Mental Health Continued

A week out from my mental health week challenge and I am still feeling unsettled. As I mentioned in my last post, the week overall felt more like a failure than success. By creating such a contraining schedule I induced more anxiety trying to remain in the schedule I had created. I haven't reached a solution yet but I am still thinking on different ways I can improve my daily life.

Some positive take-aways:

1. Higher Test Scores: With a little more time I do have some academic results though. I saw a huge jump up in my test scores from this week. Being well rested and not going into the testing area tense and stressed definitely paid off.  

2. More Friend Involvement: After feeling the support of my friends in this challenge I felt even more connected to them but I think the biggest thing has been the decrease in my social media dependence. I had friends over last night and didn't feel the need to post about it on any social media. Before I think I felt that I needed to somehow prove to people that I had friends, which is ridiculous in so many ways, but now I really just enjoyed my time with them.

3. Awareness: I have always been hyper-aware of my emotions and mental state but in doing this challenge I have a different awareness to it and a focus on not just what I am feeling but how it is affecting my life and how I can change that to be positive...

which leads me to social media...

The biggest culprit for stress in my life has been social media I have found. I need to find a way where I can enjoy it but not in a way that consumes so much of my life. Two ideas I have for combatting this is either a complete month without social media or deleting the apps and only allowing myself to check them for a certain amount of time or when I have absolutely nothing else to do. I am also looking into apps that will help me make this a good experience rather than more anxious like last week made me in the long run. 

No matter what, finding a mentally healthy place is an ongoing process and I will continue to share my journey with you. 

XOXO

Gretchen

End of the Week Thoughts on My Mental Health Week

This week didn't end up going quite as planned. It was harder than I anticipated to stick to such a strict routine. It seems this week I felt busier than others although I suspect I really wasn't. Although, coming out of this I feel much more calm and at peace than I have in weeks. I don't so much think that it was the strict routine but rather my mindset going into my days. I had 3 different tests this week and although I wasn't any more or less prepared than usual, when it came to taking the test I was much more calm and felt I had less of a mental struggle while taking them.

Tuesday night was a struggle. My brothers decided that of all nights, that was the night they would introduce a sing-a-long "homework" session into their evenings so I spent most of the tech free hour being annoyed at them interupring my reading. I got very into "Memoirs of a Geisha" that evening and discovered (via my brother) that I had read until 9:30 without even noticing much time had passed at all. Which was great, until I tried to go to sleep and tossed and turned for about an hour. At this time, I'm sad to admit that I cheated and got on my phone. I didn't feel that I needed to though but it was the most convenient option because I was too tired to read. The next morning I didn't feel as alert as usual but mentally I felt better still.

Wednesday night I didn't get home until 8:30 and had two tests the next day and still had to eat dinner so I knew right away that sticking to the plan wasn't an option.With my desk now clean I was able to get in a solid study session for both tests. I think that if I hadn't focused on cleaning up my room and study space earlier this week I would have blown off studying as much and as well as I did.  Even with this, I did go to sleep before 10:30 though but did not enforce my technology curfew nor did I spend any time of destressing activities. I slept well until about 4:30A.M. when I woke up, wide awake. I spent this time until around 5 on my phone but put it away as soon as I started to feel tired.

Thursday night was a very relaxed evening for me. I didn't get home until around dinner time and had to run a few errands and finish dinner for my family. Again, I neglected my destressing time but as I had nothing going on with school today I didn't feel it was necessary.

One thing that I've always made a priority this week was journaling in my gratitude journal. If I didn't do anything else I made sure to do that before going to sleep. I think that that has greatly improved my mood and overall stress levels. I am finding it easier to pick out the positives than I did on Monday.

A missed goal this week for me was definitely the dependency on checking my phone before bed and in the morning. I think the technology curfew is a good idea but I'm not sure that a 9P.M. bedtime is realistic for my schedule. There definitely are nights when that is something that I can accomplish but most of the time I am too busy for that or not tired enough. I think I will make adjustments to my "schedule" as a more livable routine.

Another miss was to exercise more. I will admit that not once this week did I spend 20 minutes exercising which is honestly embarassing because that isn't and shouldn't be a challenge. I do think though that for me to want to exercise I need to be in the right mental state and I'm not quite there yet where I would be working out for myself and not to please others (the whole fam connected on FitBit does not help with this 0/10 recommend). I am usually so comfortable in my skin as I am and I feel at this point that working out would be about me not feeling as comfortable. The FitBit, and seeing how much walking all my extended family members are doing and them sending me messages even as simple as the little cheer is really causing me to become selfconscious when I haven't been in a very long time. Once I can read a point where I wouldn't be working out to make them happy I can add that into my routine.    

Thanks for following along with my week. If you do something similar, let me know how it is for you and how you feel afterwards.

XOXO

Gretchen

Day 1 of My Mental Health Week

Day 1: Yesterday afternoon was my first official night in my week of mental health. I spent time cleaning my room to create a better environment that reduces stress rather than increasing in. Psychologically, blue is a color that increases a calm mood and I am lucky that my bedroom is already that color.

Creating a clean work environment for my homework, as always, made me more productive. It also made for a more enjoyable evening because I wasn't worrying about the piles of clean laundry covering the space. I also took some time to clean our my underware drawer which sounds like a TMI and unimportant but let's be honest, if you're wearing uncomfortable underwear then the day isn't going to go as well and an organized drawer is always a good piece of mind. I also finally put away my Christmas decorations which were causing a clutter on my dresser. The space feels much more
calm again.

