Emotionally Tired of the fight

I’d give anything to be able to create my artwork more often in peace!

Life is all too much about money! What wouldn’t I give to be able to use a time machine and go back to hit the person who invented money over the head to stop them!

I had a conversation just yesterday about this wish of mine to stop money from being invented, and my husband showed me my error, it’s not money that’s the problem, it’s human greed that’s making me miserable!

No one is open and/or willing to help other people. Everyone is too busy looking out only for themselves. Money has too much value these days, let alone being absolutely necessary for general living. You can’t do anything or go anywhere without it! You virtually can’t eat or drink anything without money and you can hardly get any resources without it.

A lot of unhappiness comes from the lack of money! The main problems I have with our marriage is due to lack of funds and how we could make my life less stressful and easier. If we had enough financial funds to buy extra equipment that would make my house management easier. We would buy a dishwasher, a good strong medium weight vacuum, we would more easily afford to buy food for the home as I am a really lousy cook.

My lack of cooking skills adds a lot of extra emotional stress and trouble between me and my husband. The more I try to become a better housewife and cook, the more I stress over it the more mistakes I make and the more problems we have in getting along. I have panic attacks and other anxiety issues more often and at worse levels and it all starts off more of my Bipolar symptoms. It’s like a never ending cycle of negativity and stress.

I really am desperate to try to look after the house and our son and husband better then I am able to. However my desperate efforts go pretty much unnoticed because of my lack of expertise in some of the main the tasks I have to get done in order to look after them. I get discouraged easily from cooking because it’s so bad and we sometimes can’t even eat it. It makes me feel bad to throw away food and it’s against my husbands culture and against both of our religions. When it’s that bad both my husband and I get upset and we become more irritable with each other. He assumes that I don’t try hard enough and that I get too distracted with my “hobbies” and I get sad and depressed thinking that I am not good enough at anything.

It can become very emotionally draining and tiring to have to keep fighting over the same topics, fight against your emotions and symptoms and fighting with your family members are both hard to cope with sometimes. Sometimes it can be extremely hard to continue motivating yourself to continue working on improving your emotional and mental health when you have a seemingly constant flood of problems that keep churning up more trouble.

I am desperately trying to avoid giving up all together, but what can a person do when they are unable to really learn something important no matter what they do? I have tried almost every idea my husband, I and my mother can think of to get me to learn to cook better. So far nothing has really helped, I even started refusing to answer the phone if I am cooking, but I can’t exactly stop my son from wanting my attention, he needs to be fed etc.

Sometimes, there is no real solution to be found easily…

Peacok Mini Album

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How to truly love me?

I feel more confident than I have in more than 10 years, so why don’t I feel 100% whole? The very fact that I still have a lot of questions in my head means that I still have some important work to do.

Yes, most of the time I feel ready to take the next step and try to find a life friend and partner. The very fact that I am able to say “most of the time”, the fact that I am somewhat “unsure” about whether I truly am ready yet, makes me stop and think. I want to ensure that I am not “rushing” to find someone to be in my life. Sure there is the physical needs factor, I am mature enough to realise that while becoming more confident and happier within myself my awareness of my physical needs to be intimate with someone has returned. There is a need to be cautious not to allow that or any false sense of wellbeing to go too fast headlong into the dating scene.

My best friend told me recently that she doesn’t think that I am ready yet to really date in real life. My questions about why she told me that, has led me to agree with her. I am happier more days than sad or depressed. I am more aware of my moods and my triggers and of good techniques that help me help myself to be happier. I know much more now about how to get myself back out of dark depressing days quicker and easier. I have many good effective strategies for keeping myself happier and more positive.

I believe that I like myself better than I have in many years. That is where the issue lies, I am closer to loving myself then I have ever been; however “love” still feels too strong a word for how I regard myself. I think that I am reasonably attractive and I think I am a good, strong person. That’s the crux of it all; the words I use to describe myself are still too weak, I haven’t quite yet reached true self-love yet. To understand and truly agree with the concept of “self-love” is what I need, but currently, I am unable to understand why I am still incapable of feeling and believing the true meaning of the phrase.

Hopefully, soon I will be able to find some understanding of the phrase and be able to comply with it. Once I will fully and truly able to say “I love myself” and to really truly mean it and not feel uncomfortable or dishonest in saying it, then I will be truly ready to go out and find my life friend and partner.

 

What do I want?

