To work through trauma, you have to revisit the trauma. That brings up old memories and body sensations from when you were in that traumatic moment. As a result, I have been looking at ways to look after myself in all aspects of my life.

I’m making many changes this year in many different areas, at least for this first part of it, and I will see if anything else changes later in the year post-therapy.

Something I got from Hannah Marcotti a few years ago, is where you do self-care for yourself in the future.

It's things that will make your time more effective in the future as well as your days hopefully running a bit smoother and therefore with a heck of a lot less stress.

Essentially, what can you do this morning to make our day better later and what can you do today to make your day better tomorrow?

I’ve struggled with the change in seasons from summer to autumn for many years and as a consequence, I’ve spent a long time trying to find ways to help myself with the autumn or winter blues.

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.

One of the main tools in my mental health toolbox that I've used for over thirteen years now, is to take it day by day. One day everything is amazing and then another day nothing is good, so it makes life easier to handle if we break it down into smaller chunks of time. In the last few weeks during this third lockdown, I've begun focusing on the day and week I'm in. Anything more than that and I'm far too overwhelmed.

I was inspired to write this post after something one of my church pastor's text me this week; "We can all start to feel alone, but we are all still together even when apart, zoom really helps with this ;)" It resonated so much with me and shook me out of my feelings of woe is me that I was getting stuck in that day.

I posted about my sleep routine here back in August 2019. That post was published the month before I asked my doctor to put me back on antidepressants because I wasn't coping well on my own while I was waiting for some more therapy. A lot has obviously happened between then and now.