Back to basics

'Facing it, always facing it, that's the way to get through'.  So said Joseph Conrad who's life was beset by immense and challenging difficulties.  I have been trying to do this very thing as well as holding onto what I wrote about the sun still being behind the clouds when I last blogged a couple of days ago.  Mind you, there's been no sunshine today although the ground appears to be thankfully soaking up the water!

Back to basics for me then.  Sensible balanced diet (plenty of food rich in tryptophans, that amino acid so essential to enable the body to produce serotonin, the feel good chemical), plenty of exercise and plenty of regular sleep.

To anyone who is reading this who fears losing the momentum of an ongoing, but sometimes halting, recovery, may I recommend this 'back to basics' model.  Put it another way - KISS.  That is to say, Keep It Simple Stupid'!

Don't be afraid that a bad spell is indicative of a return to emotional free fall and a decline in health from which one cannot recovery.  The 'dips' are frightening because there is always a real and honest desire not to return to where one has come from.  However, as I am trying to teach myself a dip is only a dip unless we let it become more.

I've been for a run, I've eaten a balanced diet all day (apart from the chocolate and Pinot Grigio, obviously!) and I am looking forward to my duvet.  Stay positive fellow travellers!

The sun is still behind the clouds

It's been a little while but not so long as last time - the gap between posts I mean.  I sit here feeling rather disappointed to be honest.  I have a bad week or so..  All the usual anxieties have returned and they seem to feed off each other as well as being fueled by the excessive and negative media sound bites which seem intent on scaring or exciting to encourage sales and thus generate additional advertising revenue - I know this is how it works because a journalist interviewed me for a project on challenging the stigma associated with mental health issues and I asked her!

For the time being I am going to read back over my last blog and tell myself that for the most part it's sunshine now, emotionally speaking.  Even though the clouds still get in the way sometimes it definitely does not mean the sun has gone again.  Like any long term recovery one has to embrace the odd bad spell with good humour and positivity and try hard to remind oneself that it's distressing not because it is symptomatic of a declining and re-emerging negative pattern but quite the reverse - it is now relatively unusual thus does it feel rather uncomfortable.  My prayer is that some unhelpful recurring symptoms reflect only the inevitability of injury scar tissue not a decline back into poor health.  I am going to try hard not to let that happen!