When I took these photographs last week in front of the glorious log stacks that have appeared again I didn’t exactly have a post in mind. But when looking through my archives I realised the last time I shared images in front of log stacks it was when I finally felt brave enough to open up about my long battle with OCD. And this year has probably been one of my best in terms of how I’ve been coping so I thought I’d share a little update today. As always please be mindful this is just my journey and I have no right to speak for anyone who also struggles with OCD, what has worked for me might not work for somebody else.

This is certainly not a post that I thought I'd ever be writing. I have this rule when it comes to sharing personal things online that is if I'm not completely at ease with it myself then I don't share it at all. And for so long my OCD [obsessive compulsive disorder] hasn't something that I've been at peace with, so the thought of sharing it with thousands of people wasn't something I even contemplated. But 2017 saw a really big change for my OCD and I finally felt ready to be a little more open about it. And out of all the mental health struggles that are shared in the blogging world I don't think OCD is shared enough. So today I wanted to open up a discussion about it, share how I got diagnosed, live with it and things that I've found helpful. Whilst I think it's pretty obvious that I'm not a mental health professional, please don't take what I'm saying to be gospel and if you're struggling with anything please reach out to somebody.

Over the past year or so I've been much more open about my mental health struggles and 2017 has been a big turning point for me. I've found a few things that have really worked for me and haven't just been a quick fix. And of course, it goes without saying that we all deal with things differently and what works for me will never work the same way for anybody else and just like everything else in life, it's important to take things with a pinch of salt. Anyway, I always love to read what other people have found helpful for their mental health, especially if those things aren't therapy or medication as neither of those things are something I've had much success with.

After listening to about 5 episodes of  Mad World by Bryony Gordon back to back, which is a podcast all about the truths of mental health it gave me the idea for this post. In the podcast, they discuss everything from their mental health struggles and what has helped them recover and it made me really think about the past few months. To be completely honest ever since May the state of my MH has been really poor, infact I don't think it's been such a mess since I had a complete breakdown around 4 years ago with a rough patch in November of last year. And I couldn't work out why...I was meant to be super happy there were a lot of good things happening for me I had moved out, my boyfriend was going to be home for longer than two weeks, work was good and I'd passed my driving test etc. But I didn't feel good at all, I felt horrendous every day was riddled with anxious energy [as well as other things] and not the type of energy that gives the urge to do something it was the type of energy that is absolutely exhausting and all I wanted to do was go to sleep. 

We're coming to the end of Mental Health Awareness Week so it felt like an appropriate time to finally write this post. I've wanted to talk about mental health in a more honest way for the past few months, but there's been one thing holding me back. Which is subsequently what this entire post is about. I'm so pleased that mental health is being spoken about more and more but it does worry me that people are becoming critical of their own well-being because it might not look like the stereotypical depiction of a mental health illness. So then they deem their symptoms not enough because it doesn't look like what's being spoken about and brush it to the side even when it's something that's really affecting them.  So today I wanted to open up a conversation about mental health and why it's ok if yours looks different to someone else's. 

Mental health is something that takes up a large part of my life but it's something I've always been very dubious about sharing online. In fact, I've only ever written one post about the topic in the past but it's something I want to try and be a little more open about. The past 6 weeks or so I hit a real low with my mental health state and from the outside it looked like everything was fine. And that's the thing with mental health it's not something that you can physically see so it makes it incredibly hard to understand for an outsider who has no experience with. So here's to breaking down some tough barriers and sharing some of the things that I find incredibly beneficial when I'm struggling.