Mental Health Monday #1 – A Personal Update & A Coping Skill (DBT // STOP! Skill)

Hello friends!

Wasn’t actually planning on posting this post until next Monday because I had another post planned for tomorrow, but tomorrow’s post has been postponed or possibly cancelled, depending on whether I can ever get it to sound the way I want.

So, instead of just saying “forget it” and not posting a blog post at all this week, I’ve decided now is the perfect time to start this series I’ve been wanting to do for a while.

First of all, for the sake of those uninterested in my own personal updates, I will talk about a coping skill that I’ve found helpful, and then I’ll talk about what the heck has been up with me at the bottom so you can just skip the “boring” stuff.

So, I’ve been in and out of therapy since I was about 15 or 16, I think. I’ve tried talk-therapy, religious therapy, medication, no medication, cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT), and dialectical behavioural therapy (DBT), that I can remember. I am NOT a mental health professional in any way, and I would always advise seeing a professional if you need help, but I still want to share a few things I’ve learned.

My favourite form of therapy has to be DBT, but I have definitely gleaned a good amount of information from other forms of therapy.

The skill I want to talk to you about today is the STOP skill from DBT.

The STOP skill is especially helpful in crisis situations, but can be used in other situations as well.

It’s an acronym that stands for:

S – Stop! You’re probably experiencing a strong or “hot” emotion right now, but do not react to that emotion. This is hard, but it’s important. Reacting to strong emotions often leads to regrets, fights, or sometimes damage or harm to ourselves.

T – Take a step back. When possible, remove yourself from the situation entirely for a while. Take some deep breaths at the very least. It’s best if you can take some time to really cool down, but this isn’t always possible. We’ll be discussing distraction techniques in an upcoming post*, though, in the event that you do get the chance to take a break from the situation. The main goal here is still NOT reacting to your strong emotions until you’ve “cooled down” a bit and can return to it with a “wise mind”.

DBT teaches us that there are three mindsets to be in. 

These are emotional mind, reasonable or logical mind, and wise mind.

Emotional mind is often the easiest mindset to slip into. It’s where our emotions take control of our actions and thoughts, and can cause us to act impulsively.

Reasonable or “logical” mind is where we approach a situation completely with our intellect and fact. This may sound like a good way to approach things, but we can come across as cold or unfeeling this way. 

Wise mind is the mindset where we try to see both the emotional side and the reasonable or “logical” side, and find the course of action that fits both sides, if there is one.

O – Observe. Take a second to notice your surroundings, and how your body feels, and finally your emotions. The trick is to just notice these things and try to let them go. This isn’t always possible, but noticing is the first step. I’ll talk more about that in another post as well.

P – Proceed mindfully. Think about your desired outcome in the situation, and take the necessary steps with a new awareness. What can you do to make the situation better, and what actions should you avoid that will make the situation worse?

And that’s it! This skill is to hopefully help stop us from making bad decisions.

*As much as I’d love to discuss distraction tips and what they call “non-judgemental stance” in this post, I feel like I’m already rambling too much, and I want to keep these Monday posts as “bite sized” and easy to digest as possible.

And now quick update on my own personal mental health, because as mentioned, I’ve already rambled too much!

I was diagnosed three or so years ago with borderline personality disorder (BPD) and have tried a bunch of medications, and honestly, I just seemed to be getting worse. I was in and out of the hospital, increased intensity of my manic and depressed episodes, and more. So I recently changed doctors and wouldn’t you know it? I have bipolar disorder!

It was scary as all get out to get a new diagnosis after adjusting to my old diagnosis and learning to “cope” with BPD, but ultimately I think it’s probably a good thing because now I can try proper medication and get proper therapy. It’s been a long, hard road. But for the first time in forever I’m starting to feel like maybe I can get better.

It was so frustrating to be working so hard at getting better and not getting anywhere, but now I understand why.

It’s too soon to know if the new meds are working, but I am optimistic.

Thanks for reading.

As always, and especially in times like these, take care of yourselves and your loved ones, friends!

Paige

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2020 – Back Again?

Hello Friends! I’m back. Again. Hoping that maybe I can actually stick to this habit this time.

I used to enjoy blogging, but I got stuck in my head a lot, and to be honest, I still am, but this is me, trying to push past those mental blocks and get back into the swing of things.

