welcome to the world of Mentalality

Mental health, body image & self-development. Stuff I've learned, and stuff I'm still discovering & exploring.

[mentalality]

It's NOT okay for other people to make you feel bad about yourself!!

So, this is my first foray into mental health audios on YouTube. I was inspired to talk about this following a recent trip to the cinema and the memories it ...

I've decided to try to reach a wider range of people via YouTube, and I've created the channel to accompany this blog as a way for me to talk more informally about mental health-related topics too.  I hope you like it :)  Comments, suggestions and feedback are welcome xx

[mentalality]

I wrote this in January 2017, following the suicide of a close friend's younger brother.  I had a lot of different emotions at the time; of course it was tragically sad and earth-shatteringly traumatic for the family, but I also had to deal with my own feelings about it in relation to my illness.  I felt a terrible guilt, and I feel selfish admitting it because it makes it sound as if I think the world revolves around me.  I felt guilty for my own suicide attempt, self-harm and all the times my family had seen the depths of my despair and hopelessness. 

There was also a part of me that wished I'd been there at the moment he was going to do it, because I knew I could've said to him "I've been where you are and I know it's the wrong thing to do" (plus all the other things I've said above).  In reality, I know that it's not realistic to think that way, but when someone takes their own life I think many people feel they should have done more.

I don't like the fact that this makes it sound like a "Poor me" situation, because it wasn't like that really.  When it came to my friend, I did all I could to be there for her and I never even mentioned my own reaction or my own experiences - I would never dream of impinging on her & her family's grief.  I have always said to her though, she doesn't have to be afraid to talk about it with me - I will discuss depression, suicidal ideation, counselling, mental health - anything she needs.  The advantage I have over other people is that I don't sweep difficult subjects under the carpet and I'm not afraid of mentioning death.  If I can take any positives from my own experiences, they would be so that I can sometimes help other people to understand and work through their experiences.

I went to the funeral in order to support my friend and her family, and I have never seen such a packed church before.  I expected an extremely sombre, devastating goodbye and a lot of distraught people.  What blew me away and still makes me tear up when I think about it, is that I have never been to a funeral where I felt a sense of so much genuine, pure love in a room.  And that's the main thing I want to share about this story; no matter how low you get, there is always a huge amount of love for you - more than you could possibly know.

[mentalality]

The Kindness & Positivity Jar

It’s very easy to get into a negative frame of mind about the world, especially if, like me, you have a tendency to a negative cognitive bias.  You can feel as though, day after day, everyone you encounter is trying to make your life more difficult.  In the hustle and bustle of everyday life, it can seem that people are so inconsiderate that they would shove you out of the way if it got them what they wanted faster.  I, too, have days when I feel like the world is out to get me, and human beings seem to be missing some humanity.  

At these times I find that the littlest gestures or a couple of kind words can make all the difference to how I feel, so I decided to start to keep a record of these little rays of sunshine.  I guess I wanted to prove to myself that the world isn’t a largely negative place, and give myself permission to listen to my heart; which tells me to see the good in people as much as possible.   

During 2017 I started a jar.  Each time someone did something that stood out as particularly kind or that turned my mood around, I took a little scrap of paper and wrote it down, folded it up and put it in the jar.  At the end of the year, I was able to look back at how much positivity and kindness there really is.  When I look back, it reminds me that there are some truly lovely people out there and that I'm lucky to quite a few in my life.  Here are some of the things from the jar; I've decided to do something a bit different and present each one as a picture so they're a bit more interesting:

[mentalality]

The Inner Critic

This has been a really hard piece to write, and even harder to actually post.  It includes some of the darkest parts of me; parts that make me ashamed, parts that cut me to the core, parts that make it hard for me to see myself as a good person.  I do hope, however, that it can show you that there is always another way to silence your inner critic; you don't have to let it take hold.  ***TRIGGER WARNING*** - includes self-loathing and self-destructive thoughts.  If you wish to skip that part, go straight to the section following the word "Stop" (written in capitals).

Is it bad that I feel a terrible emptiness every time I sign into Tumblr and my blog hasn't gained any followers?  How shallow does that make me?  It's a horrendous feeling to doubt my own sincerity.  I question whether my ego and sense of self-importance has become over-inflated because I assume the world will be interested in what I have to say. 

I scold myself for having any pride in wanting to broadcast my experiences and any lessons I've learned about mental health.  Why should anyone care what I think?  Why am I any more equipped to be a go-to source on mental health experiences than anyone else?  Do I really think I'm something special?!

You're nothing.  You're less than nothing, actually.  You're worse than that because you're a non-entity that thinks it's worth something and puts itself above others.  Were you really so deluded that you thought you have anything to say that's worth listening to?! 

Oh - you think you're some kind of great writer, do you?!  You see yourself as naturally gifted do you?!  I'd laugh at you if you weren't so pathetic.  Sure, you can stick words on a page, do you think that means what you have to say has any value?! 

Why ARE you doing this, anyway?  *Adopts mocking voice* Oh, do you think you're helping all the little people who are so lost, and alone that they might be desperate enough to listen to you?!  Wow, you really do think a lot of yourself; do you see yourself as some kind of saviour?  You think you can heal people with just your words?  You sad, deluded, pathetic, sub-human, self-important, self-absorbed, condescending, patronising, blinkered, clueless, oxygen-stealing, excuse for a person. 

I can't believe how hateful you are, you really make me feel sick!!  I didn't think it was possible to dislike someone so completely, but congratulations, you win that particular prize.  You know you're worthless, pointless, directionless and hopeless!!!  You know what you should do.  There are people far more worthy of life than you.  You've taken up the resources of hundreds of people who would have lived a life infinitely more valuable than yours.  Why the hell are you still here?!!!!

****STOP****

(This would have got a lot worse, and included suicidal thoughts, but I have intervened before it becomes overwhelming).

You have just met The Dragon; my inner critic, my self-sabotage, Thanatos, my undoing, the part of me that drives me towards the edge.  This is the part that wants me back in the darkness, weak and pleading for an end.  It knows all my worst fears and knows exactly how to use them against me.  You've just witnessed how a single thought can escalate when it's left unchecked.  This is catastrophizing in its purest form, and if you don't counter it, you end up believing it all.

Until recently, I didn't see this as a separate part of me; it's something that's been identified in therapy.  Treating it as a separate sub-personality gives me a certain objectivity which allows me to catch the self-destructive, negative thoughts as they occur and try and challenge them (that's the idea anyway - it's not perfect).  In the past, these thoughts would just crop up and I felt powerless against them.  Worse still, I believed them, I took them as the truth.  I would be bombarded with all the worst things I thought about myself, all at once; relentlessly, mercilessly, and in abundance.  Thankfully, my therapist has helped me to come to terms with this part of me and see that it feeds me lies to drag me back into a state of depression.

