Active Minds at SU

In the midst of college spring break season, I’ve been encountering the subject of travel more often than usual. I love to travel, as do many of my friends, but over the years I’ve realized that my mental illnesses mean that traveling can provide unique challenges that my friends may not understand.

As much as I love vacations, traveling can trigger my anxiety and depression for various reasons. Lack of sleep, lack of time alone, and adjusting to unfamiliar surroundings are all factors that can affect my moods. In addition, transitioning back into classes after a trip can be especially difficult as I find that maintaining a consistent routine is something that helps with my mental health.

All of this is not to say that I don’t still find traveling exciting and fun - it just means that there are factors I have to consider beyond booking flights and hotels. Over the years I’ve learned various strategies to make big trips easier, and i’ve also come to understand more about myself through my travels.

The biggest lesson I’ve learned is this: just because you love something doesn’t mean it won’t be difficult. In fact, the difficulties are often what makes the experience rewarding. In addition to that, here are some tips I’ve learned that have personally helped me to take care of my mental health while traveling:

1. Don’t push yourself to do more than you can handle. It’s so tempting to try to participate in everything possible, but remember that if you push yourself too hard, you won’t be enjoying anything at all.

2. Your perfect vacation doesn’t have to look like everybody else’s.

3. Don’t put pressure on yourself to feel a certain way. Just because you’re on vacation doesn’t mean you can’t have a bad day mental health wise - it doesn’t mean you’re taking your trip for granted or that you have anything to feel guilty about.

4. Always, always remember to get enough sleep!

I hope some of these tips help anybody who is struggling with the idea of maintaining their mental health while on a vacation. Happy travels!

Those who struggle with anxiety often explore only the scary “what if’s”. What if I fail? What if I embarrass myself? What if I'm not good enough? Instead, challenge yourself to change these negative “what if” questions to positive ones. What if I succeed? What if this is a great experience? What if I learn valuable lessons that can help me to grow? By doing so, you can find the courage to overcome anxieties and allow yourself the chance to succeed.

Some days

I can barely breathe

Salt water filling my lungs

But there is no ocean nearby

That I am drowning in

Some days

I can see my body

Six feet above the ground

Floating with the clouds

But I never reach that high

I always come back down

Some days

My thoughts turn to mush

And the past

Spills into my poetry

Tasting of something sour

And feeling like something

I swore I forgot

Some days

I am here

But just barely

My face burns crimson

From the heat of a conversation

My hands shake from the anticipation

My eyes look away when you come by

Some days

I let your call go to voicemail

Even as there is so much to say

Some days

I feel so tired

Of feeling tired

Of hoping the medication

Will finally work

Of praying

Maybe someday

Anxiety will be a stranger

But maybe I am the only stranger here

Some days

I have no idea

Where I am going

But somehow,

I know

I will get there

Sexual assault and matters of discrimination are to be taken seriously. It is on all of us to make sure these topics are addressed, and that individuals who feel marginalized on campus know they have a place. Do your part to spread awareness of resources, educate your peers, and speak up for others who may not have a voice in a given situation.

— Active Minds at Syracuse University

Having been abroad for three months, I feel like I have done and seen a lot. I immerse myself in Copenhagen’s culture on a daily basis: I live with a host family, I explore different parts of the city, I take the public transportation, I eat obscene amounts of food. Up until recently, there was one part of the culture here that I felt I hadn’t exposed myself to: the bike culture.

Biking in Copenhagen is a huge part of life. Around 55% of Danes bike to work, and 58% bike to school. It’s better for the environment, it’s less expensive and requires less maintenance than driving, and it’s extremely efficient. It’s totally normal here to see a grown man in a suit aggressively ding his bike bell on the way to the office.

I went out on a limb and rented a bike for the remainder of the semester.

Having not ridden a bike for nine years, my confidence was lacking. I was told by friends that riding a bike was, well, “just like riding a bike.” Many told me this was an activity I could revisit with ease. Clearly, no one took into account my absence of natural athleticism. Twenty seconds after hopping on my bike, I found myself laying on the ground of Copenhagen City Center with my bike on top of me. An embarrassing fall left my body and my ego bruised. I had tried so hard to blend in with the locals and basically just screamed “I AM AMERICAN” to everyone who witnessed this scene. I walked my bike for the rest of the day. I was sure I wasn’t going to use it again, and considered returning it.

