Mental Health Mondays #8 : Watch Your Words Part 2

Check out Part 1 of this series here where I complain about misuse of the term "mental breakdown" and explain a bit more about the idea of this short series of posts. These are my views and as much as I try I may not be 100% accurate in what I say so please bear this in mind when you're reading.

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The phrase this week is:

"OMG _____ is so OCD"

Okay now this is a big one. It's one of those phrases which seems to be so commonly used by so many people and yet it's the worst.

Introducing... Mental Health Monday's Question Box

Welcome to a quick MHM-but-not-on-a-Monday post, introducing and explaining my brand new Question Box. It's nothing too fancy but I'm really hoping that it'll be successful as it will really help me to tailor future posts to make sure I'm chatting about stuff everyone's interested in.

The aim of this Question Box is to give anyone who reads a Mental Health Mondays post the chance to feedback and get a bit of advice or have a question answered which they're too scared to ask publicly.

The Box itself looks like this...

... and the idea is you put in your question and depending on whether or not you leave contact details for me either you'll hear from me or your question will pop up in a future MHM Q&A session which I'm hoping to introduce on a semi-regular basis.

In order for any of this to work however I need you my readers and chums to be bold and just put yo' questions in that box! It can be any question on any mental health related topic, based on your experience, on something you've seen or something I've written - basically whatever you want because it's all important!

By no means am I trying to say that I have all the answers and there are some areas I won't have enough experience of answer myself but I'm willing to try and find others who can help if possible. My aim really is just to emphasise how important it is that we discuss all MH related things and help to destroy peoples' misconceptions.

So this is my shiny new Question Box, please take time to have a think about whether there's anything you'd like to submit as a question and click here to submit it!  I'm nervous about posting this as I'm not sure how successful it will be but I'm hoping that I'll get at least a couple of questions as anything will help me know what to post about in the future!

Thanks for reading, I'm going to be super cheeky and ask that if you agree with what I'm doing and think it's a good idea that perhaps you'll share this post or the link to the question box on your social media to help me get as many responses as possible... ☺️

Mental Health Mondays #7 : Watch Your Words Part 1

This is the first in what will probably be a three part series of posts, each focussing on a commonly used phrase which may be upset those who suffer from mental health issues. Such phrases often add to the negative stigma of mental illness and/or make those who suffer feel invalidated and uncomfortable. As always these are my views and I try and make sure what I say is as well informed as possible but to a certain degree this is my own interpretation from my experience.

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The phrase this week is:

"The other day _____ caused me to have a mental breakdown..."

This is something I have heard very regularly amongst my friends/acquaintances and it appears to be used to basically mean "this person upset me and I cried". So let me explain to you a little thing about what a mental breakdown actually is: mental or nervous breakdown is defined as a period of intense mental distress where you can't function in your normal day to day life; your symptoms are basically so intense (both the mental and physical) that it stops you from being able to continue doing what you were doing. This is not the same as when your bf dumps you and you cry and are generally sad and don't feel up to getting out of bed for the rest of the day because the latter is a perfectly acceptable and understandable response to the given situation whilst a breakdown can (not always but sometimes) be caused by something small or may have no obvious cause at all.

Mental Health Mondays #6 : Development and Progress

After a two week mental health related hiatus Mental Health Monday is back and this week I'm going to share my thoughts on what the words 'development' and 'progress' mean in regards to a mental illness.
As always these are just my thoughts based on my experiences and I don't claim to really know anything other than what goes on in my head so please don't take my words as fact!

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When you've been struggling mental health issues for several years with little break or time where you are almost completely 'symptom free', as I have, it can be incredibly difficult to see that you have made any progress or seen any change in your life in that time. I've seen several people go through mental health related problems and come out of the other side during the time that I've been ill and I'll admit that it can be difficult to watch someone get better while you yourself feel as though you're going nowhere.

TBR - July 2017

I've recently come to the conclusion that I don't appear to be particularly good at ever sticking to the books that I say I'll read in my TBR's. For this reason I'm only going to pick three books which I want to read in the hope that I might achieve more than 50% of them for once! Also it's YALC this month (I'm going for the first time and I'm SO excited!!) so all of these books are being picked because they're on my list of books I need to read before I go.

Truth or Dare by Non Pratt
I bought this at the YA Survival Guide event in June. I need to read it for several reasons mostly because it's got asexual rep in it (for once) and also like the whole flipping it and reading from the back halfway through is really cool.

Waiting for Callback by Perdita and Honor Cargill
This has been on my bookshelf for a while and it sounds like it'll be a really funny and lighthearted read, the kind of thing that you really need in your life sometimes, y'know?! And now seems like an appropriate time for me to read something like that.

No Filter by Orlagh Collins
I was approved for this on NetGalley and it's on my YALC list so I'll be reading this too! It sounds really quite interesting and should be a really good summery read by the sounds of the synopsis.

So this is my shorter-than-usual-but-hopefully-more-successful TBR for July. What are you planning to read? Any of these? Comment because I'm nosey and want to know! Also if you're going to YALC you should also tell me...