MOVING ON....

My inner critic is still there, and every so often will re-appear spouting poisonous insults.  Most of the time all I need to do is question the validity of what it says, and it goes away.  However, I do have to acknowledge that The Dragon exists; it's my rage, fury and anger - things I was afraid to acknowledge and afraid to let out.  They ended up being turned on myself because I didn't want to inflict them on the people I was really angry at.  It's also a general anger about the unfairness of certain things that've happened to me. 

I've had to learn to be compassionate to myself and accept that it's OK that I feel angry; it doesn't make me a bad person.  There's a lot that's still raw and can still make me feel very angry, but I realise that this anger fulfils no purpose and would cause nothing but harm if expressed.  So for now, I choose to live with it.  I refuse to become someone who says things out of pure spite, even if the person deserves it.

Pretty much everyone has an inner critic, it's just that mine is particularly nasty, and had been a dominant force in my thinking too often.  Those of us who suffer with depression, anxiety, and similar conditions will be very familiar with their inner critic because we can spend weeks, months, years with only this voice ruling our thoughts.  It's the voice that keeps us a prisoner, isolated from the world, believing we're worth nothing.  The good news is that it doesn't have to be a permanent fixture, and you can get to the stage where it's no longer impinging on your every waking moment.

HOW?

The starting point is noticing when these thoughts occur; when your inner critic is the one "speaking".  You have to catch it before it becomes a solid thought (something you accept as fact).  Then, you have to ask yourself if what it's saying is actually true.  I know that's not easy, because if you're in a negative frame of mind you'll just say "Yes".  Ask yourself what the possibilities are regarding the truth of the thought; can you come up with one reason why it could be true and one why it might be false?  Are there any other possibilities?  Could it be a half-truth? 

You can also weigh up which explanation is more likely to be true, what you might say if it was someone else's thought, break the thought down into component parts.  By distancing yourself from the thought and questioning it, it becomes something which feels less like it belongs to you and more like something you have a choice about.  This is something they'd get you to do if you were undergoing Cognitive Behavioural Therapy.  The idea is that at first you'd have to consciously initiate this process, but with practice it should become second nature.  It should result in your thinking being a bit more balanced eventually.

I'm gradually coming to understand all the different parts of my psyche that have formed unhealthy patterns of behaviour.  I can see that they formed initially in order to defend me or protect me from harm, but over the last ten years or so they've been running wild and making things worse.  Coming to see all these different "Characters" that live in me has been frightening at times, but that's why I have a therapist; she makes it possible to explore this and I still feel safe.  I would never advocate trying to deal with all this on your own (if it's even possible).

I've also come across a field of Psychology called Psychosynthesis lately, which has proved to be very relevant.  It talks about how we have different sub-personalities within ourselves and we have to acknowledge them, as well as finding a way for them to co-exist.  I'll definitely be doing some reading on this.  It's been a recurring theme that people and ideas have come into my life at just the right moments very often during my recovery.  I hope Psychosynthesis turns out to be one of these.

Finally, I just want to say one last time; don't trust your inner critic.  Your inner critic is not the real you.  You know in your heart of hearts that you are a kinder, gentler, more giving person than that voice would have you believe.  I know those sharp-tongued criticisms that keep popping into your head are very difficult to ignore or fight, but I believe in you.  The fact that you are here, reading this, means there's a part of you that is looking for hope; that is an inner strength.  You have the potential within you to find a way out of the darkness, and you know what?  You deserve to be happy.

***Please note, when I refer to different parts of myself, I am NOT referring to the experience of have multiple personality disorder or dissociative identity disorder.  These are rare conditions and usually the different identities are separate and not aware of each other, there are significant gaps in memory, and it causes significant distress or impairment to normal functioning.  If you think you may have DID, please contact a medical professional.***

[mentalality]

Had a sh*t day?

Or a terrible week, or a rubbish month.....whatever.  You thought you were doing fine for a while there, life seemed to be ticking along nicely, then suddenly you're back to square one - or worse.  There's a horrible inevitability about this, isn't there?  You knew it would happen sooner or later. 

Your inner critic is rubbing salt in the wound, telling you that you were stupid to think you'd be okay, or you don't deserve to be happy.  There's a dreadful familiarity about the situation; "Hello darkness, my old friend......" (as Simon & Garfunkel sang); it would actually be easier to succumb to the force that's dragging you down and sink back into the cocoon of misery that is depression. 

At least you know what to expect from it, at least it's a life you recognise, at least you don't have to deal with any surprises.  You can almost see the days and days of oblivion stretching out in front of you.  STOP.  PLEASE, STOP.  I know you don't have the strength to fight this right now, but if you can just do one thing for me, try this; allow yourself this day, or this hour, but say to yourself that at the end of this time, you will try again, you will start afresh.

In terms of recovery, I've had a week I'd rather not dwell on.  The UK has been experiencing the coldest weather we've had for a number of years, that has blown in from Siberia; nicknamed "The beast from the east".  Transport links have ground to a halt, schools are closed, people are being advised not to travel.  In the space of five days, I think I've only ventured outside twice.  Most of the time I've been in bed, not seeing any point in getting up, and I've slept through most of my week.  I feel awful, yet I'm comfortable. 

Any time I've thought about how little I've been doing, I block out the world and go back to sleep - literally; I have an eye mask and ear plugs.  Part of me is ashamed of my behaviour, part of me is relieved to be back where I feel as though I belong - alone with my misery.  When you have a whole host of demons you spend your life fighting to keep in check, as soon as you lose your resolve, they're back dominating your thinking again.  But, again, there's a comfort in the familiar - even if that familiar thing is pain, misery, or a downward spiral into nothingness.

The less-well-adjusted version of me, the one from five or so years ago, would have spent a long time beating myself up for "Failing" yet again.  I'd mentally be punishing myself for being weak, for wasting time, for wallowing in self-pity, for being so pathetic.  The temptation is there; I want to do all that, but I'm not going to.  It solves nothing, it only serves to make matters worse; the hole becomes deeper, the shame-spiral becomes more tightly coiled.  

Apart from self-flagellation, I wanted to do all those things in order to understand why I'm back here again; with all my experience, why am I not dealing with low-points in my life better?  Here's the thing; NONE OF THAT HELPS.  None of it serves any purpose, none of it makes me a better person, none of it will make me less likely to get depressed again in future.  As much as my inner critic wants me to believe I deserve punishment, it will only drag me down further.  Even if I'm trying to understand, my inner critic is the dominant voice and keeps me stuck in the darkness.

