stay hydrated, you meme loving fucks

‘eating healthy’ sounds vague and kinda obvious, but proper nutrition is very important for your mental health; get tested for vitamin and mineral deficiency and work with a healthcare professional to create a diet that has all the nutrients you need (and which you can actually follow)

exercise might not cure your depression, but it has a lot of benefits for your health and can make you feel significantly better; ‘going for a walk’ is not a bad idea - if it’s something you can do, there’s a good chance it will help improve your mood, concentration and overall mental health

an average neurotypical person probably won’t ever have a problem with telling they are dehydrated (they’ll get thirsty and drink way before that), but a ND person might struggle with reading body signals and get dehydrated as a result; drinking a glass of water or a beverage of choice won’t hurt you, and it might improve your mood and cognition

sleep has a massive effect on your mental and physical health, and fixing your sleep schedule has clinically significant benefits for treating mental illness; if it’s not something you can do on your own, work with a mental health professional and find solutions (like meds for example) that can allow you to have a proper sleep schedule

mindfulness meditation is not a cure for everything but it does have the potential to improve your well-being and give you that much needed peace of mind; it is also free, available to everyone and, unless you have a dissociative condition, won’t hurt you to try it

the way you think and ‘talk’ to yourself (your mental monologue) matters - fixing that is a part of cognitive behavioral therapy; if you don’t want to be suicidal, you shouldn’t be constantly making ‘guess i’ll die’ jokes; if you want to improve your self-esteem, you shouldn’t be calling yourself ‘trash’; work with a mental health professional to change that

social media can be a great thing, but it can be a bad thing too - in some cases, social media makes your mental health worse, and so can social isolation; pushing people away won’t help you, and sometimes calling your mom or going out with your friends can be a great mood boost

recovery *is* possible; people do recover from mental illness; psychotherapy and medication might not be a perfect solution, but they do help; don’t give up, even if right now it feels like nothing can ever improve

when people give you this type of advice, it is easy to dismiss it as ‘neurotypical bullshit’, but remember - the person giving that advice to you might be ND themselves and simply sharing a tip that has helped them; implementing these changes isn’t easy, and not everything will work, but it is worth trying; you deserve to recover, be happy and live a good life

Habitica is a habit and to-do tracking website. It is based around the premise that you are a character in an RPG game, and by keeping up with your habits and completing tasks, you get rewards, level up, fire attacks against monsters and benefit your teammates, if you have a team. It is, essentially, a tool to gamify your productivity.

As with every productivity tool there is out there, you need to find a set up that works for you in order to have it be effective. In this guide, I’ll offer you some tips to maximize its usefulness for student life.

i came back to the studyblr community after a couple of years of inactivity and all the blogs i followed back then are inactive! currently looking for active bloggers. like/reblog for me to check your blog out!!! currently i’m most interested in:

college and grad students

sign language students (lse would be i d e a l)

japanese langblrs

studyblrs focusing on linguistics and education

1. Take care of your physical health as this affects your mental health.

2. Take time-out and give yourself some space. You need to get away from the busyness.

3. Invest time in hobbies and doing things you love. These help you to switch off and get in touch with yourself.

4. Develop an attitude of gratitude as that can help remind you of some good things in your life.

5. If you can, do your best to stay in top of the mess as a tidy room can help you feel less stressed.

6. Have at least one friend you can turn to when you’re down, as we all need someone who we know is there for us,

While there are many success posts on studyblrs, I have rarely seen one talking about failure. Unfortunately, I think we sometimes value success so much that we forget about failure. Failure is an inevitable part of success.  So, without further ado, here are 3 steps on how to fail. 

1) The 24 hour rule

Give yourself 24 hours to grieve over your failure. Yes, its okay to break down and cry in bed! You have tried (so very hard) and your efforts seemed to have gone to waste. There is no point in wasting energy by forcing yourself to be optimistic immediately. Be sad. Be angry. You are entitled. 

