self harm

lockdown love: how to motivate yourself in the lockdown

jennifer change, complex ptsd, complexptsd, covid19, gratitude, happiness, homeschooling, isolation creation, journalling, joy, knowing, law of attraction, ptsd, recovery, self awareness, self harm

How long is it for you?

6 weeks of lockdown for me. At the start, after a cupboard was cleared each day, the adjustment week break downs, walls painted and after the garden was power washed, I finally found space to focus on my creativity, finish many projects started years ago.

Yesterday I cycled round to my friend’s house (4th time on my bike in past four days, thats four times more than in the past ten years) and said what I had been doing. She said she has no motivation and maybe I could write a blog on how to motivate yourself in this lockdown. She is an extremely high powered career woman who currently can not go to work, so it’s not like she is someone not used to working. And that is ok, do not resist this. TRUST THE PROCESS. You don’t have to be motivated. But if you want to be, read on.

I took the conversation as a sign to write this blog.

The first clue on how to motivate yourself is in this title… LOVE. Lockdown love. Hate all of lockdown? Break it down into smaller parts. Just like if you say you are having a bad day, no you are not having a whole bad day, just a bad MOMENT. So, with lockdown, maybe you are enjoying a lie in? The silence? The birds? Seeing buds grow? New green leaves? Planting seeds? Slowing down a little? The clapping on a Thursday? The blue sky? I know there are some people who are in terrible situations in this lockdown. I am so sorry. Please reach out for help.
If you need to rest, REST. Stop. Try to stop any guilt about stopping too. Like my friend I talk of above, maybe now is your time to rest… AND THAT IS OK! Let yourself off the hook. Eventually you will get fed up and start doing something.
If doing nothing “triggers” you, which is does me, then this is where a TIME TABLE may come in handy. I put one together for the whole week, imagining my week as it was before lockdown, and sticking to it. For example, I have a little 5 year old so Monday is a new school week. We lie in til 8, school 11 – 12.30. Get dressed and brush teeth etc before school. Lunch 12.30 to 2, playtime and packed lunch. Then another school session 2-3.30. Then after school club. With this time structure you can focus more, quality time with your child, or quality time for you. You could also have set food nights. Tonight it’s pizza for us. A timetable keeps you structured and it also helps you remember that day it is!
Make a LIST of jobs to achieve, household jobs, DIY jobs, creative jobs. Pace yourself, one a day is enough.
Only consume things that you love. I guess if this is drugs and drink this may no have been a good thing to say. Try not to become addicted… Please try to focus on your HEALTH. With a pandemic going on it is essential to be healthy so you do not get this virus. Try to take one small step to the you you want to be. I have eaten so much chocolate each night my clothes were starting to not fit. Put on your jeans! Going on my bike has seemed to help the chocolate situation as I guess it releases endorphins or something, just like the chocolate does. Eat your food as medicine so you don’t have to each medicine as food. If you put rubbish into your body you are going to feel rubbish.
MUSIC… I have written many times about the power of music. I think it helps form new healthy neuro pathways quicker and better. thats why music lyrics stay in your head. So make sure you are listening to good, healthy lyrics. MAKE YOURSELF PLAYLIST. I have one on Spotify called BELIEVE to reprogram my head when I am feeling terrible. Recently I have even been remembering to PUT THE PLAYLIST ON. Making a playlist and not listing to it is a bit like joining a gym and not going to the gym. Think of music as a gym for your mind. SING. I put head phones on as I cycle and practise trying to sing well as I move, its good for the breathing. (I am not meant to go out as I have severe asthma.)
DO A RANDOM ACT OF KINDNESS. If you are finding it hard to do sobering for yourself, do something for someone else. You could make some happiness jars for people. I have made little hanging white clay hearts with a rainbow ribbon and a motivating and kind, compassionate word on (love, BRAVE, connect, happiness, learn, rediscover, kindness, practise gratitude, be bolder, unify, passion, MIRACLE, and I lave them on benches for people to find. Pay for someones shopping.
VISUALISE your motivation, visualise what you used to do for your self care. I have had to give up my shopping addiction. I lived right next door to the best charity shop in Exeter, Force in Heavitree (I call it “the magical charity shop” as whatever I want would appear in there, if I was patient enough). I went in there pretty much every day for 20 years. The days i did not go in was de to it being closed. The middle isles at Aldi and Lidl were also amazing distraction for me. Shopping was my stress relief, gliding around the shops, tuning into the seasons in some twisted marketing way. Feeling joy as I found something I love (this hardly ever happens, which is why I am creating my own empire). Instead I now visualise myself in the shop, as I write a list for my big girl to go to get food with (i have severe asthma, not meant to go out). Visualise finding the coffee in the right place, then bread products and cereal, then pasta and sauces, you get the idea. If you are missing going to the gym, visualise that you are in the gym and exercise. If you used to go to the cinema as a stress relief, have a proper movie night with pop, popcorn and darkness, even in the day. If you miss going out for drinks, do as my big girl does and have an online pub quiz with your friends, dress up and get a bottle of wine in.
Find your PASSION. You will be more motivated if you do something you are passionate about. So, ff you want to do a big project, listen to your heart. You can only listen to your heart when you are still. We have a lot of time to be still now, don’t we. Your heart is so powerful it does not need to shout. It has a soft voice, a voice that comes from the heart centre of your body. Be still and ask your heart what it wants, what its passion is, what it loves, your literal hearts desire. A conversation between the heart and your head, and when your gut centre is also in line with heat and head (gut centre is about fear and overcoming fear) you will be pretty much aligned. TRUST YOUR OWN WISDOM.
After doing the above exercise, MIND MAP like crazy. Put it all down on paper. Inspire yourself. Inspire means to breathe in life. Then, and this is the key thing, let it all go. Let it go and let the universe take care of it all. Doing this is a practice, and it means you have to practice every day, as in you have to PRACTICE! Practice means “the actual application or use of an idea, belief, or method, as opposed to theories relating to it”. All this above is just theory.

