Hi! I’m MT, and I’m here to talk about mental health awareness and advocacy. This blog will be about mental health, coping skills, my personal experience, being in college with mental illness, and also host some pictures of my wonderful dogs.
I’ve discovered a couple of things first semester of college and dealing with mental illness. Most of the semester I was feeling depressed and anxious (rather than manic or lucid, etc.). It was very difficult to focus, but I found out some stuff.
THE POMODORO TECHNIQUE IS LIFE. If you can’t focus, take a break and do something distracting for a little bit. Check in with yourself. What is preventing you from focusing? After you adjust a little, try to do some work.
DON’T BEAT YOURSELF UP OVER NOT GETTING STUFF DONE. It’s not your fault. At the worst you can email your professor for an extension.
GO TO DISABILITY SERVICES. They can help you get accommodations for your classes. Accommodations are there to help you succeed.
SEE A THERAPIST. This sounds strange for helping you study, but if there’s stuff on your mind, it’s best to get it out by talking to a safe person. This will help you get back on track. Also, Dialectical Behavior Therapists will help you come up with strategies for studying.
TAKE YOUR MEDS REGULARLY. If you don’t have a meds schedule, start one. Taking your meds at different times each day is going to throw you off. I’ve been there. Set reminders on your phone and keep the medicine with you so you have no excuse.
READ SUMMARIES. If you have trouble with focusing, read the summary. It’s not going to work to force yourself to read long things.
FIGURE OUT YOUR LEARNING STYLE. And then use it. If you’re a visual learner, go look at diagrams and read summaries. If you’re a kinetic learner, rewrite your notes. If you’re an auditory learner, record yourself reading your notes out loud or ask to record the class (you can get an accommodation for this). Figure out your style.
TRY TO ATTEND CLASS. This is especially important for classes where they take role. If you have to, show up for the first 30 minutes and then leave. When I’m not doing as well, I sit in class on my laptop looking at Pinterest and tumblr.
DON’T BE AFRAID TO ASK FOR HELP. This is the most important thing. You can do this!
So I hope these tips are helpful. If you want to hear more about my experience or want a suggestion on how to work better, shoot me a message.
Psst. If there’s some accommodation or disability aid and it helps you then I pinky promise you can use it. You should use it. It doesn’t matter if you “deserve it” or if you’re “disabled enough” or anything else. It doesn’t matter if you truly need it “badly enough” or how anyone else feels about it. It’s helping you. It’s making your life easier. You’ll feel so much better if you let go of the artificial scarcity and ableist judgement of abled society and just do whatever makes you feel best and your life easier.
If you can’t work or do household chores because of your disability, that’s completely fine.
You aren’t a burden, you aren’t a leech, you aren’t lazy. It’s not your fault that you have a condition that makes you unable to exert a lot of physical and/or mental energy.
You’re allowed to rest, you’re allowed to ask for help, you’re not a bad person at all for not being able to do certain things.
Engaging your sense is one of the quickest and easiest ways to quickly self-soothe.
You will need to experiment to find out which sensory-based stimulation works best for you. You’ll also need different strategies for different moods.
What may help when you’re angry or agitated is very different from what may help when you’re numb or depressed.
Do something that stimulates one or more of your senses, Here are some ideas to get started:
Touch. If you’re not feeling enough, try running cold or hot (but not scalding hot) water over your hands; hold a piece of ice; or grip an object or the edge of a piece of furniture as tightly as you can. If you’re feeling too much, and need to calm down, try taking a hot bath or shower; snuggling under the bed covers, or cuddling with a pet.
Taste. If you’re feeling empty and numb, try sucking on strong-flavored mints or candies, or slowly eat something with an intense flavor, such as salt-and-vinegar chips. If you want to calm down, try something soothing such as hot tea or soup.
Smell. Light a candle, smell the flowers, try aromatherapy, spritz your favorite perfume, or whip up something in the kitchen that smells good. You may find that you respond best to strong smells, such as citrus, spices, and incense.
Sight. Focus on an image that captures your attention. This can be something in your immediate environment (a great view, a beautiful flower arrangement, a favorite painting or photo) or something in your imagination that you visualize.
