Tag: mental health

Minimalism – A Cure for Anxiety?

EricaLeave a comment

There’s a huge part of me that wants to be a full-out minimalist. CLUTTER is a huge problem for me – mentally and emotionally. I get overwhelmed by clutter – every flat surface of our house seems to be a magnet for gathering papers and all other forms of clutter.

http://alliecasazza.com/blog/husband-not-on-board-minimalism-decluttering

Life has ramped up for me a bit now that I’m back in school – this means my base level of anxiety has ramped up a bit too. My normal tolerance level for clutter has decreased because I’m already a bit more anxious than normal. I’ve shared a blog post (above) about a woman who mentions that her anxiety and depression got so much better when she discarded a lot of her things. She also gives good perspective on not forcing your significant other or family members to join you on your minimalist journey – rather you support their need to keep more things than you, and they support you in your need to free yourself of things – it’s a compromise (there’s that dreaded word!)

I also recently finished reading the book, “Goodbye, Things” by Fumio Sasaki, and I’m SO ready to just throw away everthing!

I’m really motivated to do this minimalist thing, but when I start going through my stuff, it’s actually a lot harder to get rid of things than I hoped it would be. Not to mention it takes TIME to do this. (Something we all have an abundance of, right?) It’s easier to just let things pile up and stuff things in the closet or garage. It’s easier to just buy a few more boxes or storage bins and call it quits.

The moments I have taken the time to go through my things, I’ve found it’s really easy to second-guess yourself and find a reason why you MIGHT need it someday, or you worry that you’ll regret getting rid of it.

A few helpful takeaways from the book:

  • If you’ve been wondering if you should keep something or not, that’s a sign you should just get rid of it.
  • The author claims 95% of the things he has gotten rid of, he has not regretted. And a few items he did regret, he could easily replace by going to the store or ordering online.

I try to keep these things in mind while going through my stuff – there’s a few items I passed over that I know I probably should put in the giveaway pile. I have things I have kept from my elementary teacher days, because I wonder if I’ll ever need them again. And I have more than a few boxes of purely “sentimental” items…

This is a post to mark the start of a journey – I’m hoping to have a garage sale in May with a ton of items! I’ll try to remember to take some before and after pictures along the way.

Any minimalists out there? Was there any impact on your mental health when you downsized and decluttered your space?

(Paraphrased from book) “Happiness is not a destination, like reaching the top of the mountain or crossing the finish line – it’s a choice you make daily to be thankful and grateful for what you have.” We fall into the lie that “if I only had ______, I would be happy.”

P.S. I also just (like literally a minute ago) got an email about a new book by Gretchen Rubin coming out in March 2019 called Outer Order Inner Calm. You can bet I will be reading that!

Update: Positive Affirmation and Meditation apps

Erica1 Comment

So, a few weeks ago I wrote about the power of positive thoughts and I mentioned that I had downloaded two different apps to practice meditation and positive affirmations. I have tried to use and listen to them daily this month and I want to share my thoughts and experience with these apps so you can decide if they might be of use to you.

*I am in no way getting compensated for my recommendations – just sharing my personal thoughts with you!Image result for headspace app

(Headspace) The first one I downloaded is called “Headspace.” It is really a great app to practice the art of mindfulness. If you aren’t familiar with the concept of mindfulness, there’s a great definition from psychologytoday.com:

Mindfulness is a state of active, open attention on the present. When you’re mindful, you carefully observe your thoughts and feelings without judging them good or bad. Instead of letting your life pass you by, mindfulness means living in the moment and awakening to your current experience, rather than dwelling on the past or anticipating the future.

Great things about this app: the speaker in this app has a lovely voice and British accent – his voice is pleasant to listen to as he guides you through your meditation sessions. Each session does a great job of telling you how to meditate, so even if you’ve never tried meditation before, you will be able to feel like you know what you’re doing. Headspace also has great animation videos that explain different concepts and are fun to watch.

You can set the length of time that you want to meditate each session, ranging from 3 minutes to 20 minutes. I tried to do 10 minutes most sessions. There are even some super-short sessions called “minis” if you only want something for 1 minute.

