well-being. 

So,one obsessive over-achiever to another, it’s okay if you don’t get perfect grades. I swear, I got a C (it would have been a C- if my school used them, but I digress) and it was not actually the disaster that it felt like it would be. A lot of my friends have been getting lower grades than they expected this semester, but they are still going into programs that they want, even though they aren’t getting perfect marks. You can take time for yourself and think about things other than school without the world falling apart around you. And, if you need a justification outside of it being good for you, you will actually be able to learn better if you can lower your stress levels. It’s easier to make things stick when anxiety isn’t clawing at your attention and distracting you.

So, my two main suggestions are:

Find a non-school-related hobby that you can enjoy. It could be something like playing an instrument, it could be playing video games with friends. It doesn’t really matter, as long as it’s something that you enjoy and that you can try to relax while you’re doing it.

Learn some anxiety management tricks. Breathing exercises are a good place to start, and they seem to help more the more that you practice them.

Bonus third suggestion: if you can, talk to a therapist if you can get one, or your school counselor if you have one, etc. Chances are good that they will have seen people who are stressed about school before and may be able to help you come up with ways to help yourself deal with that anxiety,

Things really do feel easier when you are able to have more than one thing to focus on, and are also able to give your brain a break from the thing it’s stressing over.

--Luke

[chooserecovery]

I have a friend whose grandmother passed away a week ago (the last weeks she lied in the hospital all the time) and I can see how terrible she is feeling and I really want to help her, but at the same time I'm in a really bad place, which I can't tell her right now because I don't want to bring her down even more. Thing is, she needs me, but spending time with her drenches me and makes me feel even worse. I am just not in the place to help her right now... I am a terrible friend.

Unfortunately, I think this is one of those situations where there is no good answer. No matter what I say, you’re going to feel like you aren’t able to do enough. But it is important for you to tell yourself that you are not being a bad friend just because you can’t do something.

Losing someone can feel pretty isolating, so if you feel up to it, it may help just to send her a message saying “hey, I can’t do much to help right now, but I want you to know that I’m thinking about you,” or similar. Or stopping by with her favorite snack and saying that you can’t stay, but you thought it might help her feel better. Literally anything that shows that you’re thinking about her works. However, if you can’t come up with anything that isn’t straying too close to getting pulled into a conversation that you can’t handle, that’s okay. You need to take care of yourself, too, and  chances are that she has other people who are able to be there, family and such.

Again: this does not make you a terrible friend. Sometimes in life things come up that prevent us from being there for people even if we want to be. That’s not some sort of moral failing on your part. And it’s already hard for the average person to know how to help someone who has just lost a person they care about without throwing their own major issues into the mix. Please try not to blame yourself for that. 

--Luke

[chooserecovery]

so for a first degree burn i shouldnt put any neosporin on it?

I mean, technically you can, but it’s not necessary as the skin isn’t broken so there is no way for bacteria to breach that barrier. Cool water can be soothing, as can arnica gel if you have any. Just try to keep it cool and you should be fine.

--Luke

[chooserecovery]

Response to a submission from a person who submitted one part early and finished in a second submission

What do I do?

So basically I have had depression since my mom had a stroke at the beginning of last summer and she’s getting better but I still feel like it’s not enough.

Uh srry I submited something but didn’t finish but she’s getting better but it’s not enough for me. And since I was and am so depressed I have been cutting on and off. And I don’t know what to do to help myself. Help me please.

____

That sounds like a really stressful situation. It’s understandable for you to want her to be okay again, but it takes time for people to recover from things like strokes. If you’re not already doing it, try to reach out to friends and family for support. Even if there isn’t much to be done, it may help just for you to have people to turn to that you can do other things with and try to think about something else. Major events like this can have a tendency to take over someone’s life, and it is hard to feel okay when that is happening, particularly when you throw mental health into the mix.

And with all of that stress, it’s also understandable for you to be turning to SI to cope; it’s good at making itself seem useful in the short term. However, while it may make you feel better for a short while, it doens’t help you to deal with the underlying problem. If you can, try to take a minute to look closer at what you are feeling next time you want to cut. There’s a decent chance that the reason you want to do it is because you’re feeling [stressed/anxious/overwhelmed/frustrated/upset/whatever], and if you can deal with that emotion more directly, it may make it easier for you to find an alternative that will actually help you.

--Luke

[chooserecovery]

I'm 18, and in college. I want to go to med school. I have long term goals that I look forward to. I've been depressed and anxious since I was 12. It's better now than it was then, but it's still present. It's hard. I don't know if I want to get better. I don't know if I deserve to get better. It would be so much easier to just relapse and give up and just stop. Do you have any advice on how to deal with these kinds of feelings? Also, any advice for intrusive thoughts of self harm?

First off, everyone deserves to get better. Everyone. You are not an exception to the rule. Now, I’m gonna take a wild guess and say that you want to go to med school at least in part because you want to help people. There may be other reasons as well, but I’m willing to bet that at least plays a role.  So, if you want to do that, know that you will be better at that if you take care of yourself first. If you can’t believe right now that you deserve to get better on your own merit, know that getting better will help you be more effective and let you make a bigger difference in people’s lives. You are actively helping other people by trying to take care of yourself.

Probably the most effective suggestion for dealing with your situation is going to be to consider talking to a professional; they are going to be the most equipped to helping you develop skills to manage your feelings at your own pace as well as giving you a place where you can talk openly about your feelings, which can make them easier to handle in general. 

That aside, there are little things that help most people to cope. A lot of them boil down to trying to accept how you feel.

Generally the best way to deal with intrusive thoughts is to just acknowledge them for what they are. They are a thought that shows up and disrupts whatever you are currently doing. It is not anything more than that. Having a thought does not mean that you have to act on it, and having a thought is not a failure on your part. Notice that it’s there, acknowledge that it’s happening, and then try to redirect your attention to something else; homework, a coping tool, your favorite movie, anything that is less distressing, really. Intrusive thoughts happen, but they are just thoughts, and they will pass if you can wait them out.

If you find the intrusive thoughts overwhelming enough that you have trouble trying to come up with what to do next while they’re happening, try to write down a plan for how to handle them in advance. For example, let’s say that you want to try a particular breathing exercise next time you have an intrusive thought. You could have the instructions for that breathing exercise written down on a sticky-note where you’d see it regularly (you don’t want to have to go searchign for it) so that you wouldn’t really have to think about it when you needed it. 

Feeling like it would be easier to just give up is also just a thought. It happens sometimes. If you’re tired or stressed, it’s  more likely to come up. That’s okay. It is unpleasant when it happens, but it isn’t a permanent feeling. Try to take it as a signal that something in your thoughts or feelings might need to be addressed: again, it shows up more when you’re tired or stressed. What can you do to try to make things feel a little easier right now? etc.

For basically all of the above, also consider Googling either DBT or CBT worksheets. They will have most of the skills that ou would be learning in therapy; reading the worksheets might help you get a sense of things that you can work on or suggestions for what to do when you’re feeling a specific way.

--Luke