So, I set myself free.  I let go of this week, I write it off, I chalk it up to various factors coming together to make it a bit of a difficult time.  Only when I've let go of the guilt am I able to ask; can I learn anything useful from this week?  Yes; I need to be busier in times where I'm limited by external factors like the weather, I do better generally when I go out and I see people.  I also find it far too easy to get out of routine and start potentially self-destructive habits; my meals and my bedtimes have been all over the place. 

I am still a bit angry at myself if I'm honest, because it feels like conscious sabotage.  However, that anger often gets turned in on myself and becomes a monster of its own, so if I can't let it go, I'm going to try to channel it.  All I can do is promise myself to try harder in future.  To try and put the energy from that anger into being better about self-care, into finding more ways to make my life fulfilling and productive.  I take a breath and tell myself to be more compassionate; like I am with other people.  This weather has been difficult on lots of people; I've seen plenty of evidence of people's boredom and frustration on social media, so I'm the same as everyone else when all is said and done.

Dwelling on this week will do me no good, so what do you do with a mind that wants to analyse it, that wants a way to put it to bed?  I keep the thought going in my mind that there's always tomorrow.  That's the most amazing thing about life; no matter what has happened the day before, you have the power to start the new day with a clean slate if you want to.  It's a choice you have to consciously make; I'm going to put what has gone before to one side, because it's over, and I can't change it.  I'm going to look forward and see how I can make this day better than yesterday, even if it's only a small change. 

I free myself from the burden of this week, so that I can use that energy to redouble my efforts to stay well.  If that's a bit too new-age-hippy-trippy for you, you could think of it in terms of wanting to use today to make up for the time you feel you've wasted.  I would only ever use that as a start though, because I don't think it's healthy to keep categorising some time as "Wasted" - it's often not that clear cut.  Let go of any guilt associated with "Wasted" time, it will only weigh you down.  Let tomorrow be a fresh start - and while you're still here, there's always another tomorrow - always another chance. 

It's funny, I can remember my Mother saying to me from a very early age; "Tomorrow's another day".  She used to say it to get me to settle down to bed and stop asking so many questions, or so she didn't have to commit to something definitely happening the next day.  As a child, I heard it so much it became meaningless, then as I grew up I started to think of it as a ridiculously obvious, trite thing to say.  The older I get though, the more I see the wisdom and truth in that saying; today is over - whether good or bad, draw a line under it, let it go, and start tomorrow without the weight of everything that has come before.

[mentalality]

Anxiety and the Analytical Mind

I've always known I have a tendency to think a lot; I think my way through problems, I think about all the possible outcomes of a situation I'm worried about, I think about all the things I want to do with my life and haven't, I think about all the mistakes I've made and how I could've done things differently, I think about why I am the way I am.  Yes, it IS exhausting!!

Of course, it's one of those chicken-and-egg-scenarios as to which came first; did I become an anxious person because I analyse everything, or was I an anxious person who figured the best way to deal with things was by analysing everything to death? 

And therein lies the main problem with being this way; I'm now analysing why I analyse!!  By trying to work out how I became this way, I'm putting all those cogs in motion again, tying myself in knots; the difference now is that I ask myself, "What is the purpose of this?  Do I have to gain anything by analysing it?".  The answer is so often "No - it's pointless". 

That's one of the greatest lessons I've learned; it's all very well being analytical, but I don't actually solve anything or feel any better by thinking it through.

Through many of my posts I've mentioned self-acceptance, being kinder to yourself etc., but this is one area of my life that I've had to be hard on myself about.  I've had to completely overhaul my cognitive style because it was an unhealthy way to live. 

My mantra used to be along the lines of "I think, therefore, I am"; I knew I was a thinker, sometimes it even served a purpose (essay-writing springs to mind), but I saw it as something fundamental to my personality that was fixed, concrete, and immovable.  To a degree I was even proud of it sometimes, because it gave me an air of the intellectual and I was glad to have that identity to cling to. 

As I got older, I was sometimes aware of how anxious I got about things, but I convinced myself that it didn't matter how much stress it caused because it was the only motivator I had.  At school, I found there was a correlation between how anxious I got about something and how well I did; it seemed to me that my anxiety made me care about doing my best. 

The one term I stopped trying as hard my grades started to slip and it scared me so much I fell back on my anxiety to get me through.  I had seen that other people appeared to do well without seeming to try very hard and I was getting tired of everyone's high expectations, so I thought it wouldn't do any harm to slack off a bit; I could at least stop getting worked up about it all the time, right?! 

The problem with this was I never had any faith in my abilities or intelligence.  Had I believed I was capable, I would have been able to give things my best shot without worrying about it, knowing that my best was good enough.  But I never believed that, even when I would get high grades.  By testing the water with trying less hard than usual, I proved to myself that I NEEDED the anxiety in order to do well.  Had I not being such an over-analyser, I might not have come to that conclusion; but I always wanted to know WHY.

The quest for the "Why" in everything feels like a worthwhile goal.  Intuitively it suggests that you have a curious nature and a keen intellect, because you want to understand.  That can be true, if you don't let it rule your thinking. 

In some ways, it can be a destructive force; wanting to pick everything apart and reduce it down to its smallest parts.  Sometimes it can destroy any mystery or magic about the world, and that feels sad.  The creative part of me tells me that there are things we aren't meant to understand, that there is beauty in looking at things as they appear rather than trying to discover why they are beautiful. 

Take a rainbow, for instance; there's a scientific explanation for it, and whilst it's accurate and true, I would far rather marvel at the beauty of the colours and the transitory nature of the rainbow than dwell on refraction of light through water and the visible wavelengths of light the human eye can detect.  I'm not trashing science, in fact, most of it I love and find fascinating, but not at the expense of enjoying a pure moment.  Being able to truly enjoy what is around us is a big part of the human experience, and sometimes in order to appreciate things, we simply must STOP.

"What is this life if, full of care, we have no time to stand and stare." - Leisure, by WH Davies, 1911.

I had a support worker for a while (a few years ago) who could see how much time I was spending worrying about things, analysing everything and living my life at double-speed.  Even though I wasn't doing a lot with my time, my mind was constantly busy and I was mentally exhausted a lot of the time.  I didn't know there was any other way to be; I couldn't see inside anyone else's mind and watch how their thought processes work. 

This lady was very wise, very perceptive, and had brilliant ways to help you understand some fairly fundamental things about yourself.  She told me I'd been living my life as if I was on a packed, rush-hour commuter train, hurrying everywhere & trying to get to places as quickly as possible.  She said I needed to get myself on the equivalent of the German Bummelzug or Bummelbahn; the slow train that takes the long, scenic route to all the little regional stops and gives you a chance to sit back and take in your surroundings, enjoy the ride.  

