I’m not well. I feel fundamentally flawed. Like this world expects more of me than I can give. That in order to fit in and survive, I need to change myself, to alter the very thing that makes me, me.

Medication…

How soon should you disclose your mental illness?

This question is something I tackle every time I’m entering into a new relationship. Share your truth too soon and you scare people off. Attempt to mask and you inevitably watch it crumble. Either way, you risk being left alone…

What you eat directly impacts your metal state. Put simply, the better you eat, the better you will feel.

I spend a lot of my time researching and experimenting to find what works to best guard my mental state. I want to do everything I can to ensure that my mood is stable and that my mental health is improving over time …

If you share your mental illness or invisible illness with someone, you are asking them to imagine a condition they can only read about and can’t experience.

Really you are asking them to change the lens that they view the world by. To overlay upon their reality, one of your condition. They have to put that lens over every situation that they have ever lived through, every action both minor and major, every interpersonal interaction, as well as over their hopes and plans for the future.

"I cut myself, and I knew that it was wrong, but I felt like I had no other options. In hindsight I should have told someone, but I didn’t feel like they would understand. It was like releasing water through a dam. It felt like if I didn’t cut, that my mind would crack, with devastating results ..."

A traumatic past left me with anxiety and depression issues as well as a significant amount of pent up rage. With no guidance of how to deal with it, I turned to punching a bag for relief. Luckily for me it started to work, and I fell in love with martial arts.

Eventually I came across BJJ and I was hooked - the social atmosphere, constant learning, physicality and the practicality in a self defence situation all combined to be one of the best treatments for my mental health issues. Jiu jitsu and mental health go hand in hand. Brazilian Jiu Jitsu (BJJ) was the martial art that I had been searching for. Turns out for me, it was the best martial arts for mental health. It has everything. It is endlessly challenging, involves constant learning and has a great social environment.

It is 4am as I write this, I am slightly inebriated and my brain is buzzing. I have been up all night writing and I am still going. I can’t stop. I write to heal, and I am a mental health writer so I write to help people. I find the act itself to be therapeutic. However, it can be a double-edged sword.

I must keep writing. When I get on a roll I can’t help it. Something comes over me and I must get it out. It is an affliction. This has happened before and will happen again...

"People often excuse a behaviour if there are extenuating circumstances.

We tend to forgive, downplay or simply ignore it, because we realise that the person doing the behaviour is going through something significant and therefore are ‘not themselves’ at the moment. But there has to be a balance here as mental illness is not an excuse for abusive behavior."