I think I am as close to an identity crisis as possible. I am slowly getting confident, but have nothing to show for it. I have only half an idea of what I want for myself, I am too afraid to plan for any real future for myself. It feels like it will never come true so what’s the point?

I feel lonely and grab at straws and on the verge of desperation and reach out with hypo-manic hands at the wrong things. When I pull back and try to think clearly I get a
mish-mash of ideas, nothing makes total sense.

I feel strong enough to try, but don’t know what I am fighting for.

All I know is, I don’t want to be ordered around, I don’t want to be told what to do. But if anyone asks me what I want, I don’t have the faintest clue how to answer.

I know I want a partner for myself in life, a playmate, a friend. I want a confidant, someone I could be safe to tell my inner thoughts to, and not be judged or shamed for any of my ideas or feelings.

The fact that I still feel the need to be slightly propped up, to be reminded that I am ok. I still need to be told that it’s ok to be wrong sometimes to make mistakes. Not knowing exactly who I am, not knowing exactly what I want.

All these make me question, am I really ready? Am I ready to face life on my own? Am I able to cope with the bad people in the world? What if I’ll never be ready to face the cruelty in society? What if I just don’t know how to stick up for myself?

Either I let the wrong people in too far for the wrong reasons, or I am unable to let people in at all. Why am I unable to find the middle ground on any topic? I can accept that people can make mistakes and see that they are not necessarily bad people. Either I allow people to walk all over me or I simply don’t know how to stop them. Or I simply decide to cut them out completely if they don’t seem to treat me right.

 

The Journey to Happiness…

It can take a rather long time, it can sometimes feel like forever, but if we are able to put our minds to it we can change our own minds. Once we are able to start recognising what we want to change, we can begin.

For me, it can be having panic attacks to the point of almost throwing up while a passenger in a car. In the past, it involved getting to the point of considering thoughts of suicide. Thinking that I was a waste of space and asking continuously why I’d been born.

I started reducing my panic attacks by consciously listening to music in times and places that I knew would trigger my panic. I was able to reduce the severity of my nausea bit by bit. Then I was able to reduce the time of my panic. Eventually, it stopped altogether.

I am able to help reduce my depression by practising reading Gratitude quotes, by reading Positivity and Motivational quotes. I watch anything on DVD or on Youtube that even seemed remotely interesting. Even on the days, I was close to self-harm, I turned to Youtube. I looked up anything I knew I’d been interested in the past. I persisted in watching them even on days I felt incredibly depressed. Even while in tears and barely stopping myself from crying I’d continue watching, it was a distraction.

In the beginning, I’d hardly be able to make any sense of what I’d watched. I’d hardly be able to hear the words being said in what I watched. Little by little, by persisting and continuously searching for different topics that were at least similar to my old hobbies, I started seeing some difference in myself. Slowly I was able to start understanding what I watched. I was able to start concentrating on what was on the screen. After some time I was able to watch a whole video, these videos were quite short, less than half an hour videos at best, but it was something.

Later I could remember the whole video I’d watched, and I felt myself acknowledging my interest in other things other than how I was feeling or my own thoughts. The more I was able to concentrate on other more interesting, less sad ideas, the more I could feel the weight of my own negativity lifting off my chest. I was changing, and for the better, my thoughts weren’t always continuously focussing only on my own inner negativity. I was working less on blaming and name-calling myself, and I was focussing on other, more pleasant things.

That’s the beginning of happier, calmer times, which can increase into whole days…

Imagine your Happiness…

 

It’s a slow process. It takes time to get to know yourself. It takes time to get to know your own moods and understand your thought patterns. You need to recognise your triggers, both for sadness, irritability and for happiness. You need to recognise the more positive thoughts and emotions within yourself.

You need to practice Gratitude, Patience, Calmness and Mindfulness. You need to try to understand what each of them means to you. How do you define these words? Think about and write down your thoughts and feelings.

At the beginning, it can seem almost impossible. While in the throws and wholes of depression and sadness, it can seem like you simply don’t know how to be happy. You can’t seem to remember the emotion, how it feels, how it appears on you or what thoughts you have during happiness.

It seems like you simply don’t have the energy to even try, you feel like it’s a lost cause. Why should you imagine yourself as happy, when it feels like the world is determined to show you how pathetic and useless you are? You are unable to fight against the world and the haters. You simply find it easier and more believable to go along with the world’s negativity.