Headspace also has packs of sessions with different themes to choose from (such as “Anxiety,” “Depression,” “Pregnancy,” “Happiness,” “Motivation”…) HOWEVER – you can only access a limited number on the free version, which is what I used this month. The “Basics” pack is 10 sessions and is totally free to use – besides that the app will let you try a few of the other sessions, but not really much else without paying. You can redo the “Basic” pack over and over, which is what I ended up doing – it still gets you in the habit of practicing mindfulness each day, which has many benefits.

The one-time subscription fee (for life) was WAY too much for me to justify paying – but there are options to subscribe monthly ($12.99) or yearly (averages to $7.91 per month). I also have gotten many emails from the app offering me 40% off a year’s subscription, which I am actually really interested in doing. The way I look at it, if you can justify paying more than that for Netflix each month, you can probably find that much to use an app that will benefit your mental and emotional health.

thinkup

(ThinkUp) The second app I downloaded I ended up loving so much! It’s called “ThinkUp” and you basically get to create your own playlist of positive affirmations and record them in your own voice. The free version, which I initially started out with, lets you choose about 5 different affirmations and you can listen to them on a loop with preset music in the background. I loved the idea of it, but I didn’t like that I could only choose 5 affirmations to listen to on a loop over and over. There were so many other affirmations I wanted to choose, so I decided to do a paid version.

There are two ways you can pay – you can pay month to month for a very small price, like $4 – or you can go ahead and pay a **one-time fee of $25 (**price has increased since the initial publication of this post!) to get access to everything and have an unlimited number of affirmations. For me to really use and get the most out of the app, I knew I needed to have at least 15-20 affirmations. And I while I could have tried out the app for a month or two before going all-in, I decided that in the long run it would save me money if I just jumped in and paid for a lifetime subscription. So, I went ahead and did that mid-way through January.

I love that you can look for different affirmations based on categories such as “motivation,” “new career,” (important for me!), “self-esteem,” and “stress relief.” So even if you don’t have anything motivational to say off the top of your head, you can browse the app’s affirmations and find plenty of good ones!

Some of my affirmations include things like:

  • I choose to fill my mind with positive, nurturing, and healing thoughts
  • I choose happiness no matter what the circumstances are
  • I give up being perfect for being authentic
  • I am a good mother

I have also created playlist of my favorite Scriptures that I can listen to – I think this will be really great to listen to first thing in the morning each day! Any verses you all recommend? Many of you may have already responded to my post on Facebook regarding this…

The one downside I have found to this app is that you cannot change the order of the affirmations. You can decide which affirmations go into a specific playlist, but for some reason the order inside that playlist is not flexible. When I added more affirmations, for some reason they went to the beginning of the playlist instead of adding them at the end, (which would be more logical in my opinion). Not a huge deal, but something I am marginally annoyed with.

Overall, this app is great if you’re willing to get the paid version. If you wanted to create your own affirmation tracks and set them to music you probably could, but I like how simple it is to use and that everything is in one place.

More Resources:

I recently came across a blog post talking all about positive affirmations and giving 50 different examples. Here’s the link: https://www.thirteenthoughts.com/50-positive-affirmations-for-more-abundance-happiness-and-success/

Calm is another app I have heard is good – I have not tried it but know a few friends who have recommended it.

If you’re more of a book person, this book was one I read (recommended by my counselor) when I first was looking into the concept of mindfulness.

Thanks for reading.

Back to School! Graduate School, That is…

EricaLeave a comment

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(Monday)

I began writing this on the evening of January 15th, Martin Luther King Jr. Day, and tomorrow is officially my first day of graduate school (again!) I had a semi-small freak out moment earlier today when I logged into my TWU account and saw that my professor had opened up his class online – I started reading the syllabus and looking at my assignments for the semester… I think it really hit me today that I really am going to be a student again after 8 and 1/2 years being out of school!

This blog is all (*well, mostly all) about how I am managing my anxiety – about how I am being intentional on working through my anxiety issues and recognizing and addressing problems before they get out of control. Any sort of change or life transition brings its own stress and anxieties on some level – some changes we choose and others are thrown at us whether we like it or not. Going back to graduate school was a choice I made, fully knowing that it was going to be hard and bring about a certain amount of anxiety.