2) Reflect

Your 24 hours are up. Now is the time to get over it. Yes, you have failed but are you really going to give up? Really? Not the slightest chance in hell. So grab a pen and look over your errors. Detach yourself from the emotional aspect and analyze your failure. What went wrong? What should you do next time? What can you improve on?

3) Get back up and try again

A lot of the time when people give advice intended to relieve anxiety, they suggest doing “relaxing” things like drawing, painting, knitting, taking a bubble bath, coloring in one of those zen coloring books, or watching glitter settle to the bottom of a jar.

This advice is always well-intentioned, and I’m not here to diss people who either give it or who benefit from it. But it has never, ever done shit for me, and this is because it goes about resolving anxiety in the completely wrong way.  

THE WORST THING YOU CAN DO when suffering from anxiety is to do a “relaxing” thing that just enables your mind to dwell and obsess more on the thing that’s bothering you. You need to ESCAPE from the dwelling and the obsession in order to experience relief.

You can drive to a quiet farm, drive to the beach, drive to a park, or anywhere else, but as someone who has tried it all many, many times, trust me–it’s a waste of gas. You will just end up still sad and stressed, only with sand on your butt. You can’t physically escape your sadness. Your sadness is inside of you. To escape, you need to give your brain something to play with for a while until you can approach the issue with a healthier frame of mind. 

People who have anxiety do not need more time to contemplate, because we will use it to contemplate how much we suck.

In fact, you could say that’s what anxiety is–hyper-contemplating. When we let our minds run free, they run straight into the thorn bushes. Our minds are already running, and they need to be controlled. They need to be given something to do, or they’ll destroy everything, just like an overactive husky dog ripping up all the furniture. 

Therefore, I present to you: 

THINGS YOU SHOULD NOT DO WHEN ANXIOUS

–Go on a walk

–Watch a sunset, watch fish in an aquarium, watch glitter, etc.

–Go anywhere where the main activity is sitting and watching

–Draw, color, do anything that occupies the hands and not the mind

–Do yoga, jog, go fishing, or anything that lets you mentally drift 

–Do literally ANYTHING that gives you great amounts of mental space to obsess and dwell on things.

THINGS YOU SHOULD DO WHEN ANXIOUS:

–Do a crossword puzzle, Sudoku, or any other mind teaser game. Crosswords are the best.

–Write something. It doesn’t have to be a masterpiece. Write the Top 10 Best Restaurants in My City. Rank celebrities according to Best Smile. Write some dumb Legolas fanfiction and rip it up when you’re done. It’s not for publication, it’s a relief exercise that only you will see. 

–Read something, watch TV, or watch a movie–as long as it’s engrossing. Don’t watch anything which you can run as background noise (like, off the top of my head, Say Yes to The Dress.) As weird as it seems, American Horror Story actually helps me a lot, because it sucks me in. 

–Masturbate. Yes, I’m serious. Your mind has to concentrate on the mini-movie it’s running. It can’t run Sexy Titillating Things and All The Things That are Bothering Me at the same time. (…I hope. If it can, then…ignore this one.) 

–Do math problems—literally, google “algebra problems worksheet” and solve them. If you haven’t done math since 7th grade this will really help you. I don’t mean with math, I mean with the anxiety. 

–Play a game or a sport with someone that requires great mental concentration. Working with 5 people to get a ball over a net is a challenge which will require your brain to turn off the Sadness Channel. 

–Play a video game, as long as it’s not something like candy crush or Tetris that’s mindless. 

THINGS YOU SHOULD DO DURING PANIC ATTACKS ESPECIALLY:

–List the capitals of all the U.S. states

–List the capitals of all the European countries

–List all the shapes you can see. Or all the colors. 

–List all the blonde celebrities you can think of.

–Pull up a random block of text and count all the As in it, or Es or whatever.  

Now obviously, I am not a doctor. I am just an anxious person who has tried almost everything to help myself.  I’ve finally realized that the stuff people recommend never works because this is a disorder that thrives on free time and free mental space. When I do the stuff I listed above, I can breathe again. And I hope it helps someone here too.