What we need to learn is to try and stop, wait and simply to let things be. We have to learn to accept our place in the world, thinking about whether we agree with it can come later. We simply need to learn to be. To allow ourselves to feel, and then, we stop. We have to learn how to stop accepting also. Once we accept that yes we are in a hard place, we must make the leap to make ourselves determined enough to allow ourselves to change.

It is our own minds that put ourselves in our depression, yes it is often illness, and it can be chemical. However, along with medical help and support from whichever friends or family we are able to find, we can start a chain reaction of challenges and changes.

How? That’s another story…  Which I will continue, next week… Stay tuned…

Who am I?

I was born in Australia; my parents are from a country right smack in the middle of the border between Asia and Europe.

I grew up in Australia, to European old fashioned strict rules. I was not allowed to “date” until I had finished my higher education after high school. By getting to know my Ex’s once we’d been “friends” for a while was considered me “dating”.

I’ve been married and divorced more than two times, in our culture that means I am no longer really eligible for approaches for offers of marriage. Society does not quite look at you the same way once you are divorced. Thank God in my parent’s culture you aren’t completely shunned for being a divorcee woman, but some people do tend to be judgmental and try to keep their bachelor sons away from you if you are the least friendly.

I don’t quite understand the rules and traditions of my parent’s culture, but neither do I quite understand those of Australians. I don’t live according to either culture’s rules or traditions. I don’t quite fit in with people in my age group, in either culture. I don’t enjoy drinking alcohol much except for small amounts socially, I don’t like to go clubbing and I don’t have one night stands. I don’t have lots of boyfriends. I don’t know much about general knowledge about the world because too much news makes me more depressed, upset and anxious.

Is this what they refer to as a “Midlife crises”? I am 40 years old, but I’ve been confused about where I fit in for most of my life…

Introducing my Friend Simge Yeter

Introducing my Friend Simge Yeter, she’s a little handheld puppet I made using an old towel and some old children’s clothes.

I’m planning on using her to try to explore different topics I wish I could chat about on Youtube and other public forums where I don’t wish to show my own face.

She’ll sometimes talk about more sensitive topics that I am unsure of breaching myself. I will allow her to start discussions that I”m too afraid to discuss in person. Hopefully, I can generate some reaction to her videos, let’s see…?

Facebook Group Bipolar Pen Pals

Hi,

Today I am introducing my new Facebook Group called Bipolar Pen Pals.

Initially, the group was designed to help people suffering from the effects of Bipolar find themselves Pen Pals to write to. It’s a reasonably small tight nit group of individuals. So far we have mainly been focusing on all getting to know each other and focusing on starting to generate general ideas on how to help ourselves deal with the symptoms.

Some of our members have started branching out and now have started deciding whom to swap details with to begin sending each other snail mail. Up until now most of our correspondence has mostly been all online via posting and private messages.

We are all about ensuring that our entire members feel safe at all times and we encourage our members to swap personal details in ways that does not jeopardize their personal details being picked up by others. It is a self-promoted Pen Pal swap so everyone chooses for themselves who/how or when they decide to swap details and start writing to each other. It is an all-adult group and therefore everyone is able to make their own decisions whether to start writing to anyone via snail mail etc.

Currently, we only have two members of Admin, my best friend and I, we will be working on slowly building our team of Admin/Moderating staff and hope to see our little group grow to include a lot more people. We are working on ideas to adapt and grow the group and are considering making some changes to include more variety of people into the group and accommodate more differing interests and topics into our discussion.

I am going to look for ways to include some of my art and craft into the group activities and to try to prompt our members to try to have some extra fun with their letter writing.

Anyone interested in joining our group can search for our group name, but in order to apply to join our group you must answer our three join up questions.

Hope to see you there!

Learn to be Happy!

I will be adding more content!

Don’t miss my tips and info on how to be happy!

Life has been tough! I’ve had a lot going on. The usual drama’s that come with life, have been weighing me down.

First I had limits and unnecessary rules placed upon me via (my now EX). For me my abuser was my husband, but it could be virtually anyone, you’re mother, your sister, your boyfriend.

My husband literally kept me from going on line. He forced me to close all my social media. I was isolated from virtually everyone I knew. It was my doctor’s and other professionals that helped me to see that I was living in a dangerous, unhealthy situation. I only had contact with very few health professionals and just my Mum.

