Nerdy Knits for my Mental Health

Before we jump into it, though, I just wanna say something to you guys - while I really appreciate the likes on these posts and it’s so, so lovely to see my work being found and appreciated, but I would like to ask you guys a favour if possible! Would you be able to perhaps reblog this or check out the full post on my blog (link in bio to not mess up Tumblr tags) or to check out my twitter (bio again) and help me spread the words over there a little

Basically, any vouch that you guys can give me if you like my stuff is so, so appreciated and, yeah, would mean the world to me!

Anyway, lets get into it!

As you can see I got four faction symbols completed! The flags of the Eggpire, Las Nevadas and Kinoko Kingdom and then my own design to represent The Syndicate

the original Eggpire flag was designed by Nikiforosisgone! There’s not a close up photo with the faction members because I haven’t yet done the squares for the individual faction members for the Eggpire - but this is a cry for help. Please send me ideas for Bad (and any of the others, really, aide from Ponk) because I’m completely stumped as to what to design for his square!

Any and all suggestions will be so very appreciated!

The original design for the Kinoko Kingdom flag was created by estchiyu on twitter!

I think that the flag came out looking pretty good! It looks better in person actually, because I was taking these photos after, like, three hours sleep so I wasn’t really functioning properly to be honest with y’all. But what’s also pretty exciting is that I’ve done the first drafts of almost all of Kinoko Kingdom now! Just Drista to go and then all four residents will have their squares completed for the first time

(of course I’m gonna have to go back and improve them all afterwards, but that’s pretty cool, right?)

And I also have plans for what I’m going to do for Drista, which is even more exciting!!!

The Las Nevdas flag design was originally made by Fundy on his stream a couple of months back

Out of the four pieces I made this time around, this is probably the one that I’m the least keen on - I made some mistakes when writing up the pattern and so it has meant that I somehow fucked up and the emblem isn’t centred, so I’m gonna have to start from scratch I think to figure out where I went wrong there

But I think the colours and shades I used are pretty spot on - I just need to figure out the gauge for the white wool because it doesn’t seem to be right, if you get me? 

But this is gonna be another quick cry for help: I’m pretty stumped as to what to do for the designs for Slimesicle and Fundy (I don’t want to just do a fox, you know?) so if you have any ideas as to what I can do to represent their characters please let me know! 

This design for the Syndicate is actually made up by me - it’s not a flag, of course. But I needed something to represent their faction as a whole, so I settled on this

There’s a lot more details about this design in my full blog post (link to my site in my bio if you’re interested!) so I’ll skim over some of the more important parts

I knew I had to include the end portal/table somehow, it was just a matter of doing the table as a whole or using the design for the blocks as a border - I’m gonna be playing around with this design a lot more in the future and I think it’ll probably end up with me using the portal design as a border for the design

Then I couldn’t decide what to do on either side of the table - I wanted to do little icons for every member or the initial of their codename, but then wasn’t happy with how they came out looking and so eventually settled on the firework rockets, but they’re much more of a placeholder than anything else

Regardless, I do think that it came out looking pretty cool, considering that when I started I had basically no idea what I wanted it to look like!

I also need help for Niki and Ranboo’s individual squares, so if you have ideas... send ‘em in!

If you are interested in checking out the full post which goes into a lot more details about all the squares and also the blanket plans in general then there’s a link to my website/blog in my bio! As I already said, my social links are also up there and any support you can offer me either on this platform, on my twitter or my instagram is so, so appreciated!

And so, I gave it a go.

The thing about the Butterfly project, is that it makes you reflect on the people important to you, to think about how they would feel about you self harming. It forces you to consider their thoughts if they knew what you were doing.

Very, very few people know about my previous experiences with self harm – this may surprise you, but it’s not something that I go around telling everyone about. It was a part of my life that, largely, I dealt with myself. It wasn’t until I had been clean for a little while and thought that I was on the road to recovery that I even thought about breaching the subject with the girl who had been my best friend since we were six months old (she’s probably gonna pop up a lot in these blogs I should give her a nickname at some point…)

And even now, she doesn’t even know the half of it. I didn’t want her to, I didn’t want her to feel sorry for me or to be disappointed in me, or to feel as though I was burdening her with my problems. There was even a part of me worried that this fantastic, wonderful friend of mine who I love so, so dearly, would think that what I was doing to myself was just a ploy to get attention.

But even back then, when I first discovered the butterfly project, when she just knew the smallest details of my inner turmoil (I don’t exactly remember what I had confided in her at that point – perhaps she just knew that it was an urge I got sometimes, not something that I had indulged in before), I knew for a fact that she would be so, so upset if I had given in.

