When you become a victim to yourself what exactly can you do When you loose yourself in the madness of your own mind sinking deeper and deeper – do you believe what you see do you hear what you say — there’s no escape no happiness no fairy tale ending just alot of noise

Can we talk have a conversation about what it means to be normal Is there even a real concept of normal

I wait and things are still the same I breath the air but I am suffocating

Sinking into an abyss of suffering and loneliness

No one hears me it’s like I’m wasting away

Death is fairer than life

To be able to care for the people you love, you must first take care of yourself. It’s like the advice we’re given on airplanes: put on your own oxygen mask before trying to help someone else with theirs. Taking care of yourself is a valid goal on its own, and it helps you support the people you love.

Caregivers who pay attention to their own physical and emotional health are better able to handle the challenges of supporting someone with mental illness. They adapt to changes, build strong relationships and recover from setbacks. The ups and downs in your family member’s illness can have a huge impact on you. Improving your relationship with yourself by maintaining your physical and mental health makes you more resilient, helping you weather hard times and enjoy good ones. Here are some suggestions for personalizing your self-care strategy.

Understand How Stress Affects You

Stress affects your entire body, physically as well as mentally. Some common physical signs of stress include:

• Headaches
• Low energy
• Upset stomach, including diarrhea, constipation and nausea
• Aches, pains, and tense muscles
• Insomnia

Begin by identifying how stress feels to you. Then identify what events or situations cause you to feel that way. You may feel stressed by grocery shopping with your spouse when they’re symptomatic, or going to school events with other parents who don’t know your child’s medical history. Once you know which situations cause you stress, you’ll be prepared to avoid it and to cope with it when it happens.

Protect Your Physical Health

Improving your physical wellbeing is one of the most comprehensive ways you can support your mental health. You’ll have an easier time maintaining good mental habits when your body is a strong, resilient foundation.

• Exercise daily. Exercise can take many forms, such as taking the stairs whenever possible, walking up escalators, and running and biking rather than driving. Joining a class may help you commit to a schedule, if that works best for you. Daily exercise naturally produces stress-relieving hormones in your body and improves your overall health.
• Eat well. Eating mainly unprocessed foods like whole grains, vegetables and fresh fruit is key to a healthy body. Eating this way can help lower your risk for chronic diseases, and help stabilize your energy levels and mood.
• Get enough sleep. Adults generally need between seven and nine hours of sleep. A brief nap—up to 30 minutes—can help you feel alert again during the day. Even 15 minutes of daytime sleep is helpful. To make your nighttime sleep count more, practice good “sleep hygiene,” like avoiding using computers, TV and smartphones before bed.
• Avoid alcohol and drugs. They don’t actually reduce stress and often worsen it.
• Practice relaxation exercises. Deep breathing, meditation and progressive muscle relaxation are easy, quick ways to reduce stress. When conflicts come up between you and your family member, these tools can help you feel less controlled by turbulent feelings and give you the space you need to think clearly about what to do next.

Recharge Yourself

When you’re a caregiver of someone with a condition like mental illness, it can be incredibly hard to find time for yourself, and even when you do, you may feel distracted by thinking about what you “should” be doing instead. But learning to make time for yourself without feeling you’re neglecting others—the person with the illness as well as the rest of your family—is critical.

Any amount of time you take for yourself is important. Being out of “caregiver mode” for as little as five minutes in the middle of a day packed with obligations can be a meaningful reminder of who you are in a larger sense. It can help keep you from becoming consumed by your responsibilities. Start small: think about activities you enjoyed before becoming a caregiver and try to work them back into your life. If you used to enjoy days out with friends, try to schedule a standing monthly lunch with them. It becomes part of your routine and no one has to work extra to make it happen each month.

The point is not what you do or how often you do it, but that you do take the time to care for yourself. It’s impossible to take good care of anyone else if you’re not taking care of yourself first.

Practice Good Mental Habits

Avoid Guilt

Try not to feel bad about experiencing negative emotions. You may resent having to remind your spouse to take his medication, then feel guilty. It’s natural to think things like “a better person wouldn’t be annoyed with their spouse,” but that kind of guilt is both untrue and unproductive. When you allow yourself to notice your feelings without judging them as good or bad, you dial down the stress and feel more in control. When you feel less stressed, you’re better able to thoughtfully choose how to act.

Notice The Positive

When you take the time to notice positive moments in your day, your experience of that day becomes better. Try writing down one thing each day or week that was good. Even if the positive thing is tiny (“It was a sunny day”), it’s real, it counts and it can start to change your experience of life.

Gather Strength From Others

NAMI support groups exist to reassure you that countless other people have faced similar challenges and understand your concerns. Talking about your experiences can help. The idea that you can, or should be able to, “solve” things by yourself is false. Often the people who seem like they know how to do everything are actually frequently asking for help; being willing to accept help is a great life skill. If you’re having trouble keeping track of your sister’s Medicaid documents and you’ve noticed your coworker is well-organized, ask them for tips about managing paperwork.