It was such a perfect analogy and it made so much sense.  My support worker then got me to think about if there was any genuine joy in my life; did I do anything for pure enjoyment?  I realised years of guilt and worry had stopped me from doing anything like that.  We started to build more activities in that encouraged me to just "Be", to just experience some joy, to do things I could get lost in.  That was when I started to see another way to live, beyond the constant anxiety and perceived weight of other people's expectations.

I'm not saying I don't experience anxiety anymore, I'm not saying I live without worry.  I still have a tendency to think about things, to retreat into my thoughts and to try and solve things by analysing them.  The difference now is, it's not a constant stream of thoughts.  The medication I'm on calmed the physical feelings of dread and panic I was experiencing all the time, and made things feel much less overwhelming. 

Over time, I then worked with my counsellor to manage the anxious thoughts better.  She got me to regularly do a few new things to get me out of some bad habits.  Before, I felt I couldn't do anything spontaneous because it hadn't been planned and all the outcomes analysed for possible danger (to my mental health).  I would mentally prepare like that even if I was seeing someone I knew very well.  My counsellor got me to explain what my thinking process was, asked me how it helped me cope, then suggested that next time I try not to prepare. 

It took a while for the penny to drop, but I learned that all my preparation served no purpose, if anything, it gave me more to feel anxious about.  Very often, the things I worried about never happened anyway.  So we put up a marker; in the case of people I knew well, I didn't really need to prepare to see them, I should just go & enjoy myself.  At first it was hard to break the habit of mental preparation for everything, but slowly it has become less of an effort to prevent it and now I hardly think about it.

Once that particular ball was in play, it helped other things to fall into place.  Time after time I would outline my worries about an upcoming situation in therapy, then the following week we'd review how the event had actually turned out; each time my worries were unfounded.  I started to join groups, clubs & do activities, take on new challenges, and each time I'd tell my counsellor how scared I was, she'd say "Just give it one session, and if you don't like it you don't have to go back", then the following week I'd report back that I'd enjoyed myself. 

After a few months of this, she pointed out to me that I'd been quite brave, but also, she hadn't heard me say one negative thing about any new thing I'd tried out.  She said "Every single new group or activity you've tried, the outcome has been so much more positive than you ever expected".  My jaw hit the floor at this point, I hadn't realised; not only had all my worst fears never actually manifested at any point (which was always the best I ever expected), but I had actually really enjoyed it all - even being around other people.  It was very clear to me then exactly how my anxiety and tendency to over-analyse had held me back in the past.

I haven't lost my insatiable desire to understand why things are the way they are, that's a big part of who I am.  I see it differently now though.  I try to use it in places where it has a purpose.  I use it to write, to pass on the lessons I've learned about mental illness, mental health, cognitive styles, personality.  I used it to get a degree in Psychology (the ultimate "Why" in the academic world).  I use it in my counselling sessions to better understand myself and face some of the darkness from my past that I needed to forgive myself for.  My mind is no longer my enemy, but it does need channelling effectively on a regular basis in order that I don't stray back into my old ways.

What does feel frustrating and unfair sometimes is when I think about the notion of ignorance as bliss.  I feel as though people who don't over-analyse, who have less active minds, or perhaps even are less intelligent, have the deck stacked in their favour.  Logically, it should be the case that the more intelligent you are, the more able you are to deal with the challenges life throws at you, but so often I've found that the opposite is true. 

The even greater irony is that people I know who have never suffered from clinical anxiety will tell me it never occurs to them to worry about the things I've told them I worry about!!  I was angry about this for a while, but these days I understand that you never know what challenges everyone faces, so it isn't fair to judge that someone "Has it easy" - there's often no such thing. 

We are all just doing our best with the lot in life we've been given.  There is no force that seeks to punish us, the universe isn't picking on us personally, there is often no rhyme or reason, so let go of these ideas.  They may make intuitive sense, but I promise you being free of them will help you in the long run.

And don't spend so much time living in your head.  There's so much world out there; so many experiences, so many people to meet and places to go.  If you spend your time thinking and analysing it could all pass you by.  Enjoyment comes from opening your eyes and looking around, taking chances and seizing random opportunities that present themselves (but you have to be able to notice when these occur). 

Turn your analytical mind to your advantage to extract the lessons from your experiences, to notice the positive outcomes, to catch your mind's processes before they descend into anxious thought patterns. 

Yes, my analytical mind has been fuel for the fire of anxiety in the past, but I choose to be different now.  I choose to take control of it, re-direct my energies, and I choose to use it in a healthier way.  Let go of the notion that because you are a certain way there is only one path to follow.  Greater people than me have chosen to re-define what the world considers to be a defect in them, and turn it into their greatest asset. 

Don't let the thoughts take hold of you and become a microscope on your life.  Direct your analytical energies, don't let them direct you.

[mentalality]

There ARE people out there who find YOU attractive!!

Yeah, I know, you’ve heard it before.  People who say this to you tend to be the ones who are already secure in who they are, what they look like, and they’re usually in a relationship too.  You want to shout “F*CK OFF!!” and smash them over the head with something heavy. 

How would they know what it’s like when you’re terminally single, and haven’t had even the whiff of any interest in years?!  And it can also come across as a metaphorical, rather patronising pat-on-the-head.  Urgh!!  Yeah, thanks mate, now I REALLY feel good about myself. 

But most of them mean well, most of them just want you to feel better about yourself because they can see your worth and your beauty.  So, put down that that baseball bat, hold off from committing assault, because I am just like you, but I have faith in the title of this article.

 THE PATH THAT'S LED ME HERE....

I know what chronic low-self esteem is like, I’m best friends with self-loathing, disgust and feeling repelled by the sight of yourself in the mirror.  I spent the best part of a decade wishing I was someone else, or wishing I just didn’t exist at all. 

It’s a lonely place to be.  And the longer you’re there, the more convinced you become that this is the truth; the world of attraction, sex, desire, relationships is for everyone else but not for you.  You may even come to accept it after a while, and pretend that none of it exists, or adopt the cynic’s position of “I don’t need anyone else in my life” or “There’s no such thing as love”.  Sometimes that’s just easier. 

But I promise you, there ARE people out there who see your worth, who see the beauty in your quirkiness, who love your unconventional nature, who think you are gorgeous.   Yes, I said it, GORGEOUS!!

I am quite a large woman, a UK size 18/20 (US 16/18), and I’ve always been made to feel fat (even when I wasn’t).  That was always the main source of my disgust with myself.  Looks-wise, even now, I put myself at unremarkable, plain, not someone who people ever really notice. 