So, there you go! Please let me know in the comments below what you think, how you motivate yourself, or how you get on.

Stay safe x jen

summer term: home school without losing your cool

jennifer Beyonce, change, complex ptsd, complexptsd, covid19, gratitude, happiness, homeschooling, isolation creation, journalling, joy, ptsd, recovery, self awareness, self harm

I posted this last night and had to delete as i got woken (as usual) and could not get back to sleep. The fear comes at 3am, do any of you find that? worrying what people will think…. but i am not going to let this demon beat me again. if you hate what i am writing please still be kind.

A teacher went viral on 17th April, writing to parents saying that “Don’t stress about schoolwork. In September, I will get your children back on track. That is my superpower. What I cant fix is social-emotional trauma that prevents the brain from learning. So right now, I just need you to share your calm, share your strength, and share your laughter with your children. No kids are ahead, no kids are behind. Your children are exactly where they need to be.” (N.B. I do not know which wise teacher wrote this, if you do please comment below)

i am doing my best. so, here goes…

Any of you who follow me or regularly read my posts will know that I am in recovery from whats professionally called a maladaptive coping strategy, a self harming behaviour I have had/done for 40 years (as I have a form of complex trauma).

This behaviour was made worse by my sudden launch into single parenthood after being in abusive relationships. I never ever wanted to be a single parent (again) as I found it way, way too hard the first time, I knew it would cause me more harm.

Here I am trying to thrive in a new sunny home (my last house I was stuck in for 20 years had no sunlight in it at all). My little girl finally starting school, and finally some time for me, to get healthy. More healthy. I was going to yoga. I was going to church. I was going to therapy. I was going to metallisation based training. I was trying to rebuild myself into a better version of me.

I had a really strict routine each day to keep me ok, and keep my little one ok. She wakes me EVERY night, at least 3 times and has been doing so since she arrived on the planet. Actually she kept me awake way before she arrived on the planet, before she was even made. I pretty much did not sleep at all. Now I take medication. I used to do mediTation, but sometimes you have to change the T for a C. There is no shame in that.