Sound. Try listening to loud music, ringing a buzzer, or blowing a whistle when you need a jolt. To calm down, turn on soothing music or listen to the soothing sounds of nature, such as wind, birds, or the ocean. A sound machine works well if you can’t hear the real thing.
~ Let's talk about ableism and some things not to do/say to disabled/chronically ill people~
^^ before I go into this, this is based off of my own experiences and may not be the same for every disabled person because, you know, we're all different! But this is general advice ✌️
Don't say "you're too young/pretty to be disabled" → this is not the compliment you think it is. Disability/illness doesn't discriminate, a young person can most definitely be disabled/chronically ill. Secondly, if you think someone is "too pretty" to be disabled then clearly you have a very stereotypical image of disability in your head which you need to stop perpetuating.
Don't say "you don't look disabled" → as said above, this is not a compliment and all you are doing is adding to the preconceived stereotype' that disability has a certain look which is damaging to the disabled community.
Don't assume anything about what we can or cannot do. Maybe we can walk a little one day but not at all the next. Maybe we could attend that party on the weekend but nothing else for the week following. Disability is not always linear/stable - we have bad days and worse days, days where we force ourselves to do things and suffer the consequences later. BUT GUESS WHAT, YOU DON'T GET TO QUESTION THAT.
Don't touch our mobility aids without permission. Whether it is a wheelchair, cane, crutch or something else. Those aids are our freedom, moving them without permission is the same as touching/moving us without permission.
Don't talk to us like we are children/don't talk to who is with us instead of us. → a significant amount of disabled people are able to speak for themselves, and speaking to us like children is belittling and rude.
Don't just ask us questions about our disabilities. Some of us are happy to answer questions, some of us are not. It depends on a lot of situational factors, so take this into account. Our disabilities are a part of our lives and are not a lesson for others.
Also we are not sources for inspiration for you to build your saviour complex upon. My disability is a part of my life and I don't need people telling me how tragic it is or offering me remedies. We know how to manage our illness much better than you.
Please don't approach us in the street to pray for us/over us and tell us our suffering will be rewarded in heaven... My disability is not a tragedy imposed upon me as a lesson or trial - it's a part of my life.
Watch your wording too, disabled people are not broken or lacking in any way - and ableist language is damaging. We are whole, we are people - we are not the issue, the issue is we live in a world/society that is not designed accessibly.
WE ARE NOT TIRED FOR NO REASON. We are tired because our bodies are constantly fighting. We are tired because of medication, chronic fatigue and any other plethora of symptoms related to our illnesses
The same disability/chronic illness may present differently in different people so don't assume you know more about it than the person who has the illness/disability.
Disabled/chronically ill are both very broad terms which house numerous different conditions and illnesses beneath it. There is no one size fits all approach to what disability is and we need to stop acting like there is. The person who knows best is the person with that disability or chronic illness.
Just a few general thoughts on disability and chronic illness from me today. ✌️
the idea that meds/therapy can’t fix problems caused by situational/societal issues can coexist with the idea that meds and therapy can be very helpful for many people and shouldn’t be demonized or presented as useless for risk of scaring people away that might really benefit
There's a lot of stuff that varies a bunch from school to school and professor to professor, but a syllabus is a vital document for each of your classes and the professor should provide you with one. If the professor DOES NOT provide you with a syllabus, or if the syllabus is outdated or contradictory here is what you do:
Ask your professor for a syllabus or for an updated/corrected syllabus.
If they do not give it to you, you complain to their department chair. If they ARE the department chair, you complain to the dean.
The reason that a syllabus is important is because it is your contract for the class. It is the document that the professor can hold up and say "you knew you were expected to do this thing, it is in the syllabus" and that YOU can hold up and say "you don't get to give us this assignment, it is not in the syllabus."
A syllabus is NOT just a list of assignments. Your syllabus should include:
Information about required texts.
Contact information for your professor with preferred contact method noted by the professor.
The grading plan for the course (ten quizzes adding up to a thousand points? Two exams, a final, and class participation for 100 points? Three weighted exams? Attendance as 80% of your grade?).