I got out last year in October; my Ex’s emotional/psychological and financial abuse is taking me quite a while to get over. I have joined multiple abuse survival groups on Facebook. I have been working on reconnecting to my inner self, finding out who I am and what I want from life.

There’s still a lot of work to be done, I still need countless hours and meetings of therapy. I am back on Medication for my Bipolar and I am on the road to recovery. I find that every time I bounce back from a big hurdle in life, I actually come back stronger and more determined to win the fight!

I have started coming out with my diagnosis on-line; I am going to join the fight against mental health stigma!

If you’re ready to embark on your Self-Healing journey, try my 10 Tips to be Happy below!

 

Tips to be Happy!

Craving more from life…

This post is more about the inner workings of the mind and does not focus on my creative endeavours.

Why do we all seek success and how do we measure it? How to identify if and when we are successful? Is it an inner struggle or do other people have an influence on how successful and content we feel within ourselves? I want to try to understand why I crave a sense of achievement and why I seek outside acknowledgement?

“Nobodies are marginalized to the point of invisibility. Since humans are social creatures, banishment carries a threat of being deprived of social and material resources critical to health and happiness, and sometimes to survival itself. No wonder we’re so sensitive to indignity. It poses an existential threat.”

I found a wonderful article online about self acceptance and here are a few things I picked up from it.

I need to work on my Self Acceptance, that is a big issue for me that I am constantly working on improving. It is clear that for some reason no matter how hard I work on it I can’t break this one. I’ve been working on it for years and it seems that it keeps creeping back for more of a fight. I thought I had improved my self image and self acceptance a few years ago but it seems that problems in life have knocked it about and I need to re-evaluate and improve on it again.

While it helps to fulfil my need to create art is good, it only alleviates my inner pain for short amounts of time and I usually wind up frustrated and depressed again. My following my desire to create art reduces some of the inner pain, as it is apart of my inner desires and follows what my higher self needs. It is only one part of the solution.

As suggested in Sacha Crouch’s article (How to Let Go of the Need for Approval to Start Thriving), I am planning on starting a Gratitude or Self Appreciation journal to start listing things I am proud of myself for. This may help serve as a reminder for all the good things I accomplish that I am happy about.

I need to work on my self validation, we all need to be able to decide for ourselves that what we are doing in life is ok. We shouldn’t always seek out validation from outside sources, mainly because there is never any guarantee that anyone other then ourselves will be totally happy with how we live our lives.

While writing this post I realised my main problem at the moment is my need for validation. It’s driving me to the point of depression when I think about how little validation I receive from anyone in my life. I only have my Mum and two friends here on Facebook that tell me I am good or that agree that I actually achieve anything. It’s making me feel extra worthless when I think about how little of my need for validation gets met.

My husband tells me he loves me but he cant stop letting me know how little I meet his needs from a wife, he tells me off when I stuff up and unfortunately I stuff up quite a lot. It must be hard for someone who is mentally healthy to have to face living with a mentally ill person. It’s relatively normal for a person to want to live with someone who is at least as mentally healthy as you are. My husband often tells me he loves me but that it is frustrating to live with me because I have such a bad memory and because I make so many mistakes like missing cleaning duties etc. He says it’s very tiring and frustrating living with someone who is emotionally weak and cries so often and he doesn’t know how to handle me when I am having a bad panic attack or when a really bad depression sets in.

I did improve my self worth a few years ago but life seems to keep putting my self validation or self worth into question again and again from my stuff ups and wrong decisions etc in life. For some reason I can’t even remember how I improved my self confidence and self validation the first time.
Is it hard up keeping self validation and appreciation or it’s just for me?