Anyway, I am giving up my destructive habit of a lifetime and her going to school was a lifeline for me. So when they shut I was highly so worried that I would relapse. To help my self care, I am still keeping a pretty strict routine, which I am going to share with you now. At week four, have you discovered a routine too? it was so hard week too, I felt so tense, and the behaviour started again.

Today is the first day back at homeschool for summer term. We are blessed enough (thanks to God) to have been given a house with a separate dining room. It becomes the school room Monday to Friday and then it becomes the church Sunday. I am so blessed not to be in that tiny little dark house I was stuck in for 20 years.

I do appreciate that some of you will indeed be stuck in a tiny house. If this is the case, try to section off a section of the room you have as a school area, even if it is just the table. Pretend it is school. This sectioning really really helps provide some inner structure.

I am classed as severe asthma and so I am stuck in for another 8 weeks I guess.

have you home schoolers made a weekly plan? i don’t follow the school routine, we don’t HAVE to. my little girl is only 5, she is thriving. so we do what we can. I am a trained teacher but for adult education. it really has pushed me out of my comfort zone, as i am sure it has you too.

anyway, here is my weekly plan…

First of all, chose a home school topic for the week. I asked my girl this morning what the theme was to be and she said “Beyonce” and I said “ok!”. at first i was a bit worried, but then i thought this will teach my mixed race daughter about strong black role models, about feminism. you can never be too young to start, don’t you think? already cause of singing miss polly had a dolly and the doctor not being made female, my 5 year old thinks that doctors are male. miss polly had a doozy should definitely be framed as a female, the doctor came with her bag and her hat and she knocked on the door with a ra-ta-tat-tat. our doctor is female for this very reason.

Monday AM… long lie in, til 9 if lucky, coffee in bed with daughter watching stuff on phone. I generally don’t do anything until I have had my coffee, just the one a day after detoxing in January. School session in the AM is from 11-12, so we aim to get washed, teeth brushed, and dressed for school at ten. My daughter sometimes even wears her school uniform, but I do not enforce this, but as “teacher” I definitely do enforce the teeth brushing as cover cavity is sure to become a thing. The first Beyonce lesson is on “The history of Beyonce”. We have been keeping a large a4 bound journal to keep all her school activities in during this lockdown. For example, writing to be done, numbers, pictures. I think to have a document of corona times would be very interesting in the future. My big girl (yes I am lucky enough to have a second “teacher” in lockdown, back from university, otherwise I would be on more medication, and I do utterly get how hard it is alone, I really do) does the first lesson. After, they show me what they have done, all noted in the book: Beyonce’s full name, what her name means (beyond others), where it came from, the names of her parents, her age, how many children she has, where she is from. They have looked that up on the globe we have, USA, they have spelt out Houston, found out Houston is near Disneyland. I ask if Beyonce spent a lot of time at Disney land as a little girl. But we will need to find that out another day. We find out she has made 170 ish songs, that she sang with Destinys Child age 16. The next couple of pages in the journal book are a print out of the gloriousQueen Bey in a long sparkly dress, Zaria has added a crown and some extra sparkle, and then drawn her own version on the opposite page. Zaria, whilst doing all this has been wearing her own crown and her own sparkly dress, her own sparkly shoes. She tries my only remaining pair of high heels (i used to have loads), golden glittery ones. Maybe I should try them on, once along to single ladies in them. Get my power back.

Monday lunchtime… 12-2 my little girl likes to have an actual packed lunch made, or a jacket potato like she would be having a school. Then time to play after. I go out on my bike for 20 minutes.