When I got home in the evening and told my host family about the whole ordeal, I was pressured to go outside and try again. Accompanied by my 15-year-old host sister and her best friend, I was worried about making a fool of myself failing at something that was so natural to them. I wobbled up and down the street on my bike while my host sister effortlessly glided next to me. I biked on the wrong side of the street momentarily and definitely got a lot of stares from locals passing by, but I didn’t fall. The next day I biked to the beach, and I didn’t fall. Yesterday I biked to the grocery store, and I didn’t fall.

Today, I biked to and home from the train station and I didn’t fall. When I was laying on the ground in city center, I couldn’t even fathom the idea of getting back up to try again. Just days later and I’m basically ready to start my training for the Tour de France. I feel empowered and successful. I challenged myself, and thanks to the friends and host family support I had in place, I was able to persevere despite being scared to repeat my mistake.

Studying abroad is about a lot more than just traveling. This semester has basically been a crash course on learning about and developing myself. If I dwelled on a mistake every time I messed up or faced a challenge I wouldn’t have any time to enjoy the incredible country I’m in. If I wasn’t able to laugh at my mistakes I would honestly be in such a constant state of misery and embarrassment because I really make a lot of them. 

Living in a new country is hard! It’s not going to come easy; a lot of things won’t in my lifetime. The newfound patience and perseverance I have are my biggest takeaways from studying abroad. The skills I’m gaining here I’ll have forever. Souvenirs and weekend trips are nice, but falling on my face and exposing myself while trying to indulge myself in the culture is something so much more valuable (apparently). 

Hey guys, it’s been a while.

I wanted to spend some time talking about how to cope with mental illness while being in college.

I want to give some tips and reminders for those of us who are struggling with our mental health while being in college or school. I know firsthand how hard it can be so I thought it might benefit some of you if I shared my experience and what works for me.

Find your resources!

It’s so important to know where, who and what your resources are. For me, I needed to find out where the my school’s counseling center was, where psychological services was and where the office of disability services was. I also connected to my school’s office of student affairs because it was helpful to have someone else advocate for me. I wanted to know where I could go if I needed to talk to someone. I also sought out group therapy and figured out when and where it would be.

Make a wellness plan

Here’s something that you can think about while you’re working through your illnesses. A wellness plan can be something as simple as a layout of how you’re going to take care of yourself throughout the week or even a longer time period like the whole year or even your life. It can be made into a physical thing like a book or a document where you lay it all out or just something in your head that you keep in mind. For me, I do both. I like to write out what I’m going to do that semester and year to better myself in terms of my mental health. I make a Google Doc of my steps and who I’ll be meeting with. I also keep in my head what I want to do so it’s always in the back of my mind.

Another good thing about wellness plans is getting a journal of a log of your triggers. It’s helpful for you but also helpful you others when you want to help them get a sense of how they can help you. Being able to identify your triggers and what sparks bad times can help you get a better hold on your mental health in general.

Talk to your professors

Now this one has been a tough one for me and I can tell it’s hard for a lot of us. I try my best to explain to my professors at the beginning of each semester what I’m going through. I tell them my diagnoses and explain to them what that means for me. I tell them about what I need and what supports need to be in place for me to do well in that course. Now, I usually have a letter from my school’s office of disability services to accompany this conversation because it sometimes helps to have another person validate what I’m going through. I like to get a sense of who the professor is and if they’re going to be compassionate about my struggles. This is always the hardest part for me. I don’t like to use my illnesses as an excuse or a disclaimer but I know I need to talk to professors in order to avoid trouble in the future. It has worked for the best for me but I have had a couple of tough professors who weren’t as understanding as they could have been.

Have a social life, too!

Aside from all the talk about academics, you need to do stuff outside of class once in awhile. I’m not a social butterfly by any means. I hate social events, I hate group events, I do not like to talk to new people. But I know it helps a lot when I get myself out there and do not isolate myself. It helps me to at least leave my comfort zone for a second and engage with others. It’s good for me. Sometimes I go to campus events that I think are interesting, like movie showings or concerts. I try to go with friends to their events, too. I also like to go to parties that my friend’s friends are having. It’s nice to get out with my friends and meet other people who are like us. Being social can be exhausting but I think there are benefits.

