At the end of November 2022, I took a massive mental nose dive that scared me so much that I self-referred for more therapy then and there. I was at work that day, and my manager and colleague supported me, as always. We agreed that I would step back from sales and serving for a few weeks to observe them and see if I could pick up anything new to try when serving customers. Stepping back helped me a ton because it helped me gain a better perspective of things, both inside and outside of work.

We all know how crazy 2020 was and for someone like me who was already in a mental health dip, it was a very gruelling year. I know many people were in the same boat as me over the last twelve months, and now we have an enormous amount of boats surrounding us. There's almost too many to count.

So, I thought it might be useful if I shared some of the things that have helped me over the last twelve months as I've worked on my anxiety, depression and PTSD.

I've really been struggling the past few weeks, I don’t know what mood I’m going to be in when I wake up and two Saturdays ago I woke to feel very anxious. I had my breakfast and did my meditation but then half an hour later while journaling I burst into tears. Even now I couldn’t tell you why. I had serious doubts as to if I should go into work as it happened about twenty minutes before I was due to leave the house. But I find that keeping the structure in my day and seeing and speaking to people often helps lift my mood.

For years I’ve done things that would now come under the self-care umbrella. Things that I needed to do to help lift my mood, to help take care of myself and things that make my low days a bit easier to manage. They range from opening the curtains as soon as I wake up in the mornings when it’s light earlier to get as much daylight as possible, to having an early night when I need it and all manner of things in between. Today I’m going to tell you about some of the things on my current self-care list.