Before my thirties, I’d look in the mirror and only ever see my flaws, which made me feel ugly (as terrible as that sounds).  The thing is, it’s a part of me that I’m highly self-critical, a perfectionist, and my vulnerable nature together with the negative bias in my thinking has meant that I’ve stored up any and every bad thing anyone has ever said about me. 

Those things were so well rehearsed, so well integrated into my sense of self that I came to believe them.  They went from opinion to truth right under my nose and buried themselves in my psyche to re-surface whenever they liked.  It’s only years of therapy that has saved me from whole-heartedly buying into this reality.

 SO, HOW DO YOU GO ABOUT CHANGING? 

You want to be someone who is alright with who they are, you’d like to be comfortable in your own skin.  I don’t know if the process is the same for everyone, and I can’t claim to be the finished article (is there any such thing??), but I know some things have improved.  The following is some of what I believe has made the difference:

Step One; be open to the possibility that you’re wrong about yourself.  Basically, don’t trust your mind.  The thoughts you have appear to you as fact, they just pop in there and you don’t question them.  Your mind lies to you though.  It goes on experience, it goes on whatever you’ve been feeding it. 

Think about a situation you’ve been in with another person where you find out that there’s been a misunderstanding; you’ve ended up saying “Oh sorry, I thought you meant.....”.  It’s easily done.  Your mind has probably given you the wrong interpretation of what the other person said.  Even if you’re someone who blames themself for everything (yes, I’ve been that person too), if you’re honest you can find at least one example of a genuine misunderstanding where your mind presented yourself with an alternative reality to the one that was intended, and you weren’t aware that it had happened until you were corrected.  

So, if you can accept the statement that your mind lies, you can start to entertain the possibility that your opinion of yourself does not necessarily reflect the truth.

Step Two; challenge your ideas about beauty.  You don’t need to accept the images of what’s considered attractive as gospel. 

A lot of the ideals we’re presented with are constructed the way they are in order to make money.  The best way to make money is to make people feel that it’s vital they get their hands on your product, and how do you do this?  You create a need for it, and you do this by making people feel they are lacking something. 

In the beauty industry, if you want to sell the maximum number of products and keep on selling them, you have to keep pushing home the message that you haven’t quite attained what you need.  You narrow the ideal of beauty to something that’s almost unattainable for most people, but reinforce the idea that it’s possible to get it if you spend enough money on it.  People want to believe it’s as easy as buying a product, and they can be everything they want to be. 

Advertising is so good at this that we don’t even know it’s happening most of the time.  It’s also all around us nowadays, so we often don’t have a choice about consuming it.  Just keep this is mind.

At a very basic level, the beauty in your body is in its incredible design.  You’re ALIVE, you’re conscious, you are a thinking, feeling, creating, inquisitive being.  It took an amazing set of coincidences for you to be here, and so many interconnected, complex systems make it possible for you to live and breathe. 

Your body is so miraculous that even the greatest minds haven’t been able to understand how everything in your body works.  Even the process of thinking is astounding; electrical signals whizzing around networks of neurons which your brain seamlessly translates into thoughts in fractions of a second.   Your consciousness, your personality, your experiences, your knowledge; they all live in this place, but no one quite knows how. 

But that’s just mechanics.  There is a beauty in WHO you are as well.  The interaction of your personality and your experiences make up a unique individual; no one like you has existed before and will exist again.  Sure, there’ll be similar people, but no one exactly like you.  That uniqueness means everyone has something to contribute to the world, and more importantly, the right to do so.  No one sees the world as you do, so no one can tell you that your viewpoint isn’t valuable.

So, let’s tackle the hardest part of it; physical attractiveness.  Different cultures and time periods have different ideas about what’s attractive, and that changes, which shows that it’s not an absolute.  Plus, there are always exceptions to the rule, I mean, there have to be, otherwise change would never happen. 

Decide to have your own definition of beauty.  For me, this was done by stopping reading women’s magazines, watching lots of documentaries about people who challenge traditional ideals, training myself to question all the messages I was being bombarded with every day. 

Thank whichever deity you believe in that there are alternative ideas out there, you just have to look.  I’ve seen documentaries about plus-size models and bloggers, about men's attitudes to their penises, about eating disorders, about people going through plastic surgery, about self-harm, about people of all sizes, races, genders, states of mind.  They all showed me a universal truth; people are beautiful.  Not just collectively, but individually too.

There’s another note that could help here too.  My therapist used to say something to me which I use when I’m feeling terrible about how I look.  There’s a TV show in the UK called Jeremy Kyle on which people air their personal problems and argue it out (think very low-grade Jerry Springer).  These people tend to be physically and personality-wise not the most appealing people, they tend not to be very intelligent, and the show tends to make them look as bad as possible. 

I don’t watch the show, and I don’t like to judge, but my therapist used to say to me that I should have faith that there’s someone out there for me because even the people on Jeremy Kyle have had sex & relationships.  Her implication was that if they can be found attractive by someone else, I definitely can.

At this stage, I think you need to have achieved a level of self-acceptance before you can go onto the next stage.  Other people pick up on your confidence, or lack of it.  It’s often in everything you do or say, in the way you carry yourself and the way you talk about yourself.  I think you have to have some respect for yourself and your body before you let someone else in, otherwise you could end up letting someone in who doesn’t deserve you and could treat you badly. 

Find a way to find at least something about you beautiful, even if you’re not 100% sold on it.  We all have good days & bad days, but you need a minimal secure base to operate from in order to protect yourself from further harm.  If nothing else, this base can be a sense of self-worth, and hopefully more can follow from this. 

People enjoy being around someone who is self-assured but not cocky, confident but not proud.  I think it gives them a sense of stability and allows them to feel similarly about themselves.

Step three; form connections with other people.  Yeah, I know.  For a lot of people reading this, this one is the biggest, scariest step of all, and I’ve just gone and bunged it in there casually like it’s a thing you just go out & do, like the weekly food shop.  That’s why I’m not just going to do a paragraph on it and leave it there.  I’m going to follow up this article with one entirely devoted to it, because that’s how important I think it is.

I must also tell you that without other people, I would never have got as far as I have on my journey to being a happier, better-balanced person.  I always thought people were the problem, and that I was better staying away from them; the irony is that they’re exactly what I needed. 

It was only through forming connections with other people that I learned how to see myself in a better light, to see what was reflected back at me from what I gave to others.  It was only through experiences of meeting other people that I learned where my own beauty lies.

 AN ENDING?

I can’t easily conclude this article, as I can never really prove the truth of the title.  The main aim, therefore, is just to plant the seed of the idea, of the possibility.  I want anyone who believes themself to be unattractive or who feels unworthy of love to just start to entertain the possibility that they might be wrong; that other people don’t see the same flaws you do when they look at you. 

