Journey to recovery.

Just because someone is smiling, this does not mean they are happy. Many people who have a mental health illness smile to avoid people asking questions and sometimes people do not want others to know they are unhappy, me included.
The aim of my blog is to raise awareness around mental health and the past few posts have been positive, however, the past few weeks have been an emotional roller-coaster. 
This will be one of the most personal posts I have posted probably since my first blog post. 

Leaving college...

Since leaving college in June, I have slowly noticed a decline in my mental health again, may be this is because I have nothing to focus on anymore. At first I didn't really notice anything but as the weeks/months have gone by I have started to notice a lot more how much my mental health is declining. I have started to become very isolated, I don't do things with anyone, I would rather stay in my room and do nothing all day and the main reason for this is because of my anxiety and constant low mood. My anxiety is now at the point where I feel physically sick when I even think about leaving the house, never mind when I actually do leave the house. So, when people ask me what I've done this summer, the answer is the majority has been spent in my room because I've isolated myself away from everyone.

'Your in therapy so you should be getting better'

This is one of the things I hear the most, however, just because someone is in therapy, this does not mean that they won't have little blips in their journey to recovery. I am currently receiving counselling and at the start I was a different person to what I am now,  throughout the first few weeks of been in counselling I started to get better, however, at the present moment I have started to get worse and this is something my counsellor has also noticed but this does not mean I won't start to get better again. Being in therapy can be very hard, I personally find counselling hard because it is about talking about things I tried to just forget but I know that in order to move forward, these things need to be spoken about. However, now I've been in counselling a few weeks, I do not find it as daunting as I did at first, maybe this is because I have gotten to know the counsellor and I know she wont judge. I know a lot of people are scared of therapy because they are scared of being judged, however, these professionals are there to help and support. 

'The journey to recovery is not a short and easy one, in fact, it is a long and hard one but things can and do get better!'

The past few months have been so emotionally draining, however, in counselling on Thursday my counsellor made me realise that I can and will get over this little blip. The only person in my life who can make changes in order for me to get better is ME. In my eyes, I thought that because I was getting better I didn't need to carry on getting help off professionals apart from my counsellor anymore, however, I have now realised just because you may feel as though you are getting better, it does not mean you should shut out the professionals who can help even more. So after coming to this realisation I decided it was time to make an appointment with my GP to go back and speak to him to discuss options and get some advice. Although making this appointment has made me feel really anxious, I also feel like it is something I needed to do in order to get back on the right track to recovery. 

Going back to negative habits which have long-term affects, isolating myself, pushing away people I love and pushing away professionals which are there to help has had a negative affect on my mental health over the past few months. Then, adding onto that personal problems, the stress of waiting for results from college and the thought of going to uni in September has just piled on top of me and has all rolled into one.

For anyone reading this who is currently feeling similar, the main thing I would say is to take all the help and support you can, make sure you take care of yourself (self-care) and look at all of the online resources available as some of these are really helpful!