Getting Your Shit Together X Mental Health Monday

Falling off the bandwagon can be frustrating; you can have your shit together for a while and then suddenly you don’t have your shit together and it can be confusing which leads to frustration! Having a mental illness is tough and it's not necessarily your fault that you don't have your shit together, you can just wake up and not have a clue how to function correctly but you do have some power in the situation...So how do you get your shit together then? 

Getting your shit together requires baby steps, depending on the severity of your decline you may need to focus just on the basics for a while, give yourself a sticker when you've achieved it this will release endorphins and create a sense of achievement that you can and should be proud of; It's not easy breaking the cycle but even if you only do 1 basic task you'll start to feel a little more put together. 

It takes 3 weeks to form habits good or bad; the choice is yours how long you fall off the bandwagon for but just know the longer you leave it to get your shit together again the more work it’s gonna take to get back on the bandwagon - that’s not to say it’s impossible quite the opposite if you practice the skills of basics for 3 weeks you’ll have mastered it, back on your shit and ready to do more!

When you've mastered the basics then add 1 thing to your todo list when you’re comfortable with that then add 2 things to your todo list…it might take a few months before your upto 3 tasks and the basics in a day (by basics I mean hygiene, getting dressed, eating and cleaning) anything else would be something to add to your todo list. Obviously there are exceptions to this like if you have certain priorities like work or kids that’s just something you’d add to the basics however if it’s just somewhere you need to be that’s semi non-urgent in comparison to work that would be a task you add to your todo list if that makes sense? 

Mental Illnesses require daily effort to become stable and it's okay to feel overwhelmed by the basics sometimes; Don't beat yourself up if you can't achieve any of them, in this case try do something calming like colour in a colouring book or try a 10 minute guided meditation. Then once you feel calm you can prioritise which task(s) are most important and aim to do at least one of them - remember there's 3 parts to every day just because you didn't manage in the morning doesn't mean you can't all day long. 

Till next time,

Stevie x