Even the most outgoing, confident people suffer self-doubt, don’t always feel attractive, and feel inferior in comparison to others sometimes.  It seems to be an unfortunate part of human nature, but it doesn’t have to rule your life. 

It’s also the case that we are all imperfect, every single person on this planet, but not everyone beats themselves up over it.  So, I say to you; accept that you are human, and as such, accept that you have flaws and you have strengths, and it is all of these that make you beautiful.

[mentalality]

Pressure to Conform

Any student of Psychology will tell you that as a human being, we are driven to want to conform.  It’s a side-effect of being a social animal; the drive to conform and emphasise our “Sameness” keeps the group together in order to boost its chances of survival.  It makes sense, right? 

But perhaps you’re like me.  Perhaps you see the word “Conformity” and it gets your hackles up.  Maybe you’re thinking “Well I don’t want to be like everyone else!!”.  Agreed, I don’t like the sound of it either.  It suggests that we’re just anonymous, de-personalised, homogenous faces in a crowd.  I hated wearing my school uniform when I was younger for that very reason.  However, conformity can apply in much more subtle ways than this.

There are various famous experiments in this area.... off the top of my head you could look up Moscovici, Asch, even Milgram (although this is more to do with obedience to authority than group conformity) if you’re interested in the research.  All of them demonstrate that in unfamiliar situations (under certain circumstances) we tend to look to the herd for protection.  We don’t want to stand out, look stupid, get things wrong when we’re amongst other people.  When I first read this stuff I didn’t believe that modern-day participants would react in the same way, as we’re so much more tech-savvy, media-aware, and suspicious these days.  Think back though, because you WILL have felt the pressure to conform at some time in your life.

For example....Imagine you’re in a room with 10 people, and a decision has to be made.  The other 9 people all feel one way, and you very strongly feel the opposite.  It’s time for you to speak up; everyone wants the meeting to end, they all believe their decision is correct, and the boss is asking “OK, are we all in agreement?”.  Of course, it depends on the consequences of the decision as to whether you feel it’s important to speak up.  However, even if you don’t speak up you’ll most likely get that feeling in the pit of your stomach that makes you feel pretty uncomfortable.  That feeling is your inner conflict raging; you know you don’t agree with the others, but do you speak up and risk others’ disapproval or feeling like the odd-one-out?  I want to stress that the fact that you feel discomfort in this situation doesn’t make you weak, it just makes you human.  We have an in-built pre-disposition to want to maintain group cohesion.

So, what point am I making here?  I’m saying that you don’t need to feel bad for wanting to conform.  It’s natural, and it doesn’t make you any less of an individual.  I spent a lot of my young life wanting to be like everyone else, wanting to fit in with the pretty, popular, ever-smiling, seemingly perfect girls I knew.  The bigger the gulf I felt between those girls and me, the worse I felt about myself generally.  I can now see how my desire to fit in wasn’t because I was weak, lacking in my own redeeming features, or hoping to live vicariously through them.  It was far more to do with wanting that genuine, human connection that you get when you feel similar to who you’re with.

There is, of course, a balance needed here....  Nowadays, I’m proud to be different from other people; I like my quirkiness, creativity, openness, and sensitive nature.  But I no longer say this is in defiance or to deliberately isolate myself as I would have once.  I acknowledge that I need other people; I need to belong, I need to conform to at least a small degree in order to feel connected to others.  The mistake I made in the past was choosing the wrong groups to try to belong to.  So, don’t conform for conformity’s sake.  Find other people who are like you, because I promise you they are out there, and let yourself be part of their groups.  If you can do that, it won’t feel like you are surrendering to any kind of pressure to conform, you’re just sharing your time with people who share the same values as you.  Then you also remain the fabulously quirky & wonderfully unique individual that you are!! xxx

[mentalality]

Dating and your Demons

Dating can be difficult at the best of times, but you face a whole new set of challenges if you're someone who has a mental health issue too.  I spent a good deal of the last decade hiding away, pretending sex and relationships didn't exist or weren't for me, but lately I've felt that I do want someone special in my life.  Simple to achieve, right?  Nope, this topic comes with a whole new set of demons.

Having been in counselling therapy for the last five years, I'm at a stage where I can say I'm quite self-aware.  I understand more about myself and my motivations than I ever have before.  Great!!  Yes, it can be.  But it can also be a royal pain-in-the-arse.

I've learned about how my parents' ambivalent attachment style has messed with my head and made me an insecure adult.  Their anxieties and lack of self-regulation of their emotions have left me in a position of never really feeling loved and never really feeling good enough.  I also lack the resilience to deal with these problems because I was never taught how to regulate my own emotions either.  As a consequence, I have trouble believing anyone can/will love me, and if they do, that they'll stick around.  Whilst that knowledge has been invaluable in terms of understanding why I have behaved in certain ways in certain situations, it doesn't solve the problems themselves.

Our parents are the first people we form a relationship with, so they become our template / schema for all future relationships.  Thus, I have repeatedly (unconsciously) sought out ambivalent relationships in which there is a push-pull dynamic between myself and the other person.  It's not done deliberately, but it's almost as if there's a part of my psyche that wants to keep repeating the ambivalent pattern until I can find a way to solve it.  Which, of course, is pointless.  Yes, I am, frustratingly, attracted to unreliable, emotionally closed-off people who are likely to abandon me.

Furthermore, I have a tendency to want to "Fix" people.  This is, I think, partially because I can't seem to fix myself, and partially because I think if I fix the other person, then they'll be able to see what a wonderful gift that was and reciprocate by fixing me.  I know; totally ridiculous and irrational.  However, this is all going on at an unconscious level.  I should also say that I'm naturally compassionate and don't like to see other people suffering, so my propensity for wanting to fix people is not entirely self-serving.  I care deeply, I love whole-heartedly, and I stand by people loyally, but I also understand that the broken parts of my psyche are not always driven by such kind motives.

So, if you add that tendency into the mix, it means that I'm not only attracted to the wrong people, I stay with them because I believe I can fix them!!!  Oh my God, how self-pitying and narcissistic that sounds.  And that's the other danger; knowing why you do some of the crazy sh*t you do can fuel your self-hatred to even higher levels.  When I found out about the strength of my own narcissistic side it scared the hell out of me and I wasn't sure I'd be able to cope with knowing about it.  Thankfully, my "Voice of reason" (my therapist) is there to remind me that it's only a small part of me and other elements of my personality can help to keep it in check.

So, where do I go from here?  Well, I'm now willing to acknowledge that I deserve to be happy and I deserve a fulfilling relationship.  That's taken years of therapy to get to the point of being able to say that & believe it.  I have also come to believe that no one is ever the "Finished article"; that is, I used to say I'd be willing to try for a relationship when the rest of my life was in order and I felt like I was able to offer something to another person, i.e. when everything was perfect.  I know now that everyone is at least just a little bit screwed up, and no one is ever 100% ready-for-a-relationship.  I guess I stopped seeing myself as utterly broken and the rest of the world as normal.