So, why would I choose to do this?  I definitely am already “busy” enough – I have a husband, an 18 month old son, I work full-time, I am very involved in other activities at my church and at home… Maybe the “why” isn’t so much of a question as “HOW?” How am I planning on adding anything else to my schedule? How can I be the mother/wife/employee/friend/individual that I want to be when any of those just by themselves can feel overwhelming?

We’ll get to the HOW in a minute – to go back to the WHY is much simpler: after accepting my new job in August, part of the deal was that I would go back to school to get my degree in Library Science. I am beyond grateful for the opportunity to do this and extremely excited! I knew up front before accepting the job that this was coming, and I chose to do it. (Challenge Accepted!) I also love the feeling of accomplishing something – I really value being able to work hard at something and succeed – and I love learning, and I love reading and libraries… so the “WHYs” all kind of makes sense really!

Going back to the HOW though – yeah, I’m still taking this one day at at time. I feel like the busier I get, the more purposeful I am with my time, out of necessity. So, my planners – (plural) – are my best friends, and I am definitely working on remembering what is most important to me and what I may not have time to do as much of. People always say they don’t have time to do things – I think this is not always the case for me. I generally find time to do the things that are really important to me – or the things that are really urgent and cannot be ignored.

I’m honestly not as worried about the planning/prioritizing aspect, I’m good at that sort of thing, and I love planning! What I do want to keep tabs on is navigating my stress and anxiety through all of my responsibilities – knowing that I’m going to undertake the challenge of graduate school for the next two years means that I need to really get serious about doing things to keep my mental health in check.

Blogging is part of that – it holds me accountable to you people (thank you, by the way!) and it also allows me time to really self-reflect on how I’m doing. In my other post I mentioned that I’m taking some time each day to do some meditating and listen to positive affirmations, which I already feel like are helping me a lot.

So, I haven’t technically started grad school yet, and I’ll keep you posted on how it’s going. I anticipate many ups and downs along the way – so if I go off the radar for a bit, you’ll know I may be in a bit of a “down” phase.

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(Saturday)

Today is January 20th, I’ve finished my first week of school! Here’s the week in review – I wrote a short journal entry each day this week that may be interesting for some to read. My first week of working towards my library science degree is done!

Monday

1 day before school “officially” starts. I log into my account and see that one of my professors has opened his class on Blackboard. I start reading all of his instructions, try to figure out how to navigate this system, begin reading over the syllabus and various attachments… and that nostalgic feeling of being completely overwhelmed on the first day of classes all comes rushing back to me! Went to Walmart and bought my “school supplies” which consisted of a folder, monthly planner, and 2-subject notebook. Excited and nervous about tomorrow!

Tuesday

Lots of feelings today! Took my “first day at school” picture, because that’s what you do (obviously!) I wrote down all of my assignments and due dates for the next few months in my planner. I notice that someone has already starting posting in some of the discussion boards online – I start to worry that maybe I’m already behind… Is it possible there’s another person more over-achiever-y than me? I have a feeling the real discipline of online classes is not doing the work, it’s being able to not do ALL the work the first day your classes open – knowing that you have more to do, but knowing you can only do so much – taking it one day at a time.

Wednesday

The initial shock of being a student is fading a bit – I submitted my first assignment online! (Afterwards I found out I didn’t use the proper naming schematic that the professor wants us to use, so I resubmitted it… hoping that’s not a big fail!)

Thursday

Had my first “synchronous session” as it is called, a live online session with my professor and classmates. I need to give a shout-out to to Dr. Elkins at TWU – he is a hoot! I’m looking forward to “attending” his classes via Blackboard this semester!

Friday

I took the night off from doing anything school-related. Dean and I went out to celebrate my birthday since on my actual birthday I had my first synchronous session online. We had a nice dinner and went shopping at the mall – woo-hoo!

Saturday

Starting to realize how soon Tuesday the 23rd will be here – the day my first assignments are due! Small amounts of anxiety building up again today… it’s time to get down to business!

*Keep watch for continued updates on grad school! Have a great weekend!