Painting and other art to combat poor mental health or mood has become a real soundbite, but for me it’s been abundantly helpful, when I started painting in March I had no idea I’d enjoy it and stick to it - now I can’t stop.
The first three weeks were quite exciting for me. I was very motivated and always busy - Focusing on who I wanted to be and what I wanted to create...
So part two of this epic series (note to self – calm down Pete) is about being further along my anxiety recovery journey, when things were already moving along towards being over my anxiety and panic attacks. I’d learned that I could go out of the house and do general life stuff, but I wasn’t enjoying it yet. I wanted to learn how to be able to enjoy it.
If there’s one thing I have learned it’s how to relax. I had serious anxiety from 2004 to 2013 so it was a case of necessity being the mother of invention. During that time my desire to shift the shitty stuff was strong, there was no way I was ready to accept that my life was going to stay that way.
It occurred to me today that it’s been months since I did a blog post about what I want to write. It’s always been about writing something for the readers. I am quite inwardly focussed at the moment and thinking about self-motivation, so I want to write about that. Two birds – one stone too, I hope that reading about what motivates me can be of use for you.
I got used to social distancing years ago after a long journey with mental illness and recovery taught me that I can enjoy not being all that social, and work through it. I hope this helps!
As the saying goes, if just one person is helped by this, it will have all been worth it. And so today I write about my bridge jump in 2002.
I'm not an expert, but I know a few things about how online information is formatted to entice...sometimes it creates an unconscious tension.
I spent two months in anti anti-psychotic mode in 2019. My clozapine was never a jagged little pill like all the other anti-psychotics I’d been on, a varied selection ranging from tiny pink aripiprazole to harder to swallow chunks of olanzapine.
This is a look at a typical day, living fully alongside minor (?) anxiety. I'm a busy man.