SELF CARE

Taking the time to take care of yourself is probably the most important part of this list. I know whenever I talk to my advisors and even some professors, they stress that I keep up with my self care. It’s so important to take time away from everything else and just do something you like. Play a video game, read that book that’s collecting dust, do a face mask, eat some cake, take a long shower. Do something that you usually don’t have time for and enjoy it.

Time management/time balancing

This one has always been hard for me and I’m still struggling with it. Make a schedule for your life. Use your phone, Google Calendar, something. I like to put all my classes on my calendar and then add things to it as I go. So, if I have a meeting, I add that to my calendar immediately. I try to also take time for self care and social stuff. It can be a lot to juggle so it’s good to have some sort of system.

Eating and sleeping

I’m going to put these two together because they are both important. MAKE SURE YOU ARE EATING AND SLEEPING. I say that in caps because it is so important to our mental health to keep our physical health up too. Make sure you’re getting those nutrients, drink tons of water & get to bed! Set a bedtime for yourself and hold yourself accountable. College life does not promote good sleeping habits but it’s up to you to get sleep. For me, if I don’t have a good sleep schedule, it throws everything else off and I start to slip into a bad place. It’s so important to keep yourself intact especially with the basics like eating and sleeping.

Some gentle reminders…

Grades aren’t your worth

Your grades do not determine how worthy you are. You are not equal to an F. You are more than your grades.

School isn’t everything

It can be an important part of your life but it is not your life. It can seem that way with how society is but it’s not. You come first.

Your mental health is first

I can’t stress this enough. If your mental health isn’t taken care of, then everything else goes to shit. You need to be okay in the head to be productive and flourish. It’s a challenge, but you got this. We got this.

Original Post by Delaney: https://insanebeliever.wordpress.com/

This is my mental health/mental illness related blog. I’m going to tell you about my day to day and if you relate, let’s survive together.

For about eight years I have struggled with an impulse control disorder that causes me to pick at my eyebrows in reaction to stress.

Around eighth grade, I started noticing gaps in my eyebrows where hair used to be. Once thick and full , I noticed as they became thinner and more scarce. What used to be one of my favorite physical qualities became something I dreaded seeing when I looked in the mirror.

I knew that i wasn’t alone in suffering from anxiety, but I felt alone in that mine manifested itself physically. I was embarrassed that my brain’s reaction to stress was to make me pull my own hair out. My discomfort with my appearance throughout high school led to further challenges academically and socially. I felt out of control in my own body, and thought my hair-pulling defined me.

Once I started school at Syracuse University, I began to independently explore and develop my interests. I declared a social work major, and found myself excelling in classes that I found meaningful and powerful. The content I learned was teaching me skills that would enable me to help marginalized communities, people with mental health issues, and families in untraditional situations. I became active in the mental health community on my campus by joining Active Minds, a mental health awareness and advocacy group. The meetings, panels, and discussions I have attended broadened my knowledge, made me more self-confident, and surrounded me with passionate, well-rounded people.

It took me until very recently to realize that my trichotillomania may just be one of many things in my life I can’t control. Once I developed a positive self-image, I realized that there is so much more to who I am than the fact that I have a compulsive reaction to stress. Developing a positive self-perception was life changing for me; I’m happier, more empathetic, and more productive. I can better see the impact my actions and words have on others. 

My hair-pulling is something that will probably always hang over me. Even after coming to terms with it, it’s taken me until now to speak out about it. This is, however, a disorder that impacts hundreds of thousands of people. I can only hope that my speaking out will empower people to have a more positive outlook on themselves rather than dwelling on the presence of their anxiety and letting a single compulsive quality define them. 

I have a vivid memory from middle school of an afternoon spent hanging out in my older sister’s room with her and one of her friends. They were asking me about school, about my social life, just random, normal conversation. I answered their questions, and at some point without thinking made some sort of self-deprecating joke. My sister’s friend looked at me and said “Tell me five things you like about yourself”.

I was confused. She repeated herself. She told me that I shouldn’t insult myself, and that to make up for it I should think about all of the reasons I was awesome. 

It took me a full ten minutes to come up with five traits that I really liked about myself. I was embarrassed listing them out loud. It felt like I was bragging. But when I finally listed my five things, she nodded in acceptance, and we returned to our conversation.