So much has changed since I was here last, and I intend to talk about as much of it as I can remember over the next few weeks, but as a quick summary to whet your whistles:

• I live with my fiancee now, as well as our two cats, and a crested gecko! It’s a crazy, wonderful life. That’ll be a whole post in itself, I think, but not because I live somewhere else. You’ll have to read the post, I guess 😛
• I don’t really write poetry/prose anymore, but I want to get back into it. We’ll see how that goes. If it goes well I might post that on here, but again . . . we’ll see.
• My mental health has been a rollercoaster and a half, as usual, but now I have a diagnosis. After being misdiagnosed for a while and on the completely wrong medication. I am currently unmedicated again which is a mess, but hopefully not for much longer. I have a phone appointment with my therapist on this upcoming Thursday and should know more then.
• I think I’ve gotten two new tattoos since I made my initial tattoo post, and am hoping to get another one sorta soon. I’ll update for sure with pictures of my newer ones, and if I end up getting a new one soon I’d like to post about that a bit more, as well. My tattoos are important to me, for lots of reasons I will probably go into in the tattoo update posts.
• I didn’t think it was possible for me to get more anxious about writing than I was before, but somehow I have, and it’s caused a huge mental block, which is no fun. But I’m taking baby steps to get back into the swing of things and I love it.
• Unfortunately no longer working, which is sometimes a blessing and sometimes a curse.
• I turned 23! Oof. Feels like I was 16 just yesterday! Where does the time go?
• Of course there’s SO much happening in the world right now. Not entirely sure how political I want to get on this blog, despite viewing myself as a fairly socially and politically minded person, I don’t want this to turn into a super negative space.

I think those are the major things for now.

So, I know I’ve said this before and failed, but expect a bunch of posts over the next few weeks (no more than two a week, though!)

Let me know in the comments if you have any feedback or questions!

As always, but especially in times like these, stay safe and take care of yourself and your loved ones, friends!

Paige

An Update

Well, my friends, needless to say sometimes life does not go the way we plan it. 

The past week and a half-ish has been rough. First of all, I’ve been struggling with my mental health something fierce (but I’ll touch more on that in another post, I think!), and everything that could go wrong seemingly has. 

My computer fizzed out on me, and I’m the idiot that never backs up her work*, so I lost EVERYTHING for my NaNoWriMo project this year, as well as the half-finished draft of Awake.

*Or at least I used to be. I certainly won’t be anymore! 

I’m honestly heartbroken, but I’m trying my best to get back on track — though I certainly won’t be finishing NaNoWriMo with 50k this year now, and I probably won’t have the rough draft of Awake done by February, I know I did my best. 

And it taught me a valuable lesson: BACK UP YOUR WORK EVERY TIME YOU QUIT! To several places. Just saving it to your computer isn’t enough. 

And maybe it’s for the best. Maybe I’ll write a better story now that the old draft is gone. Or at least that’s what I have to tell myself to keep from getting too discouraged.

Anyway, that’s all for now. Thanks for reading!

Love you guys, 

Paige

Pretty Words

I wrote you in ink because I wanted to preserve you,

Even though I knew that words would never do,

All of the poetry in the world could never touch you, or what you meant to me.

Still I tried, and I tried, and I tried,

Writing line after line after line,

I wrote dozens of pages of pages of lyrics and rhymes,

But pretty words mean nothing when you run out of time.

 

I wrote you out when I realized what a mistake I’d made,

You were a coward, and a fake.

You told lie after lie after lie,

But I wrote line after line after line,

And I tried, and I tried, and I tried.

I wrote dozens of pages of lyrics and rhymes,

But pretty words mean nothing when you run out of time.

 

I reluctantly penciled you in when you came back,

But I kept my eraser close at hand,

Somehow knowing that I’d write you in just to write you out again.

 

Time after time after time,

I wrote line after line after line,

And I tried, yeah, I tried, and I tried,

But you told lie after lie after lie.

 

In the end I made a choice and I left you in,

But if it’s pretty poetry you’re after, you’ll have to ask her.

‘Cause I already wrote line after line after line,

Because I fell for lie after lie after lie,

I wrote dozens of pages of lyrics and rhymes,

But pretty words mean nothing when you run out of time,

And pretty words mean nothing when you stop believing the lies,

And I’m all out of pretty words.

The Drive

I can’t see the lines but I’m pretty sure I’m crossing them,

There were no clear boundary marks, so I kept driving, and no one said stop.