Monday PM… it’s meant to be yoga 2-3. Now if my 5 year old was going to school I would be free to go to yoga on a Monday, so I try to keep this schedule a little. I have a yoga DVD, but there are loads of things online for free. I usually hoover the yoga room, the living room, and plug in the atomiser, and put out two mats, and I force myself to do the DVD. In the early days of lockdown I thought “oh wow, doing yoga with Zaria will be amazing” and “I can teach her mindfulness and stillness” but in reality she just gets bored and so do I, sometimes sitting on the sofa to look at my phone. But today as we are doing Beyonce I ask Zaria what she wants to do (anything to get out of yoga) and suggest baking. We decide to look at what Beyonce eats, we google “what is her favourite biscuit?” But nothing comes up, maybe we should have said cookie. We do find out that she does not eat snacks, no puddings, no junk food but she does allow herself popcorn and pizza one day a week. We find out she eats lots of leafy greens, lots of fish, and we learn a new word, hydrated, as she likes to keep hydrated. I think it is a good nutrition lesson for Zaria. We listen to Beyonce tunes in the kitchen whilst baking. I have never really listened to Beyonce, as in really listened. I did dream I was Beyonce and sang like her once after tuning my chakras (see previous post). I still have not listened to Lemonade, but I know Beyonce made it as life gave her lemons. Maybe making actual lemonade could be a lesson. I listen to songs that used to remind me of past hideous loves, Halo, such a beautiful song and video, how could I ever wishful think that song about some hideous man? We listen to single ladies, we dance, I sweat, I feel powerful, the best thing you never had, and I especially listen to If I were a Boy which I find gives me goosebumps. We make gingerbread. It is hard, I am not going to lie to you, it is hard to play teacher, I could never ever actually home school, I don’t understand how teachers do it, and Zaria’s actual lovely first teacher absolutely loves it, stating that she even misses the kids now they are not allowed to go! It is hard, Zaria moans, the making of a mess drives me insane, I hate getting my hands in the sticky mess. I try to halt the negative thoughts, manage the mess, washing dishes, putting things away so I can cope. Zaria keeps on putting on crazy in love and we start to shake the little containers of sprinkles and dance and laugh. You have to make it fun. She even gets the instruments out, recorder, bongos, tambourine.

We have a marble jar to motivate her and keep her behaviour good. This is an idea from her actual school. When the chidden do good work they get a marble put into the marble jar. When the jar is full they have a “marble party”. saying this, i do try to set aside any feeling of superiority. this helps to build good connection. she teaches me so much herself, we are both teachers.

Afterschool club 3-5.30 involves the swing, the trampoline, jigsaws, fun, sun and quality time playing. Without this quality time I get utterly bored playing and end up looking at my phone. Exercise also incorporated into this time. I also try to make sure I do something creative for me, some job the needs doing, like the windows, painting something, fixing something, but sometimes these activities can be made into a life lesson during school time in the week, for example gardening. Right at the start of the isolation I bought an electric piano for £60 off gumtree. We have hardly even plugged it in. But the other day I moved it to the window of the room we see the sunsets from and I do at least imagine myself playing it as the sunsets. You could, in after school club, incorporate some sort of club into the club, you know like a dancing club, like piano, like baking, football, art, whatever. For an hour. These pockets of quality time REALLY DO HELP. Believe me. Today we decide to watch Beyonce Homecoming, before you think that is ay too grown up for a little girl it is edited my her big sister, no “bad” word, except she does ask us what a DIVA is and what a HUSTLER is…

The rest of the week will hopefully go something like this…

Tuesday AM… like Monday with the coffee and phone, more history lessons, who influenced Beyonce. Powerful black women.

Tuesday PM… 2-3 gardening club, so I get some gardening work done.

Afterschool club fun and exercise

Wednesday AM… music/singing lesson

Wednesday PM… yoga 2-3

Afterschool club as above, with a walk or cycle or roller boots session.

Thursday AM… Beyonce dance routines

Thursday PM… who knows… numbers? “If Beyonce asks three single ladies to put their hands up, how many fingers will there be?” (this is from big girl and i am still laughing about it). “If Beyonce has a pizza and it has 8 slices, and she eats 3, and Blue Ivy has two slices, how much is left for Jay-Z?”

Afterschool club… by then I am losing my mind. so i try to do something for me as well as her. she pretends to be a queen and i read my magazine.

Friday AM… yoga again, see above, I will teach her mindfulness and quietness!

