Gum on My Shoe

There’s a joke in my family when talking about treating oneself to something: “You’ve got to have some pleasure in life!” The required response, of course, is “You don’t have enough pleasure already?!” I was thinking about this the other day after posting my piece on loneliness for Mental Health Awareness Week. In the article I explored Mark Rowland’s notion that we feel lonely when there’s a mismatch between the connections we have and our social needs and wants. If that’s true, I wondered, what about our other needs? What do we feel when those go unmet? Sad? Angry? Frustrated? Empty? Unhappy? More generally, why do we find some activities and experiences pleasurable and not others? Why do we yearn for happiness and pleasure? What does it mean to be happy, anyway? What about all the times we’re not happy? Do they have value too, or are they merely to be lived though until our next fix of happiness? What’s the point of being happy if you’re only going to be not-happy agai...

No matter who we are, there are times when we’re not feeling good. It helps to have strategies in place for handling times like this. A personalised Wellness Recovery Action Plan (WRAP) can be helpful. In other posts, I’ve described how to turn a bad day around , how to be kind to myself , and things I’m grateful for . In this article I’m going to describe the strategies I use to distract myself while I wait for my thoughts or mood to shift. Just about anything can serve as a distraction technique if you’re able to immerse yourself sufficiently in it. If you’re interested in the role of distraction in Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT) , I recommend this post written by my friend and fellow mental health blogger Aimee Wilson. Here, in no particular order, here are my personal top distraction techniques. 1. Writing My Diary In one form or another, writing has always been an important part of my life , and it’s one of the primary self-care strategies in my WRAP. I’ve kep...

There’s nothing inherently wrong with having a bad day. It’s natural, I would even say healthy, for our mood to fluctuate in response to whatever is going on around us. On the other hand, no one wants to stay stuck in a rut. Here are ten techniques I use when I’m having a rough day. Several of them feature in my Wellness Recovery Action Plan (WRAP) . It’s worth saying these are not fixes or solutions for anxiety, depression, or other mental health conditions although they might form part of a person’s wellness toolbox. They help me weather the ups and downs of life and I offer them on that basis. 1. Go for a Walk I’ve written elsewhere about how important walking is to my wellbeing. It’s my go-to strategy when things are getting me down. Walking allows me to acknowledge whatever feelings are present for me, experience them, and then let them go . I sometimes use the “hot coals” technique I learned from Fran. I close my hand at my chest, taking hold of whatever feeling I wish...