Welcome to my headspace!
Hello guys,
First things first I wanted to cover some of the basics; who am I, what this headspace is, why I have created it! Well I am Amelia, currently a student of Child and Youth studies, a gym goer, avid TED talk/radio listener and working mum of two beautiful huskies. I am part of a loving family who has greatly supported me and helped me to become the person I am today. I will share my story in a bit more detail below later.
So this headspace is just someplace for me to talk about subjects I am interested in and hopefully help others to branch out and learn new things. I will also talk about mental health and my journey with it. Hopefully uploading some videos/vlogs also if I can figure out how to do it! My main goal is to show people what living with mental health can be like and to help stop the stigma mental health currently holds. I know I cant end the discrimination with one small blog but if I can just help one person my job will be done!
Now the part about why I am starting this blog... Up until today I was part of a page called Stigmee. We talked about metal health and the stigma it holds. There is a facebook, youtube and instagram. I have linked all three so you can check them out. Today the original owner of the facebook page has asked me to step down as she dosen't feel like I am contributing enough. Therefore I have created my own little blog to share what I can when I can with hopefully some people or just get it out of my head! This isn't something I wanted or am happy about but sometimes things in life just don't work out as planned. As my mum always says, there is a reason for everything! (Will do a talk on my take on this later!)
As i mentioned above I want to share a little about my mental health story with you. This is something I have written for an amazing charity called Mental Health Muscle. Please go and check them out on facebook and instagram.
I want to share with you a little bit about me and my journey with mental health. From a very young age I have struggled with the concept of liking myself. One small slip up or mistake and I would bully myself for days. I have always had a loving and supporting family who hated seeing me punish myself for often uncontrollable things. The biggest difficulty for me as a young child was that I didn’t know what I was feeling wasn’t normal. As a young teen I started counselling. This is when I began to realise that what I was feeling every day wasn’t normal. Counselling consisted of telling my life story, digging up the past and trying to come up with a reason for why I was “feeling down”. Don't get me wrong counselling can be an amazing tool that can help you understand what you are feeling but for me it wasn't the right tool. I was in and out of counseling until I was 19. Every visit left me feeling numb and exhausted.
At the age of 16 I requested to be put on medication to see if that would help. I was told that a lot of teens go through this depressive state and that they wouldn't consider putting me on medication. I was discriminated against because of my age and suffered two more years until I was of a suitable age to try medication. At this point I had tried everything else and I knew that this wasn’t something I could fix alone. I wanted to get better and to be able to enjoy my life. I got lucky. The first medication they put me on changed everything. I cared about myself and my wellbeing. I stopped seeing the guy that was using me, I realised that I didn't have to be in a relationship to be loved, I could learn to love myself. I am so grateful that medication could help me but this was just the first step in changing my life to help support myself. I removed people from my life that brought me down, became closer with my family and best friend, and stopped looking for that someone to “love me”. I joined a gym and got a personal trainer. It wasn’t about being skinny to be accepted anymore but to help me become more confident and understand my physical body more.
Don't get me wrong I still have my down days, weeks, months but I have now built a support system of amazing people that know me and understand what I need when I can't look after myself. My partner knows that when I haven't gotten out of bed all day or eaten that it's not because I’m lazy but because I couldn't cope with the day. I still face discrimination often but I now have the tools to look past the negativity and attempt to teach people that stigma of mental health is not acceptable. I hope that my journey can help others with mental health illnesses and without to understand that it's ok not to be ok.
Thank you so much for reading and I can’t wait to continue this blog. If you have anything you would like me to talk about please comment below and please subscribe for future posts!
First things first I wanted to cover some of the basics; who am I, what this headspace is, why I have created it! Well I am Amelia, currently a student of Child and Youth studies, a gym goer, avid TED talk/radio listener and working mum of two beautiful huskies. I am part of a loving family who has greatly supported me and helped me to become the person I am today. I will share my story in a bit more detail below later.
So this headspace is just someplace for me to talk about subjects I am interested in and hopefully help others to branch out and learn new things. I will also talk about mental health and my journey with it. Hopefully uploading some videos/vlogs also if I can figure out how to do it! My main goal is to show people what living with mental health can be like and to help stop the stigma mental health currently holds. I know I cant end the discrimination with one small blog but if I can just help one person my job will be done!
Now the part about why I am starting this blog... Up until today I was part of a page called Stigmee. We talked about metal health and the stigma it holds. There is a facebook, youtube and instagram. I have linked all three so you can check them out. Today the original owner of the facebook page has asked me to step down as she dosen't feel like I am contributing enough. Therefore I have created my own little blog to share what I can when I can with hopefully some people or just get it out of my head! This isn't something I wanted or am happy about but sometimes things in life just don't work out as planned. As my mum always says, there is a reason for everything! (Will do a talk on my take on this later!)
As i mentioned above I want to share a little about my mental health story with you. This is something I have written for an amazing charity called Mental Health Muscle. Please go and check them out on facebook and instagram.
I want to share with you a little bit about me and my journey with mental health. From a very young age I have struggled with the concept of liking myself. One small slip up or mistake and I would bully myself for days. I have always had a loving and supporting family who hated seeing me punish myself for often uncontrollable things. The biggest difficulty for me as a young child was that I didn’t know what I was feeling wasn’t normal. As a young teen I started counselling. This is when I began to realise that what I was feeling every day wasn’t normal. Counselling consisted of telling my life story, digging up the past and trying to come up with a reason for why I was “feeling down”. Don't get me wrong counselling can be an amazing tool that can help you understand what you are feeling but for me it wasn't the right tool. I was in and out of counseling until I was 19. Every visit left me feeling numb and exhausted.
At the age of 16 I requested to be put on medication to see if that would help. I was told that a lot of teens go through this depressive state and that they wouldn't consider putting me on medication. I was discriminated against because of my age and suffered two more years until I was of a suitable age to try medication. At this point I had tried everything else and I knew that this wasn’t something I could fix alone. I wanted to get better and to be able to enjoy my life. I got lucky. The first medication they put me on changed everything. I cared about myself and my wellbeing. I stopped seeing the guy that was using me, I realised that I didn't have to be in a relationship to be loved, I could learn to love myself. I am so grateful that medication could help me but this was just the first step in changing my life to help support myself. I removed people from my life that brought me down, became closer with my family and best friend, and stopped looking for that someone to “love me”. I joined a gym and got a personal trainer. It wasn’t about being skinny to be accepted anymore but to help me become more confident and understand my physical body more.
Don't get me wrong I still have my down days, weeks, months but I have now built a support system of amazing people that know me and understand what I need when I can't look after myself. My partner knows that when I haven't gotten out of bed all day or eaten that it's not because I’m lazy but because I couldn't cope with the day. I still face discrimination often but I now have the tools to look past the negativity and attempt to teach people that stigma of mental health is not acceptable. I hope that my journey can help others with mental health illnesses and without to understand that it's ok not to be ok.
Thank you so much for reading and I can’t wait to continue this blog. If you have anything you would like me to talk about please comment below and please subscribe for future posts!
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