Ideas from other websites on how to improve your self validation.
* Try to to notice how much you judge yourself rather than value yourself. Note this down if needed so that you can keep a track of how and when you judge yourself.
* You need to start to noticing and acknowledging your feelings, acts of kindness you undertake, and consciously value them.
* Judging yourself is the opposite of validating yourself, and creates inner pain and insecurity.
* You need to find and stop yourself from judging yourself as much as possible. You need to learn to trust your self, rather than making others your authority for what is right or wrong for you, and you will start to feel more inwardly powerful and happy.
* Try learning how to tune into your Higher Self, your inner conscience, your moral sense of right and wrong.
* To be present, grounding yourself and not dissociating or avoiding your emotions, try not to daydream, suppress or numb your emotions. To be present, means listening to yourself.
* Acknowledging your internal state and labelling it accurately without self judgement or self negativity. Try to be honest with yourself about how you feel and about when and why it started.
* If unsure of how you feel or why, you may sometimes need to guess by going over recent activities and experiences. Think back whether anything happened that may have upset you. If someone else were in this situation how would they feel? You might also guess by looking at what you want to do. If you want to hide, maybe you are feeling shame or fear. Think about where you feel sensations in your body, fear is often thought to be felt in the throat. What direction are your thoughts and emotions taking, are they fearful?
* You may be having thoughts and feelings that are based on events that happened in your past. Maybe you are afraid when people argue because in the past arguments led to your being hurt. Validate yourself by saying, “It’s acceptable and understandable that you are afraid of arguments because when you were young, your parents would hurt each other during arguments.”
* You may have intense emotions, remind yourself that it is normal. Everyone has emotions, no one is happy all the time. It’s also important to acknowledge when others would feel the same way and accept that as well.
* An important distinction is remembering you are not your behaviour. If you do something that’s normally against your beliefs, that doesn’t make you a bad person.

 

Somebodies and Nobodies, Why Do We Want To Be Famous? Fame promises an escape from ghettos, both real and imagined. Robert W. Fuller PhD. Posted Sep 25, 2009.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/somebodies-and-nobodies/200909/why-do-we-want-be-famous

How to Let Go of the Need for Approval to Start Thriving, By Sacha Crouch, 2016.
https://tinybuddha.com/blog/how-to-let-go-of-the-need-for-approval-to-start-thriving/

Self-Validation, Learn to accept your internal experience and build your identity, by Karyn Hall PhD, Posted Jul 12, 2014.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/pieces-mind/201407/self-validation

Image from Pixabay, https://pixabay.com/en/board-blackboard-success-business-2434016/

How to keep working on product ideas when things are tough…

My newest projects!

I posted some new items on my Etsy store recently. Still hardly any likes on my Facebook and only a few new followers on my Twitter account and Instagram.

I posted some new digital stamps that I’ve been working on. I hand-drew them and went over them with fine liner before I scanned the

A lot of the marketing guru’s suggesting that social marketing is the “big thing” now for advertising and reading more interest in your “business” or “products”. In truth it can be very hard for introverts and people with emotional and mental health issues to get “noticed” and to grow “followers”, let alone getting any sales for products etc., that they try to get people interested in.

I may not have the answers as to how to generate “sales”, but I do know a lot about picking up the pieces and trying to continue creative ventures when it seems as though you’re gaining nothing from them.

 

Why can’t I gain Followers?

Does it really matter in the big scheme of things if people suffer from emotional or mental symptoms?

The real truth, is that some of us simply need the space to vent out our emotions and show our creativity no matter what. Even if creative artists don’t get any real interest in what they create, simply “trying” to get their work seen and noticed can be a huge ego and confidence boost for some people. Sometimes we need the extra push to get out of bed and put some effort into doing something for ourselves.

Even though we are pretty desperate financially for me to get some sort of income to help my husband pay the bills and for me to be able to continue to afford to buy supplies to continue my creative activities. For me it’s not really about getting any “sales”, otherwise I’d have given up last year for good and never tried posting any more Youtube video’s. I certainly wouldn’t have continued working on improving my blog or to find ideas on topics to continue posting blog posts…

 

What if I never get a single sale?

The truth is, I might never generate a single sale, I might give up on the Etsy store if I don’t achieve any sales from my efforts. I’d probably continue trying to get some interste in my blog though, because this is how I am able to continue getting some satisfaction that my words might possibly help some people. If only a few people read my posts, that itself is helping me to keep my confidence a little bit better. Sometimes that’s all a person really needs in order to keep working on positive efforts. The fulfilment of the need to feel necessary to someone, that feeling that I may actually be able to help some people buy blogging, it can keep me going sometimes when I’m feeling down.

The push to continue trying to make a difference for atlas a few people, really helps me put more effort into maintaining my own emotional health. The need to continue pushing yourself in order to be of benefit to someone can be a very powerful motivator.

The positive feelings you are able to gain from being able to continue working positively towards a goal aimed at helping people can make a huge difference in your emotional well being.

For me, knowing that even just a few people are reading my blog posts is sometimes enough. I am able to be at least a little happier knowing that someone finds my work interesting, even if only a little. Knowing that I may make somewhat of a positive influence on other’s, is in itself priceless…