Hi guys! I know it's been a long time, but my mental health went on an olympic marathon straight down the toilet. We're talking Flushed Away bad, but, I'm coming out of it very slowly, and I've been thinking about coming back.
What I'm here to talk about today might not seem very witchy, but it is. I didn't realise just how important shadow work is. It's basically being your own therapist, except you don't have a doctorate, so you have nobody to sue if a treatment you choose doesn't work the way you want it to.
I've been quite ill for a long time, so I referred myself to a talking therapies group. While I'm waiting for an appointment, they gave me a website with info on it to help me understand mental health, how to care for mine, and exercises I could do to help make me feel better.
I'm still doing the online course while I wait to be paired with a therapist, but I felt that I should share some of my experiences here.
Journaling helped me a lot. Keeping track of my feelings and thoughts. Getting up and doing something, anything, really does help too. I know you don't want to. I've been there, I still have those days, but the thing is, I actually did an experiment.
I hadn't wanted to do anything for weeks beforehand, so that gave me a firm baseline to start from.
For the next several days, I had opportunities pop up to leave the house, which I don't like doing, I know, I'm a hermit. Relatives needed help with things, so even though I really didn't want to go, I went anyway. And I hated it.
I have a number of health problems, and these trips exacerbated them. I was tired, I had intense pain by the end, and hated every second of being out, but I found that the next day, I actually felt a little bit better, and by taking note of it and my experiment in the journal, I actually noticed the difference.
Once wasn't enough though, so I repeated it another three times, and my answer came back consistently, even though I'd had trouble getting myself up and moving, I did in fact benefit from it the next day.
So I highly recommend trying this yourself. Get a journal, or a pad of paper, anything you can write on give the experiment a go.
Don't go hurting yourself like I did, of course. I didn't have a choice, with my conditions, pain is just something I have to deal with, so keep yourself as safe and pain free as you can, but also, push yourself a little.
Wash your cup when you're done using it straight away.
Pull your blanket up. You don't have to do the whole bed if you're not up for it.
Get the hoover out for a quick go round, or go for a short walk. Doesn't matter how short, all you have to do is try, you can work up to longer walks.
Forgot something downstairs? Go get it. Dont put it off until you go downstairs next.
It can be done. I did the experiment first for you. Now we know it works, you can try :)
Thanks for reading.