I am so aware that I must tread carefully though.  My having no healthy relationship template and being emotionally vulnerable is like sky-diving without a parachute over a sea of sharks.  And that's what makes me reluctant to seek out a relationship.  Well, that, plus I don't think it's fair to inflict myself and all my emotional baggage on some poor, unsuspecting bloke!!

Right now, I'm at an undecided, in-between, not-sure-what-to-do stage.  I know I have a lot of love to give, and I know I want to share my life with someone, but I also don't want to get so badly hurt that I put my recovery back several years.  For now, I'm staying open to the idea of it, but I'm not going to chase after my happily-ever-after; that way lies madness methinks.

[mentalality]

The power of "We"

A divided world…

We’re too focussed on how we’re different from other people.  So much in this world is designed to segregate, to put people into convenient boxes, to highlight some peripheral or superficial characteristic we have that sets us apart.  So often we talk about “Them”, “Those people”, some group or other.  Hell, even by saying “People”, I start thinking of myself as an agent acting independently from the rest of the world.  

That separation may appear unimportant, but it’s been such a huge part of my life that it’s taken me the best part of thirty years to start to feel included in the world outside my door.  I’m not saying in any way that language is responsible, but language reflects the way we think, the way we act, and possibly, over time, the way we behave.  I don’t want to be in a world of “Us”, “Them”, “Those people”, I want to be connected, I want it all to be “We”. 

 A large part of being human is ape-like….

Human beings share a common ancestor with apes, which is why we are so genetically similar.  Of course we are intellectually more developed (well, most of us), but we still have major physiological features (including in our brains) in common.   

The most fundamental, which we seem to have forgotten in our technologically-advanced age is that we are social animals.  For millions of years we’ve lived in social groups; our whole existence has revolved around it – scientists suggest that language developed from grooming, which served a huge social function in groups (and still does in ape species).  

 Yes, we’re supposed to be highly evolved, blah blah blah, and I know that we have been able to progress at a faster rate than naturally through evolution.  However, a lot of our physical make-up is still stuck in a time before technology, bloody hell, before walls, and doors, and locks, and before we even started to try to consciously divide ourselves into this group or that.   

Now, I’m not advocating some giant hippy commune where we all sit around grooming each other and practising free love (baby!!), but for the sake of our mental well-being we need to start looking around us and seeing “We” instead of “Them”.

  Evidence that we need each other….

Have you ever felt alone?  Of course you have.  It’s a fundamental human experience, and you’ll feel it at all ages; from being a small child and not being able to see where your parent is, to being a teenager who nobody understands, to losing people we love, to finding we are old and perhaps don’t feel we have a purpose anymore. 

That experience, that FEELING is not a fact, is not a concrete thing you can see or touch, it’s not actually a reflection of reality at all; that child’s parent is probably just out of sight and will return, teenagers meet other teenagers who feel the same way, older people will find a way to live their new life without the job, or family to run around after.  With time, the feeling of being alone passes, it is transitory, our feelings around the situation change. 

Yet that FEELING feels so earth-shattering, it can dominate our thoughts, it can dictate how and even if we live our lives.  That’s because that FEELING that we have is based on physiological, biochemical and psychological responses; chemicals released in our bodies can change our moods, our motivations, even our cognitive functioning.   

Evolutionary biologists will tell you that this is because they serve a purpose, they motivate us to survive – and how do we survive?  By being together.  So perhaps that feeling of being alone is a survival mechanism; our own bodies shouting at us to seek the company of others. 

Ask yourself, when you felt lonely, how did you overcome that feeling?  I bet you the answer involved another human being.  We NEED each other.  As much as we don’t want to admit it, it’s how we were made, and it’s who we still are at a genetic, physiological, biological, and to an extent, psychological level.

   The reason I’ve been thinking about this….

So, what is the purpose of this rant?  It’s not aimless, I’m not just venting.  It came out of my watching a BBC TV programme, “Growing Up Gay”, fronted by the lead singer of Years & Years, Olly.  It’s about his struggles as a gay man, but as a gay man who continually battles with mental health problems. 

Do you notice how by saying he’s a gay man tends to put him in a category straight away, and having mental health problems is another one?  Already those categories sound like barriers and you start to think about certain characteristics he might have.  It’s not your fault, our cognitive systems aim to simplify the world logically in order for it to be easier for us to process and make sense of.  The good news is, if we know about this, we can try to make an effort to over-ride it; look into your heart and see the person behind it all. 

  What my heart saw….

Olly is a gorgeous, funny, joyful, life-loving soul who wears his heart on his sleeve, loves to dance, and clearly bonds with others on a deep, emotional level.  He’s still battling his own demons, but instead of focussing on that, he is more upset by the plight of other gay people who have suffered prejudice, experienced eating disorders, and are going through their own mental health problems. 

Olly was bullied at school, from the age of 9 to around the age of 15; he’s now 27.  Think, for a minute, about the proportion of his life Olly has spent living in fear, feeling self-loathing, disgust, feeling alone, doubting his own value.  The actual bullying carried on for around 6 years, which is pretty severe, but how many years has he been suffering the legacy of that bullying?  Will he ALWAYS have to fight for his sanity and fight to feel comfortable in his own skin? 

I’m not saying that life would have been rosy without those bullies, many mental health conditions have at least a partially genetic basis.  What I am saying, is that his so-called peers could have protected him more, and so served to make his battles less damaging psychologically.

  What can we do?

I don’t want to seem like the kind of person who spends their time feeling angry at the world, who scolds people for not being a certain way and tries to brow-beat people into being some kind of ideal.  That’s not me. 

I do, however, ask that you start to NOTICE more.  Notice if you realise someone else is in distress, ask yourself what you would want if you were in distress.  And KNOW.  Know that we need each other, know that we are social and sociable creatures, know that treating everyone else as “Other” can isolate us. 

This is for own our good as well as every other human being on this planet, because, guess what?  You feel better when you help another person too.  You will, most likely, experience the effects of a wonderful, bonding chemical called Oxytocin.  It’s released by your own body, in social bonding situations, during sex, following the birth of a child, and when we spend time with people we feel attached to.  That chemical is a miraculous thing, and scientists are even starting to suggest that it has a protective effect on our immune system – so bonding with others really can affect your health and your survival!!

 The take-home message….

The thing I want to end on is the way in which Olly concluded his programme.  This young man, who spent a fair part of the programme clearly upset, who is still battling inner turmoil, who is still re-living his difficult life-experiences by talking to others about theirs, is truly amazing. 