Friday PM… baking, making lots of tasty treats for the weekend, if they last that long!

After after school club Friday it’s pizza night, as a reward for the week. I so look forward to pizza night. I like to mark the days by meals as it helps me feel like there is a structure and I am somehow held by the days, by the routine.

Try not to be too rigid in your routine, as it will stress you out more. Stress is not the goal here. The goal is to enjoy, to be in-joy. one day at a time.

Do not focus too much on the actual learning outcomes, even though my girl’s reading has come on leaps and bounds since starting the routine, and her numbers too so much better.

From this routine I can go to bed feeling like I have achieved something. Then this helps me not to hurt myself at night, it helps me to not think I have been a bad mother, or crappy thoughts like that. It helps me think I have done my best, I have been in-joy, mindfully enjoying the day. Been in play with my child. It helps me sleep ok, then wake ok not dreading the day.

Let me know how you are coping with home schooling the the comments below. thanks for reading. jen x

isolation creation: happiness jar

jennifer change, complex ptsd, complexptsd, gratitude, happiness, isolation creation, joy, recovery, self awareness, self harm, Uncategorized

Does anyone know about the happiness jar idea?

It could be called a mindfulness jar, or a joy jar.

It is normally started on new years day, which wrote a blog about a couple of years ago.

I have decided to re write this as I think it is an excellent way to try keep you and your household ok in these challenging times.

We are having to create a new way of living.

What makes you happy is personal to you. But basically it is something that made you smile, laugh or excited. It could be a kind act that you see in life around you or online, a kind word you said to someone, something beautiful… something wonderful… these are all things that make me happy.

What would your list be like?

So, here is what you do in 5 easy steps…

Take a jar, could be an empty clean jam jar to start with, before you are allowed to go out and buy a bigger one! Keep the lid. Put a label on it called “The happiness jar” or “joy jar”. Stick on with sellotape.
Cut up or tear up little bits of blank paper, recycled from envelopes etc if possible. These should be about 2 or 3cm square, or just a random small size. You may have a lot of time on your hands so if you want to cut up 2 or 3cm squares perfectly go for it!!
Put the pieces in the jar, along with a small pen or pencil if you can find one small enough to put in the jar.
Keep the jar on your table so that when it comes to mealtime you can remember it, or somewhere you can see it like next to the TV, on the mantlepiece, next to the TV, next to the kettle. Write down two (or more) things that made you happy that day. For example, when my little girl was dressed for world book day as Hermione Granger with her cape, I asked her to do a spell Hermione would do and she said “asparagus”… and it made me laugh all day long, I wrote it down and put it in the jar. Or having a bath and listening the birds in the garden. Or Chris Martin doing a Facebook live from his house when in isolation! It really can be that simple. You will find that you have to force yourself to do this at times, on days when happiness is hard to see but it is still there, it is just your mind that has stopped seeing it.
Date the memory with the month and year. Put in the jar. put the lid back on.

The jar is normally opened on or just before New Years eve. I really look forward to it. But you could open it when isolation is over. Remember how some really subtle but precious things happened, a new way of living for some.

I keep the little paper memories and put them all in a sealed envelope marked with the year. Or if you journal stick them in your journal. It is like planting happiness seeds to grow new better ways of living and being.

I made a collection of jars with the labels on and paper and pen in outside my house, with a sign saying free happiness and a set of instructions on what to do. it is such a beautiful idea to share around.

Please let me know what you think in the comments and if you have given it a go. Add your pictures of your little pieces of paper. We are all in this together. you will find that your happiness is in the smallest of things.

Stay well x jen

ps: i have not written a blog for nearly two years. this is mainly cause someone left a hideous anonymous comment on my last post and it really destroyed me for a while. i think we have come a long way in accepting mental health disability now but to that person… what else did you do for fun back then? Wait around disabled parking places and tell whoever parks there that they are only doing it for the parking? My next blog is probably about what makes a troll troll. though i am hoping with sad events like the death of caroline flack people are actually learning to be more kind.