Although it’s been many years, I return to that afternoon a lot. I think about how easy it was to criticize myself, and yet how hard it was to turn around and do the opposite. Self-deprecation was just how everyone I knew talked. It was vain to say you liked yourself; it was cool to say you didn’t. Years later, the people I surround myself with are much more positive. We build each other up and build ourselves up. We’re proud of our achievements. And yet I still sometimes feel that negativity seep into conversations. “I’m so stupid”. “I can’t this outfit off”. “I wish my hair looked like hers”. It’s so much more common to hear sentences like these than to hear things like “I love how I look today”, or “I did really well on this paper, I’m proud of myself”. 

I’m writing this blog post in the hope that I can encourage myself and others to kick this habit of self-criticism. So here are five things that I like about myself:

I’m smart

I’m creative

I have nice eyebrows

I’m passionate

I’m a good friend.

Your turn: what are five things that you like about yourself?

I feel a lot of pressure to make my semester abroad the best 4-5 months of my life. Social media hugely reinforces this stress by showing me how happy and busy other traveling students look. As I scroll through Instagram, Facebook, and Snapchat, everyone I know appears so well-adjusted to their drastically new settings. It’s sometimes hard for me to justify taking time to just relax and process my surroundings when I feel as though everyone is utilizing every second of their day to explore and socialize.

This perception that social media creates is dangerous. When switching from a comfortable setting to one that is so far and foreign, it is only natural to feel uncomfortable and overwhelmed. In the beginning of my journey abroad, I felt like I was the only one who was not yet acclimated to my new environment. While I was scared and lonely, I, too, showcased my adventures abroad as picture perfect.

Studying abroad, however, is not all smooth sailing. There are good days and bad days, just as there are when you are at home or at your respective university. I feel school stress and pressure to find a summer internship. The time change, different climate and physical surroundings, and constant activities takes a toll on one’s physical and mental health. I frequently struggle with exhaustion while studying in Copenhagen, where the days are extremely short and the darkness is much more than what I’m used to.

After sharing my feelings with a few friends, I learned that they felt similarly to me in that they were still getting adjusted but perceived everyone else as having a perfect experience. It was comforting knowing my feelings were valid and not unique. I began to open up more about my difficulty adjusting and found that this occurrence is widely shared, even among people who I thought were having an incredible time.

It’s okay to be anxious and uncomfortable; in fact, it’s something that should be embraced. We need to give ourselves credit for being brave enough to live, take classes, and make friends in a completely new environment. It’s difficult to not compare your experience with the experiences others seem to be having, but there is so much more than meets the eye as far as what people are posting on social media.  From an Instagram post, you can’t see the complications someone had navigating a completely new public transit system and getting lost on her way to the destination. A snapchat story of plane tickets for a weekend trip doesn’t showcase the stress someone faced trying to find people to travel with for the weekend.

Take your study abroad experience one day at a time. Push yourself to grow and learn, but know your limits. Find activities that interest you and make you happy rather than forcing yourself to do what you think you should do. Be honest with yourself and consider what you need to have a happy, healthy, and productive semester abroad.

Our first General Body Meeting will be this Tuesday, January 30, 2018 in Hall of Languages 214 at 7pm! There will be snacks!

Active Minds

Members of Active Minds at SU focus on raising awareness about mental health issues, reducing the stigma toward people living with mental illness and promoting self-health.

Throughout the year, the club brings in therapy dogs, hosts stress-relief events and brings speakers to campus. In the past, they’ve created an art installation on the Quad based on what mental health means to people across campus.

All of Active Minds’ club meetings and events are posted on their Facebook page, and any interested students can attend. General body meetings are every other Tuesday evening. There are no membership fees required to be a part of the club.

Active Minds listens to SU students as well as organizations like the Counseling Center to hear concerns about support and resources.

“I like that we’re able to connect the gap between administration and students,” said Thandar Zone, Active Minds’ engagement chair. “We see how everyone is very willing and wanting to help.”

Zone added that the stigma behind mental health shouldn’t deter people from coming to meetings. You don’t need to be living with mental illnesses to participate, she explained.

“We’re open, we’re just here to help,” Zone said.

Meet the E-Board: Co-Communications Chair (On Leave/Abroad)

Maia Garcia '19

Major: Social Work

Favorite Movie: Freedom Writers

Ideal Vacation: Scuba diving in the great barrier reef

Fun Fact: I am obsessed with sloths.