Drawing a butterfly on my wrist, naming it after her – one of the most important people in my life – made it easier for me to remember why I had forced myself to stop in the first place. Because sometimes it feels like it’s too hard to get better for yourself, but it feels a little easier to try for someone else.

Sometimes I wish that I had heard about the Butterfly project earlier, when I was trying to quit for the first time. But other times I think that I learnt about it at just the right time for me. For me, the butterflies remind me, in a roundabout way, that I am loved. That there are people who care about me, who would be disappointed or upset with me to see me slipping back into old, bad habits or coping mechanisms or whatever you want to call them.

The thing is, however, I’m not a very artistic person and so I did feel somewhat awkward walking around with a badly drawn butterfly on my wrist. So a few nights ago when I was, once again, trying to calm down and remind myself of how far I’ve come, I tried something a little different, based off of what I already know I’m okay at.

(I’m sure you all already know where this is going)

Made with the shakiest hands imaginable and enough tears to fill the Olympic swimming pool (I’ve been watching a lot of Olympics to cope recently), I knit myself a butterfly.

I made it over the course of a few rough nights in which I needed to be reminded of why I quit. It was nice to be able to create something rather meaningful to me in the medium of knitting, which I now find a real comfort.

And that’s one thing that I think is so fantastic about this project – you start with the basic principle of the butterflies and then you can turn it into something that works a little better for you as time goes on. Perhaps moving from butterflies to some other animal, or from drawing to another medium.

I suppose this butterfly doesn’t really work in terms of the rule of it dying if I do give in, but for the moment it works well for me.

And it’s probably something that I’ll keep doing on nights where it all seems too much and I want to go back to my old ways. By the end of the month, I may have a whole kaleidoscope of knitted butterflies around my room (hopefully not, but if I do, it’ll be a sight to behold!).

(apologies for the deviation here but I need to say it – this pattern is not by me, it was created by Ginny (Ginxcraft) on Etsy)

This project is something that means a lot to a lot of people, many of whom are similar to me. And if this can find someone, anyone, who has been struggling with this, struggling with finding the right resources to help them or just needing someone who understands and has been through it, I thought that I’d write this post as a reminder that you are not alone and that what you feel is valid and I hope that the project can help you as it has me.

I hope that this post will encourage those of you who want to share to come forwards with your own experiences with the butterfly project and that we can come together to try to offer support to those who need it

Not dreaded because of the people – no, everyone who I speak to from my course is lovely and caring and so, so understanding.

Or… I suppose it is because of the people. Because I don’t deal well with people. I never have. In a way, I just don’t understand them, I struggle to read them because I’m too focused on trying to follow the correct social etiquette, always so sure that I’m going to mess something up, become a public laughing stock.

Sure that they have formed a secret club and there will be some form of ‘social initiation’ that I will probably fail.

Eleven minutes.

Though, I’m sure I’ve already failed the test seeing as though I can never bring myself to reply to the messages on the group chat.

I so desperately hope that they don’t take my constant silence on there personally. But I can’t explain it to them, I would never be able to find the words to explain how exhausting I find even the smallest amount of social interaction. Or how I could spend hours tweaking my responses to their messages, wanting to make sure that I got the right tone, wrote the right thing, hit the right joke.

How it’s just easier to silently panic over replying than it is to live in fear that I’ve said the wrong thing.

Ten minutes.

I’m sure that the Zoom icon is taunting me.

If it had eyes they would be staring right back at me, boring into my skull, reading my mind and coming up with an abundance of ways it can make me squirm.

Am I still invited to the call?

They haven’t explicitly said that I could come. Perhaps I ought to read between the lines and not turn up. Maybe they took my lack of public response on the matter as my saying that I couldn’t make it or that I wasn’t interested.

Nine minutes.

Maybe in this scenario it would simply be best to tell them that I was feeling unwell and so wouldn’t be able to join them. It would probably be a relief to them – after all, they are all a few years older than me, with real lives, real jobs and real hobbies and a real chance to take what we learn on this course to their futures.

They don’t really want me there.

My thumb hovers over the home button on my phone, ready to unlock it and open the WhatsApp chat to send a message to say I was feeling unwell.

It wouldn’t be a lie, and it wasn’t a lie either the countless times before where I had sent a message saying I was sick so couldn’t complete some of the work or couldn’t make it to some of the other group sessions.

Eight minutes.

But I know that they must think it’s a lie every time I say I’m feeling unwell.

After all, physically I am fine. But I don’t know how to tell them that every conscious moment I am simultaneously exhausted by everything, even thinking of reading a few pages, and yet also completely wide awake, jittering and fidgeting, desperate for my brain to just shut up for a moment.

I close my eyes again, feeling wetness gathering at the corners and I bite my lip to stifle a pitiful whimper. I clench the hand that isn’t holding my phone, finding a vicious comfort in how my ragged, bitten down nails dig into the palm of my hand.

