Feeling Your Emotions- Happiness (Part 1)

This is the next post in the Feeling Your Emotions series. You can read the introduction here: https://fallingpetalsuk.blogspot.com/2017/11/feeling-your-emotions-introduction.html

Disclaimer: I'm not a doctor, so if you're having mental/physical issues please seek medical help in addition to reading this. :)


I started this series over two years ago with the intent of exploring emotions and "feeling them to heal them". So far I've covered some of the so-called "negative" emotions- anger, sadness and depression, fear and anxiety and shame. Then the last post was a "neutral" one about the in between point of "negative" and "positive" emotions. That was in July, so it's taken me a while to get back to this. I wrote some other posts in between, including one called When You're Struggling which you can read here: https://fallingpetalsuk.blogspot.com/2019/10/when-youre-struggling.html

Letting Go of 2019 + Starting a New Decade

 

We're at the end of another year. As I've said before, it seems to come round quickly, those last few months from September to December seem to just fly by! The past couple of years I've written posts about letting go of the year. You can read them below

Letting Go of 2017: https://fallingpetalsuk.blogspot.com/2017/12/letting-go-of-2017.html

Letting Go of 2018: https://fallingpetalsuk.blogspot.com/2018/12/letting-go-of-2018.html

I write mid year reflection posts as well, and it's already 6 months since I wrote this year's. Now it's time for the post about letting go of 2019 and getting ready for 2020. As with the past posts, I started writing this a few days ago and now I'm finishing it on New Year's Eve. We're also entering a new decade, so I'll reflect on that too. :)

Gratitude List

Things I'm grateful for this month:

Chocolate advent calendars!
Buses
Yule/the Winter Solstice
YouTube
Helpful people
Making new friends
Christmas
Hot chocolate

Manifesting and Mental Health- Part 2

Note: This is a post about the Law of Attraction (LOA). For a background on LOA click here. :)

Disclaimer: I'm not a doctor, so if you're having mental/physical issues please seek medical help in addition to reading this. :)

In August I wrote about manifesting and mental health. I decided to break it up into a couple of parts because there was quite a lot to cover. You can read Part 1 here: https://fallingpetalsuk.blogspot.com/2019/08/manifesting-and-mental-health-part-1.html

In Part 2 I'm going to look more at manifesting while dealing with mental health issues. Sorry it's taken me a while, just not had much inspiration lately. :)

Since writing the first post I went through a bit of a hard time. I wrote a bit about it in this post called When You're Struggling: https://fallingpetalsuk.blogspot.com/2019/10/when-youre-struggling.html

I felt like I'd fallen down a pit. I am feeling a bit better now, but up and down. Part of it is shifting into autumn and the cold season. Since I have Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD), I do find the colder months more depressing. I wrote a little bit about it over on my other blog The Seasonal Life.

So when people are always telling you to "be happy now" it can get you down. I've found this post by Kelsey Aida about why you don't have to feel good all the time to manifest helpful: https://kelseyaida.com/theinspirationalblog/why-you-dont-have-to-feel-good-all-the-time-to-manifest

The main thing I've found with manifesting while dealing with mental health challenges is that you're already feeling quite down and you're struggling (at times it feels to me like "wading through sludge"), so when it comes to staying optimistic and "raising your vibration" it can be hard. Also those of us with mental health conditions should be careful because we don't want to end up making ourselves feel worse. I came across a post about how the idea of manifesting can be bad for mental health. You can read that here: https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/zmapne/the-idea-of-manifesting-your-future-may-be-bad-for-mental-health

Gratitude List

Things I'm grateful for this month:

Going to a belly dance workshop with Lianna Greene
Going to Meetup events at Tom Foolery in Shoreham and Cote Brasserie in Brighton
Last of the autumn leaves and colours
Sunny autumn days- we've had a lot of rain lately, so I'm grateful for sunny days!
Leeor Alexandra videos
Inspirational blog posts- check out my Nov Update post on my other blog for some links I found useful. :)
McDonald's Millionaire's latte and Costa's gingerbread and cream latte
Christmas decorations and trees in the shops- it's a bit early for me to get into the Christmas spirit, but still nice to see!

Gratitude List

Things I'm grateful for this month:

Autumn colours
Trying a new belly dance class
Doing a short mindfulness course
Going for brunch with a new Meetup group
New Are You Afraid of the Dark? starting soon!
Hallowe'en doughnuts and chocolates! 
Pumpkins
Hallowe'en/Samhain coming up

When You're Struggling

 

I'm currently working on a couple of other posts but since I've been going through a bit of a hard time lately, I thought I'd start with one on the subject of feeling better when you're struggling.

Disclaimer: I'm not a doctor, so if you're having mental/physical issues please seek medical help in addition to reading this. :)

I've been up and down this year, but been feeling quite depressed for much of the time. I have depression and anxiety and have times when one or the other is worse. In late summer my boy cat died which made things worse. I'd lost his sister two years before. :( I also become a bit more depressed transitioning into autumn, because I'm a summer person and have a bit of Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) during the winter.

Since last year I've been attending courses and classes at my local mental health resource centre and it does help. I also look for ways to manage the depression and anxiety. But sometimes I feel at a low ebb and struggle to see the point in anything. If you're feeling the same, I hope that some resources I share here can help you. :)


Important: If you are feeling suicidal here are some links to where you can find people qualified to help you right now:

http://lostallhope.com/help-me


UK/UK and Ireland specific:

Samaritans: https://www.samaritans.org/how-we-can-help-you/contact-us

NHS links (UK based): https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/suicide/ 

Childline (for children and young people): https://www.childline.org.uk/info-advice/your-feelings/mental-health/suicide/


Australia and New Zealand:  https://www.blackdoginstitute.org.au/getting-help/emergency

US and UK: https://psychcentral.com/lib/telephone-hotlines-and-help-lines/


International:

http://ibpf.org/resource/list-international-suicide-hotlines

https://www.befrienders.org/other-helpline-organisations

https://www.nowmattersnow.org/help-line

https://metanoia.org/suicide/


Update 4/11/19: Here's another helpful link: https://www.helpguide.org/articles/suicide-prevention/are-you-feeling-suicidal.htm