Best Time To Plant A Tree Was 20 Years Ago...

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2nd best time is now.

 

Hi I'm currently in the process of overhauling my life at 33 years old.  

Since January I have been signed off as unfit for work by my doctor due to mental health issues.  I've had these issues all most of my life but never realised it wasn't normal until recently..  I thought everyone else was running round with the same issues but they were less sensitive or better at hiding their problems.  

Anyway, i'm so far feeling happier than I was and am seeing a therapist which is helping a lot.  As part of my therapy I have been asked to conduct a very short survey to help get into the minds of how people think and how it differs from the way I think.  There are 3 survey which are anonymous and each one literally will take about 20 seconds..  So if you are someone who feels they are of good/normal mental health then it would be great if you could help me by taking a min to fill out my surveys:

 

https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/5VSNCJQ

https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/59XPWWR

https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/5D9R3HK

 

I will add more here in due course regarding my goals, plans and progress and some stuff about my mental health issues.

 

Thanks for reading

 

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So it seems most of my problems are stemming from a possible obsessive compulsive personality disorder however this needs to be confirmed by a psychologist.  

This means I have a tendency to be strive for perfection in certain areas of my life.  For me these areas are social interactions, rules and morality, work/career.  This is not sustainable for me and it's had a knock on effect causing avoidance, social anxiety and really low self esteem.  It's also caused me problems getting close to people.

My doctor has put me on medication and it does help a bit.  I hope to be off the medication by next January.

At the moment I am doing compassion focused therapy and cognitive behavioural therapy.  Through studying my mind daily I have noticed how negative my mind is by default.  It's amazing how quickly my brain will give most thoughts of future and past events a cynical or negative tone.  I never really realised the extent I was doing this until I started journaling and keeping track of my thoughts.  The aim is to replace these negative thoughts with positive thoughts until they become positive by default.

Since I started journaling and organising my thoughts, I decided to also start a bullet journal to organise my life more.  If you are a disorganised person, try a bullet journal, they really help.

This week as part of my therapy programme I will apply for volunteer work.  Primarily I will be applying to volunteer at an art gallery as once I have started to deal with my issues better I want to begin working in the creative industry as that is what I am good at and have an interest in.  My aim is to eventually  gain an internship in industrial design.  I have a degree in this field from 10 years ago and my aim is to have my sketching skills at a decent level and then re do my portfolio, ready for 12 to 18 months time.  It may be a challenge to get in to this field because of my age, however if I work hard enough I think it is possible.

My other goal is to be 14 stone lean in a years time.  I am currently 14 stone with about 18/20% body fat.

Despite these career and body aspirations, my main focus has to be on my mental health.  My goal is to be in a job by christmas and to have significantly reduced my negative thinking.  To increase the probability of reaching this goal I need to be very specific in defining or quantifying the level I want to reduce my negative thinking by.  I'm not really sure how I will do this yet and is something to think about. 

 

So currently my daily routine/checklist is as follows:

wake around 7:30, 8 am and take a cold shower ( i have been doing this for 6 months and has become a habit now)

do weights for around 1 hour to 90 mins

read therapy books or self improvement books for 30 mins

practise sketching for 1 hour (because I enjoy doing this the tendency is to sometimes neglect other things which can be a problem, usually its my therapy exercises that suffer, so I need to be more mindful of this)

Flipping awareness exercises 5 minutes

Meditation 10 mins

Journalling at the end of the day 30 mins to an hour

Any chores that need doing i will put in my bullet journal to be completed the next day. I try to keep a tidy environment as a habit and generally keep on top of general household duties.

On top of this I try to keep some new habits in check which are avoiding youtube, eating healthily and bed by 11pm.

 

If you are reading this I would be very grateful  if you could fill out my surveys in the above post, doing this will really help me with overcoming my mental health issues. They are about 5 questions each and are multiple choice and take about 20 seconds for each survey.  Ideally i need about 50 people to fill them in to get a good sample size.  So far I have had 1 person lol.  Thank you to that person.

 

That's all for now.