I didn’t feel the rumble strips, heaven knows I might already be a goner,

But there’s no guard at the border,

So I’ll keep driving ’round the corner,

And I’ll either drive to glory or smoke out on the way,

But that’s the drive,

And it’s better than it is to stay.

How to Win NaNoWriMo (+ A Personal Update)

Let me start by saying I’m afraid to make this post, but it’s been a few weeks, and I owe you guys an update.

There are several reasons making this post scares me:

For starters, I’m afraid you’ll judge me for jumping ship on Awake for the next few weeks. I’m about halfway-ish through it, and I’m going to finish the rough draft at least by the end of January, you can hold me to that.

But more than that, I’m afraid to write this post because I have some kind of performance anxiety. As soon as I tell people “I’m doing [X]” I start to panic about doing X, even if I’ve been doing it well up until that point.

That’s the case with this year’s NaNoWriMo. I’m a few thousand words behind where I’d like to be at the moment (though technically I’m still on target!), but I’ve written every day so far and I fully intend to finish with 50,000 words at the end of the month if it kills me.

Anyway, Arrival is in full swing, and as much as I want to bang my head off my coffee table (because I don’t work at a desk) and scream, there’s also a huge sense of pride that I’m creating something new again.

The feeling of writing a novel is slightly intoxicating to me, and that’s why I write.

NaNo’s been difficult this year because I’m working 35-40 hours a week, and so I’m trying to keep up with that, plus trying to keep up my relationship (thank goodness she’s ALSO doing NaNoWriMo this year, so she understands) is kind of exhausting, but it’s been good. I haven’t felt this Alive (pun intended) in a long while.

NaNoWriMo is always kinda hard, though. You’re writing an entire novel in 30 days, for heaven’s sake! But it’s totally possible with a few key things to help you along the way:

GETTING OUT OF THE HOUSE

Up ’til this year I’ve always novelled at home, but this year my fiancee and I have decided to get out as much as possible, and it’s helping SO MUCH.

I was always against the idea of novelling anywhere else, thinking it would be distracting or I’d feel too much pressure, but honestly, just finding a Starbucks and settling down with a caramel brulee frappucino and some good music in your earbuds is where it’s at, my friends. I wrote 2000 words in a McDonald’s yesterday, too. So it doesn’t necessarily have to be anything fancy, it just has to be somewhere outside of your house that you can sit down and focus.

CAFFEINE

I understand that caffeine isn’t for everyone, but for ME, caffeine is a lifesaver. Like I said earlier, I’m working 35-40 hours a week, which isn’t really that much, but it’s enough to make me want to come home and nap for eight hours, and then go to bed for another eight hours. (I guess the depression doesn’t help here, but that’s another story for another day!) So anyway, my caffeine consumption has at least DOUBLED since I started NaNo eleven days ago. Whoops.

SLEEP

On the other side of caffeine there is my other best friend: sleep. I already mentioned that it’s something I want to do far too much of, but human beings really do need to sleep to repair our bodies and refresh our minds, so during NaNoWriMo, allow yourself to get some sleep. I don’t know what your schedule is like, but try to make sure you’re getting at least 6 hours of sleep. I’d recommend more, but then I’d be a hypocrite.

HARD WORK

This is the one most people don’t like, but it’s important. The fact is, you won’t succeed in anything, especially not NaNoWriMo without putting the effort in. If you think participating in NaNo will be a cake walk, it won’t. But I promise you, it will be worth it in the end.

And this is not something you ‘need’ per se, but something you need to DO, rather: ditch your inner editor.

Of the 2000 words I wrote yesterday, I’ve already decided I’ll probably cut 1250 of them in editing later, but is that stopping me from continuing the story? No. Am I cutting those words out now? No. Because I still know where my story’s going, and I’m pretending those scenes/words don’t exist for now, and I still wrote those words, and they’ll be part of this story until the editing process, so I think it counts.

Because I’m working in Scrivener it’s really easy to just separate the scenes I don’t like and label them SEMI PERMANENT or [DELETE LATER] but if you’re working in Docs or Word or any other writing program that doesn’t separate your novel scene-by-scene, just use something to separate it for yourself like highlighting or [!]’s at the start and end of the paragraphs/scenes/whatever you want to delete and you can worry about it later.