You may feel you don’t have the time to stay in touch with friends or start new friendships. Focus on the long-term. If you can meet up with a friend once a month, or go to a community event at your local library once every two months, it still helps keep you connected. It also gives you the chance to connect with people on multiple levels. Being a caregiver is an important part of your life, but it’s not the whole story.

https://www.nami.org/Find-Support/Family-Members-and-Caregivers/Taking-Care-of-Yourself

Self-harm is very common and affects more people than you might think.

10% of young people self-harm [1]

This means it’s likely that at least two young people in every secondary school classroom have self-harmed at some time. [2] If you are self-harming, you are not alone – lots of information and support is available.

Remember, self-harm isn’t a suicide attempt or a cry for attention. However, it can be a way for some people to cope with overwhelming and distressing thoughts or feelings.  Self-harm should be taken seriously, whatever the reason behind it.

It is possible to live without self-harm. It is important to know that you won’t always feel the way you do now.

With the right help and support most people who self-harm can and do fully recover.

What is self-harm?

Self-harm describes any behaviour where someone causes harm to themselves, usually as a way to help cope with difficult or distressing thoughts and feelings [3]. It most frequently takes the form of cutting, burning or non-lethal overdoses. However, it can also be any behaviour that causes injury – no matter how minor, or high-risk behaviours [4].

Basically, any behaviour that that causes harm or injury to someone as a way to deal with difficult emotions can be seen as self-harm.

The self-harm cycle

Self-harm usually starts as a way to relieve the build-up of pressure from distressing thoughts and feelings. This might give temporary relief from the emotional pain the person is feeling. It’s important to know that this relief is only temporary because the underlying reasons still remain. Soon after, feelings of guilt and shame might follow, which can continue the cycle. [5]

https://www.mentalhealth.org.uk/publications/truth-about-self-harm

This might not be new to you because there are many people who have some type of mental issue going on. I am unique because of the color of my skin. See I am an African American woman and in my culture mental illness is not talked about in fact it is plain out ignored.

I felt different and I knew something was wrong but I suffered through it because talking about it only would of shamed me.

Presently I don’t care about the shame that comes from my culture when I talk about being mentally ill and African American.  It took a nervous to bring me to this point, and now it is my hope that I will be able to help others speak their truth.

My mental disorder is Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, PTSD, and Depression — fancy titles to say that I worry all the time and I get overwhelmed when things are not perfect.

I take Zoloft which is a God send for me; I take 200 mg per day and Atarax 25mg as as need when I start feeling overwhelmed.

I see my therapist every two weeks, I am lucky in that respect because a-lot of people that look like me can’t afford to see a therapist once, which is a problem that needs to be addressed.

I am using my gift of writing to try to help solve this problem and my gift of talking as well.  The stigma of mental needs to be changed and today is a good day to start.

This is a very important topic for everyone because not only should we strive to be knowledgable about our jobs but we really need to be knowledgable about ourselves

I have a podcast that explores everything I have been thru and how I am learning to become a better advocate for myself

So today I am at work and I am extremely tired. I did a podcast about saying no https://anchor.fm/mysisterkeeper which is something I need to adhere too.

Introduction

People like to tell me I need help and that I am nutts.  Maybe that is true in the real sense of things, growing up I use to think that I was different from everyone else because of the way I saw the world and interpreted things within the world.  I always felt growing up like a black sheep, like I did not fit in with anyone or anything, believe me I tried to care about what other people cared about and what they felt was important, but I did not hold that same care factor, in fact a lot of the issues and things most people care about I felt was stupid and dumb to give a second thought too. 

Therefore, I often found myself alone and isolated, in many cases by choice but regardless I spend a lot of time alone.  In my isolation/alone time I found myself engrossed with reading books, learning things and spending more than enough time in my head.  For a long time I did not know who I was or what I wanted because as I stated before I have been so wrapped up in trying to be like other people I never found me. 

The focus of this book is my own personal journey of self-discovery and acceptance.  I am an African American woman who suffers for a mental illness. 

Being mentally ill for me is a pain in the ass, seriously, it’s like walking on egg shells because I am not sure who I will be that day or the next.

To simplify for your understanding or maybe my own I am an African American woman who is mentally I’ll

Are surprised

I get overwhelmed most of the time and I have a hard time trusting others

abstract waves of electrical energy that only exist in ones preception and misconception is my existance

Being Mentally ill is not my idea of fun happy times

I went to sleep at 9p and woke at 11p

I grab the remote and flip through channels….nothing is on but weird religious shit

So I grab a book try to read it but my mind is racing

I hate nights like this especially when I have an early morning

I have to pee but I am comfortable and warm all is well except

Well you know

I start to itch because my skin is crawling and it’s a sensation in my head

I am bored I flip through channels again

I am tired but not tired enough to sleep to dream

Maybe I should make something to eat

Dam I got to pee