His message is simple; whoever you are, whatever you are, you deserve to be loved, and you deserve to be happy.  Stop and think about that.  For all the negativity he has absorbed from other people who have treated him with callousness and hate, he only wants to project a message of love and acceptance. 

That is astounding, miraculous, and wonderful.  Also, is that not the epitome of a social creature?  Emphasising togetherness, oneness, attachment, similarity, the bonds that we all share.  That just shows how strong the instinct is in us to look after and love each other, it can defy hate, prejudice, segregation, illness, and even trauma.  Hold on to that, keep it close to you.  I believe it is the universal truth. 

In this age of individualistic values, where we seek to put more and more distance between us, don’t forget who we are.  If you can absorb that knowledge into the way you think and let it define how you interact with others, and enough of us see the light, perhaps we will all receive the love we deserve.  Perhaps we will all be happier and healthier for it.

[mentalality]

There are many of us open-hearted people who show endless compassion for others, but either feel none for themselves, or have no one who is able to reciprocate in the way we need. This perfectly captures the essence of this problem, and reminds us how important it is to practice self-care.

[mentalality]

How I live now....

My situation is a rather complicated one to explain, but I feel I have to give some background for what's to come. 

I am in my mid-thirties and terminally single.  I've never had a long-term relationship, and no one has ever been in love with me.  I started young and was all too eager to grow up and have a boyfriend, so I made lots of mistakes and chose to spend my time with people who treated me badly.  Oh, and also throw my mental health issues into the mix, a suicide attempt and a couple of breakdowns.  I've never been the biggest fan of the way I look either.  I spent most of my twenties hiding away from the world of sex and relationships, and I felt like anyone I fancied was always out of my reach.

My thirties have signalled a new chapter in my life in many ways.  I started to take control of my mental health more, I put more dedication into therapy with a brilliant counsellor/therapist, and I began to face a lot of the issues which have undercut most of the problems in my life.  One of the main things I had to deal with was a great deal of shame; body shame, sexual shame, shame about who I am and the things I've done.  Any therapist will tell you that shame in any form is extremely toxic to mental well-being, and it can lie festering and undiscovered for decades because it's often too painful for us to deal with (or it dates from a time when we weren't old enough to understand what it was).

During this time, I made a new male friend who had been going through similar things and also suffered from mental health issues.  It was a complex relationship that, for better or worse, strayed beyond the territory of friendship and turned physical.  I can't speak for him, but I fell in love - he was so many of the things I value in this world.  Whilst I deeply regret the result of this (the end of the friendship), it opened up parts of me that I didn't know existed or had been buried for years.  I re-discovered my sexuality.  It also made me look at my body in a different light, and gave me a glimmer of hope; someone out there found me attractive. 

My lovely therapist was all for me going out dating and getting myself a relationship, but I was more cautious.  Firstly, I wanted to find out more about who I am sexually, as I felt like I'd seen a hint of a whole new side to myself, but there was also the problem of being unemployed and mentally ill; which I didn't feel ready to declare to the world.  I knew my past choices in men were also chronically mis-judged, so I wanted to understand more about what I needed and wanted in a partner.  Having been through massive changes over the last few years, I feel like I'm still re-establishing the "New me" and my place in the world, so it doesn't feel like the right time for finding a long-term partner.  I want to be stable, independent and know what I want to do next before I add any permanent fixtures :)

One crazy night when I was feeling randomly horny, I created a profile on a hook-up website (like a dating website, but just to meet people for sex).  I had started to accept I might not be hideous to all men, that not all men are like my exes, and I actually have a bit of a kinky side.  I set up the profile more out of curiosity than anything; I wanted to see if I'd get much interest, and if I did, if any of them were vaguely normal.  I was honest, my photos were genuine, and I made it clear I was picky about who I slept with.  In the first five minutes of my profile going up I was swamped with messages!!  There were loads from people who I'd never even consider, but I was pleasantly surprised by how many good-looking, genuine, nice guys there were.  It helps when everyone is upfront with each other about what they want, but even so, I've talked to guys who are lovely far beyond what they need to be to get a sh*g.  It's not a natural home for a girl with an open heart and a natural propensity for emotional over-involvement, but I established some rules for myself early on and if things get too much for me at any time, I take a step back for a while.

For it to be a good experience for me, I have to create a basic connection to the guy - even though I know I might never see him again. I like to know a bit about him, what turns him on, things he wants to try and things he's tried before, what he thinks and feels about sex, and he needs to see pleasure as more than just a join-the-dots exercise.  I have to find him attractive and have some rapport with him, so that I'm comfortable enough to trust him with my body.  For me, sex is about sharing pleasure; enjoying giving each other pleasure as well as appreciating what the other person is trying to do to please you.  Knowing that both of you are excited by each other and watching each other get more and more turned on is the thrill for me.  It has also been empowering to see my sexuality in action; to feel like a woman, to feel my body react in an adult way, to use my instincts as a woman to give pleasure.  Whilst some might condemn me for having sex outside of relationships, I have found so many times that the experience has been good for my soul as well as my body.  There is little in terms of human interaction in this world that's more honest than sharing each other's bodies.  I say that if no one is using anyone, you are both going into it with your eyes open, and both of you want the same thing, what's the harm?  Sex is still special to me, and I'm still pretty picky, so I don't think I'm de-valuing it.

You may see my existence as slightly sad, but I'm open to whatever comes my way.  Should I stumble upon the man of my dreams I'm perfectly willing to delete my profile and perhaps start a relationship, but I don't want to rely on that happening.  If I feel my hook-ups are making me feel anything negative about myself, equally, I'll stop.  Or, if I find myself in the situation that I'm actually doing it more for the guys than I am for me, I'll review the situation.  For now though, I'm having fun, I'm exploring, I'm gaining in confidence and it makes me feel more normal than ever.  Luckily, my therapist is compassionate, encouraging, non-judgemental, and I think quite enjoys hearing about my escapades, so I have her looking out for my emotional well-being as well.  I'm also very careful to always let a close friend know exactly where I'm going and who I'm with, and I let them know when I get home afterwards, just as a precaution.  I'm happy to say I've never felt as though I'm in any danger though, and I follow my gut instincts about who I should meet in the first place. 

So, how I live now is free, single, and exploring my sexuality!! ;)

[mentalality]

Hello

Well, hi there ;)  If you've stumbled on this blog, great, I hope you will enjoy it.  I'm creating content for it at the moment and posts will follow shortly.  In the meantime, click on "Follow" to keep up-to-date with the blog and you'll be among the first people to see what I have in store.

You can also read the "About" section to learn a bit about me & this blog.

Thanks for dropping by xxx