If you get hung up on fixing and editing and tweaking right now, you won’t finish NaNoWriMo.

Anyway, that’s my ‘advice’ for finishing NaNoWriMo, do you have anything to add? Let me know in the comments!

Lots going on!

Hey everybody, it’s been a while since I made a post here, and I’m sorry for that, but! I have some exciting stuff going on that I hope makes up for it.

 

1. I started a Patreon! So if you want to support me on a more consistent basis, head on over there for the rough drafts I’m working on + Alive in all its glory.
2. No worries if you can’t/don’t want to, though, because all of my rough draft work will be posted on my new Wattpad account approximately a week after my Friends on Patreon have it.
3. Awake is in full swing over on Wattpad already, and I can’t wait to share it with you guys.
4. I’m PLANNING on doing NaNoWriMo this year, so you can find me over there if you want to. I’d love to be friends, if you’re participating! Now, whether or not I’ll SUCCEED in NaNoWriMo is a whole different story, but I’m going to try!

I think that’s all the major stuff. I’m going to go work on Awake for now, and I’ll talk to you guys again soon, I promise.

Long Time Coming

Hello hello, friends!

It’s been far too long since I made a post, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to make this one either, because that means Coming Back, and I’m not very good at keeping up with this blog anymore, but y’know what? I’m gonna try my best.

And my best may not be very good, but it will be my best.

 

Today I have exciting news! I finally published Alive: A Journey To Redemption!

After five freaking years of writing and rewriting, it’s finally done and ready for public consumption!

It feels a little surreal, to be honest. I feel like I should still be fussing over describing Riley in the diner, and nitpicking at words in the end scenes, but I’m not.

Instead I’m working on Awake: A Work In Progress, and it feels good.

 

I don’t really have much else to say in this post, but I promise I’ll try to be here more over the next little while.

Thank you for your patience.

 

 

 

 

The Wizard of Oohs and Ahhs

I wish we didn’t feel the need to make God into the Wizard of Oohs and Ahhhs, because He is great, and He is powerful without the shiny bells and whistles of the Emerald Church.

We curtain Him off and project an unnecessary image to the rest of the world, like He’s not enough on His own.

We play songs about how big and mighty He is, but never allow Him to show it.

Music is used to tug at the heart strings; we rock the drums, raise our hands and sing, but God doesn’t need our smoke and mirrors! He is enough as He is!

Why do we treat Him as if He used to be a great God, but now we’re unsure? Why do we feel we have to dress Him up with bright red rugs, chandeliers, and paper coffee mugs to convince people that He’s a good, good Father? We catch people by the emotions, with the projection of a floating head, but God is already a full being and we’re only subtracting from His majesty by trying to add to it.

God doesn’t need facades, parades or charades, and He doesn’t need the munchkins putting on displays; He just needs our open hearts and our willingness to let Him show up, without covering Him up.

When the world inevitably pulls our curtain down; we’ll realize we didn’t need any of this, because God is not the Wizard of Oohs and Ahhs, He is every bit as great and powerful as He ever was.

 

Camp NaNoWriMo Update #1

Hello, friends!

I almost decided not to write a post today because I was ashamed of myself.

My word count on my NaNo novel so far is a whopping 835 right now, which is 832 words less than I was supposed to have on the first day.

Whoops. But I was reading articles about rambling roses, trying to get back to the roots of this blog (ba dum tshh!) when I discovered this little gem:

“To prepare the ground adequately for a climbing rose is a prime requisite for success. The soil ought to be naturally rich, or be made so. Though climbing roses will grow on poor soil more successfully than other kinds of roses, the fact remains that the better we treat them the better they will treat us.” Planting and Taking Care of Climbing Roses on OldandSold.com

(Yes I know the article/quote is about climbing roses, and my blog refers to ‘rambling roses’, but both plants are similar in structure and nature so I’ll allow it!)

And I realized that just because I’m off to a bad start doesn’t mean it’s time to dig the seed out of the ground and throw it in the trash, it means it’s time to dig my roots in and get growing some ding-dang-diddly ramblin’ roses!

So maybe my soil started out poor due to my lack of effort, but I’m recommitting to myself, to my novel, and to you right here, that I will treat my soil novel better, so that it (and I) can become a beautiful rose someday.

Sorry this update was short and probably didn’t make much sense, but I’ve got some writing to do! I will talk to you all next Wednesday, if not sooner! 🙂