Journaling went meh. Even though the space was small to write about the things I was grateful for, it was definitely a challenge for me to fill it. I didn't use the other journal as much as I had expected to but it was also the first night getting into this routine. I did record some of my feelings on how it felt to have all my techonology away until the next morning by 8 p.m. I do have to say I did cheat for about 20 minutes into this and used my computer to study for my gov test that I took today. Tonight I will hopefully finish my homework in time to really take the full hour for relaxing activities.

To set the mood, I lit a candle with a calming sent (note to self: buy a lavendar candle because all the ones you have are too fruity or stimulating), turned off my big lights and lit my fairy lights, switched to instrumental music (which was turned off once I began to read), brushed my teeth, washed my face, and put on comfortable pajamas.

At first,  I felt very anxious, I didn't particularly enjoy the coloring I was doing because I was subconsciously wanting to check my phone. I had to cut off a few conversations, one about some exciting news I just found out in realtion to a friend, to committ to the challenge so those were things on  my mind for the first bit. As I colored I didn't feel very settled and skipped around in the new cities coloring book rather than sticking to one page. I need to go back to Europe and pay more attention to the colors of buildings. As I noticed these feelings I journaled again for a few minutes and then sat and enjoyed the Gershwin which was playing on my Pandora station. After the song ended I turned off the music and my fairy lights and moved to bed to read. It was at this point that I began to really feel calm and settled, to no surprise if I really think about moments in my past when I felt the most at peace. I read a solid two chapters of "Memoirs of a Geisha" before my eyelids were too heavy to stay awake any longer. Surprisingly I didn't feel the urge to check my phone as I fell asleep.

This morning my sleep wasn't as solid as I had hoped it would be. I was in and out of consciousness for awhile before my alarm went off. One downside of the current set up: the vibrating of my phone alaram was very loud on my dresser and it was hard for me to reach my phone to turn it off. I did wake up feeling more refreshed but spent much too long in bed checking social media. I did manage to pack my lunch, make coffee, and fill my waterbottle, things I've been struggling with this past month, all with only being 5 minutes late to get my carpool.

Tomorrow morning I want to try and not go straight to that but instead turn off the alarm and leave the phone and social media until I get to school in the morning. I give myself a solid 40 minutes before classes start at school to prepare for the day and that could be a time for me to catch up on what I've missed while I was asleep. At somepoint, I hope that I won't feel like I've "missed" anything just by going to sleep.

I've been more awake today and more focused at school. My mood has already improved greatly. The biggest surprise for me has been the number of people who have come up to me and said "that's really great what you're doing and how you're doing it for yourself." I didn't expect to have the support I am getting with this nor did I realize how many other people wish they could do the same. It just goes to show how fast our days are and how little we put into caring for ourselves.

XOXO

Gretchen

Image Source

A Week of Mental Health Challenge

Do you ever feel completely run-down, stressed, overwhelmed with emotions? That's been me over the past month. I've found myself in a terrible mood and unmotivated towards any sort of activities that would usually stimulate me. My acne has gotten really bad and without much school work I have been staying up much too late for things that don't matter. After the past 31 days of this, I've had enough. 

In this first week of February I am challenging myself to a week where I treat myself like the queen I know I am. The first order of business was a bit of retail therapy. 

1. I've ordered 3 books by my favorite "queen" Eleanor Roosevelt on Amazon and have my copy of Gloria Steinem's "Life on the Road" coming in the mail tomorrow. I hope that reading these women that I admire will help me to feel empowered myself. 
2. In the past when I had these times when I felt this way I used a gratitude journal to help focus on the positives rather than the negatives in my life. If you know me than you know one of my mottos is every negative is a chance to grow. This journal is structured with 2 sections per page with room for the date. It makes the area large enough to challenge me too fill it but not too big that I'm stretching things just to fill the space for the day. Sometimes we just have a bad day and making it through that is enough to be thankful for on its own.
3. "Dance as though no one is watching. Love as though you've never been hurt. Sing as though no one can hear you. Love as though heaven is on earth." This is what is across the front of what I am going to call my "little black book." I chose a second journal to buy for extra thoughts and emotions I felt I needed to write down.
4. An adult coloring book filled with places around the world and some new colored pencils. 
5. A charcoal facemask, which I need to go wash off right now as I write this. Thumsb up by the way to Yes to Tomatos for their afforable and equally as effective charcoal mask.  

Now here's where all of these things come into play, my daily routine. I'm a firm believer in sleep and that's the stem of all this. On a general day I get home from school around 4:30 and my goal now is to be in bed to go to sleep by 9. That gives me a solid four and a half hours of "free time" which right now looks a lot like get in bed, social media for a while, nap for 2 hours, eat dinner, do a little homework, social media some more, shower, social media, put down phone, pick it back up and repeat until it's too late for my liking. I'm sick of it. 

Here's the new plan for my week of mental health:

1. Get home
2. Eat a healthy snack or smoothie
3. Work-out for at least 20 minutes
4. Do homework
5. Shower/dinner time
6. Free time for Netflix, social media, or YouTube until 8 p.m.
7. At 8 p.m. set alaram and plug in phone (and all other technology) for the night not to be touched until the morning.
8. After all technology is away take the hour to enjoy soothing music, color, write in gratitude and regular journal, and/or read. 
9. At 9 p.m. lights out.
10. Wake-up in the morning feeling well rested. 

I don't think this is going to be something easy for me but I am fully committed to this in order to improve my quality of living which seems to be lacking at this point. Come back tomorrow to see how my first day went.

XOXO

Gretchen