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Natural Healing

Nature! How often do you actually stop and take note of the natural world? I've suddenly realised recently how often I walk around too much in my head, or phone, to take stock of the nature around me. Yet, despite my habit of not really appreciating my surroundings, I'm benefitting from it all the same.  I imagine most of us have experienced the power of getting 5 minutes of fresh air on our mindset. But, how often do you actually stop and really take note of the happenings around you? The birds singing, the fresh Spring blooms, that special colour of green the new leaves have. Whether its because of the sunny weather or because I've made an extra effort to take stock of what's around me, nature has had an extra mood lifting effect lately. Being British, I won't lie that the sun probably has a lot to do with it (all us Brits seem a lot happier on sunny days because of how rare they are!), but really taking stock of the intricate blooms, the bees, and butterflies sud...
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Food glorious food part 3

Part 3 is here! Not exactly the most exciting thing to wait for, but for anyone who's interested here it is... Do you know what the biggest irony of dealing with the mental pressure to keep weight off is? I'm not happy with my body. Plain and simple. All this mental energy being wasted to achieve something I'm ultimately not happy about. So if I'm not happy , why not change it? Because its not that simple - the instant that scale goes up, or I feel bloated, I hate my body even more and panic. I've mentioned before that prior to losing the weight and being ill, I was confident and at the happiest with my body I'd ever been; yes I still had days of feeling 'gross' but they were completely outweighed (ha, pun not intended!) by the fact my body was so strong, and I was amazed at exactly what it could do. I think this is why I'm not happy with it now - even though I've very much got the desirable look for social media,  skinny,  my body feels weak and...
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Food glorious food part 2

Back in June last year I opened up about how food had suddenly become an issue for me overnight, and I wanted to give a little update.To be able to do this subject justice, this will be the first installment of a 2 part update, rather than making you read a small novel posing as a blog post! Reading my post ('food glorious food') back it makes me sad to realise that, realistically, my body dismorphia and eating disorder are far more engrained in my psyche than I realised at the time. Rather than my managing to overcome it with, what seemed simple, changes of thought pattern to 'food is strength', it has doubled down. I will freely admit that this is mostly down to my naiveity regarding how long I've actually been dealing with this (turns out most of my adult life), and just how firm those foundations are sunk into my brain.   I've now realised that my body dismorphia spans from childhood; always being heavier than my friends, 'innocent' childish teasing ...
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Get creative 🎨

I think everyone understands the feeling brain fog and the old noggin not firing on all cylinders when you're feeling unwell. This may be because of a cold you've picked up, the impact of a poor nights sleep, a bad mental health day or one of the symptoms of a more chronic issue. On these days (which has been every day with varying severity over the last couple of years) it's hard to put your mind to anything and 'be productive'. Even the little wins requiring mental energy seem like mountains to climb, and all you feel like you're capable of is doom scrolling or binge watching. This is where I've found it useful to have something creative I can return to that is soothing for me mentally, I enjoy, and feels 'productive' in a manner that isn't as taxing.  This is where crochet and paint by numbers has come in; these activities give me an endgame that is achievable but not too taxing. For example, with both of these activities there is something be...
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Away with the fairies

In my 'so whatcha gonna do about it?' post, I mentioned that hypnotherapy was on the cards as part of my treatment, well it's finally come around and I've finally started my 'Gut led hypnotherapy'. It has been a long time waiting, being lauded as the 'key' to unlocking everything and really making progress.  Now, when someone mentions 'hypnotherapy' or 'hypnosis', I don't know about you but my mind instantly jumps to the scene in George of the Jungle 2 where someone is hypnotised to eat a boat load of ice cream... Just me? Anyway, the point is, hypnosis has almost been satirised as a 'magic trick' or something done for entertainment in western society. Then you learn that actually its been a technique employed for various forms of therapy, including trauma, for almost a century (if not longer). Its actually something that is discussed in 'the body keeps the score' by Bessel Van Der Kolk, a well renowned and respected b...
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Escaping Normality

For Christmas, my husband and I were gifted a voucher for a local escape room. We've done a couple before with friends and absolutely loved them, but have never done one as just the two of us. This weekend we put it to use and had a real 'date' afternoon for the first time in a long while.  I'll be honest, my husband and I are very different in how we approach tasks: he's an engineer so very methodical, has a good head on him and stays calm in all situations, I, however, am definitely the more chaotic of the two of us with my approach not always being the most logical or methodical, but it gets the job done! Our brains operate in different ways, but that's partly why we work so well together - he sees through the problem in front of us to compartmentalise into its different parts, and I see the road less trodden and am able to pick up on the hidden clues... that's if he's not already solved it and onto the next thing!  It turns out that our different app...
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Celebrating the wins 🎉

This week I did something for the first time in 2 years... I drove my car to the local dealership to get it's service and MOT. Yes this doesn't sound like much, but it's a huuuuuge step for me, here's why: Since I've been unwell, car journeys are, to put it bluntly, awful. I get car sickness that's on steroids and all the potholes and bumps exacerbate my pain, so being a passenger is something I just sort of put up with, and have a rest when we arrive wherever we're going. So add that to the mental energy and physicality actually driving the car takes, along with a fuzzy not quite fully with it brain, and you have a recipe for being a perfectly worn out and overwhelmed driver. Now, before anyone jumps in saying 'that's dangerous driving, what are you doing that for!?', I am fully aware of this and have been slowly building up my tolerance and 'driving fitness' by doing little drives to the gym and little bits around the local area so ...
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