Six minutes

When I open my eyes next it is to find that two minutes have been wasted and three more messages have come through to my phone.

One with the room code and password and link which serve to twist my stomach into knots and clog up my throat and I struggle to breathe.

The next is a photo of two children, tucked into bed. One looks half asleep, eyes looking drowsily up at the person who was taking the photo (the same woman who had been concerned about being late) with a tired smile. The other was far more awake, sitting up in bed and his arm is blurry as he’s moving to grab a book from his bedside table.

The image makes me smile. It helps me to breathe easier.

The final message waiting for me on the group chat is simple, and yet makes all the difference to me as I try to suppress my panic over joining the call.

“I hope everyone can make it this week! I can’t wait to catch up with you all!”

Five minutes

With still shaking hands but renewed assurance I navigated my mouse to hover over the malicious icon.

There’s a few moments after I click it where it doesn’t boot up and I am left with the sudden irrational fear that Zoom itself – the hivemind, if you will – has decided to intervene and save my course mates (my friends?) from having to endure my company.

And then-

Four minutes

the familiar coloured bubbles. The screen welcoming me to the meeting and for a brief moment I can’t remember why I was so panicked about joining as I navigate myself to the ‘join meeting’ button and click it, writing in the room details.

It’s instinctive, the way that my fingers type the name “Freddie”, rather than my full, real name which they all know me by. After all, most of my friends call me Freddie by now and hearing the nickname is somewhat of a comfort to me because of that.

I suck in a breath and try to stop the menacing carousel in my mind, going over every possible outcome of what would happen if I didn’t change it to the name that they knew me by.

Three minutes

I type quickly, erasing Freddie and replacing it with the old, familiar letters and don’t hesitate before ticking the box to turn off my video.

I sit back at my desk chair and wait, chewing anxiously on my nails as I wait for the minutes to pass.

I can’t be early.

I can’t be late.

I’ll click join meeting the moment that 7 o’clock hits so that I can’t be judged or mocked for being early or late, I’ll just be on-time. Reliable, boring, safe and on-time.

Two minutes

I can’t help but worry that my course mates will be able to hear how my leg is shaking beneath the desk. The movement sends tiny ripples across the surface of my now lukewarm tea.

I pick up the mug, cradling it in my hands in the hope that it will be enough to stop them from being able to see how my hands are visibly shaking.

I count to ten, I try to slow my breathing down into something more manageable, something more natural. I try to focus on something – anything else.

The dog zipping past the window as she cases the ball thrown by my laughing brother, the smell from the kitchen and the quiet murmurs and laughter of my parents poking fun at each other. Above me I can hear the footsteps of my older brother, home for the weekend and having turned his room back to normal from the make-shift study I had set up for myself in there.

I consider going to grab a blanket, something to hold on my lap properly, something to curl into and make myself small. But as the thought crosses my mind, my eyes flick to the clock in the corner of my screen and something pierces through my chest.

I’m one minute late.

I type in the password at least three times incorrectly before at last being allowed into the meeting.

Nine faces smile at my entrance, calling out cheerful greetings and “glad you could make it”‘s, some just raising their hands in a wave before they return to the conversation they were already having.

I turn my camera on, hiding myself in the folds of my hoodie but smiling at them all the same, nodding along to the conversation.

And about half an hour in, my heart has finally stopped pounding and my brain has lost its fog and I can breathe again.

(you may be able to tell from this short story that I’ve been having a lot of Zoom calls with my coursemates and as much as I love all of them, Norbert acts up every single time and this is what I go through and I wanted to get it out on the page. Let me know your thoughts and if you’ve had similar experiences with Zoom or anything of the sort! Links to all my socials and website and the like are all in my bio if you’re interested!

1. Sensory Overload

So this is a big one and I genuinely think that I could talk about it forever, but I’ll try to keep it short. I hadn’t actually realised until very recently that sensory overload was a real thing.

All those times I was sent spiralling into a panic attack because everything was too loud around me? Or when I would have to literally cover my ears and start humming to try to calm myself down because I was finding some background noise too loud? Or how, year after year at my dad’s birthday party I would end the night sobbing on the ground because the fireworks were just too fucking loud?

Yep, sensory overload.

And there I was thinking that there was no real cause, that I was just being dramatic or perhaps I was just a little jumpier than most people. But no, it’s a very real thing that doesn’t get talked about enough, and I wish that I had known that it had a name and that other people were going through the same thing because I think that then I would have known how to better deal with it when all my senses were too overwhelming

You’re not strange for getting overwhelmed in situations that are too loud or by textures that you don’t like or anything like that – it’s not just you that it happens to. And so please reach out to someone who you know does understand it and don’t be afraid of asking them if they can help you figure out healthy ways of managing those times where you are feeling that overwhelmed

And if you don’t know who to ask, then I’m here. Be it on my instagram, twitter or Tumblr (where I do have anonymous asks open) if you feel like you want to talk to me about it please don’t hesitate to. I will repeat again that I’m not at all a medical professional, but I do have a solid past 19 or so years coping with my own sensory overload bullshit so I can try to help you to figure out what works for you

It sucks to feel alone going through any mental health shit, but in particular this always makes me feel so, so lonely and if I can help anyone going through it to feel even just a smidge less isolated then that’s a win in my books

2. Adrenaline Crashing After Social Situations

This is such a big one for me, but I think that a lot of my friends who I’ve spoken about it with all already knew that this was a thing and I was just being dumb about it. But I wanted to put it down anyway in case there are people who don’t realise that this is pretty normal

When you go out into a social situation or even just somewhere out of your comfort zone like leaving your house and going to a public space or I know I get it when I go into a shop, even if I use self service I still get a huge adrenaline rush just from being outside basically. 

Because to your anxious brain’s mind you have just returned to somewhere safe (your home or school or friend’s house for example) from an environment that it deemed as being ‘unsafe’, hence why it activated your fight or flight. So naturally upon returning to a place that you feel comfortable in and it starts to regulate your hormone levels again it’s going to leave you drained and sometimes the comedown from that can send you spiralling into a panic attack

Again: it sucks. But it’s a normal thing, please don’t think that you’re overreacting or exaggerating or whatever because of it. A lot of people with anxiety have this happen to them

3. Post-Event Rumination

It’s essentially just being completely and utterly self critical over everything that you did, even if you weren’t doing anything out of the ordinary

For example, if I ran into my neighbour and had a quick conversation with her, literally just exchanging no more than just “hi, how are you?”‘s, that run-in would be playing on repeat in my head for at least the next day and I’d be sure that I must have said something wrong or she knows something that I don’t or anything like that.

For me, if the adrenaline crash wasn’t enough to send me spiralling into a panic attack, post event rumination pretty much always is. But I found a weird amount of comfort in being told that, actually, it’s a thing that a lot of people deal with! A lot of people do it and I’m not strange for being one of them. So that was nice for me to hear at the time, especially to find out that it’s real enough that it had a name, and so I thought that there was someone else out there who might need to hear it too

4. Crashing/Spacing Out

This one is so, so common for me, but no matter how often it happens I always just feel so fucking rude, like, it can literally be the most interesting conversation in the entire world and I just…. won’t be able to concentrate? For the life of me?

As it turns out, though, that’s apparently completely normal for people with anxiety, especially in regards to the social side of it. It’s something that I actually did research in myself rather than trying to talk to one of my friends about it. And that’s because I didn’t know how to admit to being constantly spacing out in conversations with them (as in, more than they would notice) without it straight up just sounding really rude.

But it only took me a pretty quick Google search to tell me that it was actually not at all uncommon. A lot of the time, it just comes from being completely drained by conversations or sometimes (going back to the sensory overload thing) the environment just making it too hard for me to fully concentrate because of fucking birds or something

So yeah, next time that you catch yourself spacing out in a conversation please don’t feel bad about yourself because of it. Of course, it’s incredibly inconvienient and will probably always make you feel a little rude, but it’s got a cause and it is normal and usually it’s totally out of your control, too. Most people will understand it if it does happen so please, please don’t beat yourselves up about it

5. Romanticisation of Mental Health

I guess that this isn’t really, like, normalising something any more than it’s just me having a bit of a rant about how mental health is seen a lot of the time from the outside thanks to it being completely misrepresented in the media

I just know that the very first time that I saw a panic attack on a TV show was during one of the earliest episodes of Teen Wold (which I still haven’t finished by the way – anyone who’s reading this and has seen it, should I watch the rest?) and I remember Stiles getting kissed by Lydia as a way to bring him back from a panic attack.

I genuinely cannot stress enough how averse to that I am now, knowing what I do about how I and my friends deal with my/their panic attacks and anxiety – that is my worst nightmare!

My aim in making this post was to try to bring some people going through these things some comfort by being able to understand that what they are going through is completely valid and that there are ways to cope with it no matter how lost and alone you feel trying to navigate it

So please add on your own things that you wished you knew about anxiety earlier, what you wish you had known was normal or even things that you think not enough people are aware about – comment it or DM me or whatever, I just want to be able to raise awareness of these kinds of stuff

Anyway, figured I’d fill the post with photos of my dog looking sweet as fuck because she is the loveliest dog in the world (send me dog photos boys)

Thank you for reading, I hope that you’re well and if you wanna check out the full post I wrote it’s on my blog - there’s a link in my bio to it!

I hope that you’re well,