Schedule for major exams/assignments.
The professor's late work and attendance policies.
The add/drop and final withdrawal dates for the class.
The professor's office hours.
The extra credit policy, if any.
A general description of the course and how you can expect the term to go ("there will be twice-weekly video lectures, a monthly knowledge quiz that is ungraded, weekly discussion boards, two major exams, and one research project" "attendance is mandatory and will be a large portion of your grade; there will be two exams and a final" "students will be expected to complete three small research papers and one long essay, as well as take monthly quizzes").
A general description of the types of assignments/exams you'll be completing ("weekly discussion board, 400 words minimum and two responses" "100 question multiple choice exam covering chapters 4-9" "timed essay" "3-5 page essay on subject")
Your professors SHOULD also give you a schedule of assigned readings/lectures/homework with due dates so that you can plan out your term, but that is less important than the syllabus. The syllabus is for your benefit, it is your shield from professors doing random shit like deciding that "actually now the midterm is half your grade" three weeks before the end of the term.
Giving students a syllabus in a timely manner is one of those things that professors HAVE TO do. They don't get to be wishy-washy about it. If you get to the second week of your term and you do not have a syllabus (with the proper dates for your term verified by the professor!) in your hot little hands you should either be complaining to the dean or dropping the class.
I know that dropping a class last minute fucking sucks. I know that scrambling to find something to fill the hole in your schedule or to get your minimum units is extremely shitty. But trust me, it is SO MUCH WORSE to have a professor who changes their schedule or their requirements at will if you don't have a document that you can use to say "this is bullshit."
I had some pretty awful community college professors, but I also had some really awful university professors.
I don't want to say "every professor at a community college is going to be amazing" because it is just not true, but CC professors usually know their subjects very well and have less of the academic pressure to publish than university students do and usually have smaller class sizes, so they have a lot going for them in terms of being able to give more of a shit about their subject and their students than a grad student teaching 100 levels at a university or a PhD trying to get a paper out.
In addition to having some awful professors at the community college, I had some *FUCKING AMAZING* professors at the community college. The last time I was at a community college was in 2009 but there are still professors who I think about and whose lessons I remember more than a decade later.
I do genuinely think that you're better off taking introductory courses from people who REALLY know their material at a community college than you are taking those classes as an impersonal lecture clicked through by a TA in a hall with 300 people at a university.
But also: If you are starting out at a community college PLEASE take some wild-ass classes. Take Cartooning. Take Ceramics. Take Science Fiction as Literature. Take Journalism Production. Take History of Rock and Roll. The professors who teach shit like this at the community college are going to be people who genuinely enjoy it and know their subject upside down and inside out.
You've gotta get your elective credits somewhere, right? Get them somewhere fun. It's MUCH cheaper and MUCH easier to take low-stakes, entertaining courses at a community college and if you DO take a couple extra semesters to transfer (I took SIX extra semesters to transfer) then at least you'll have more units to transfer in with (I had only two GEs that I had to take at the university and no electives and LOOK I did not WANT anything except what was required when I was paying $3000 a quarter instead of $300 a semester)
So I've seen this happen when the professor fucking hates one specific student.
In one case, there was a student in my very small lit class (15 students?) who the professor was uniformly shitty to in class to the point that the rest of us caught up with him after class one day and were like "Dude. Dude what the fuck we're so sorry" and he was almost crying because he needed the class to transfer and she was the only one who taught it and she had told him that he was failing. Which seemed like bullshit because he had attended every class meeting and participated in every class and that was a big part of the grade. So then he pulls out his work from the semester and we compare, and the professor is grading him on a completely different scale than the rest of the class! Essays that counted for 20 points for us counted for 50 points for him. So we check against the syllabus and we see that even with the weird essay skewing he should have had the minimum participation grade (he had 2/4 points every day, at least, because he showed up and talked) and should have been at around a B or a C, minimum, at that point in the semester.
So four of us sat down with him and made sure we could vouch for him for every class meeting, that we could verify he'd been there and participating every time (something hard to hide in a class of fifteen) and that the professor was REALLY aggressive toward him, and that she wasn't grading him according to the syllabus, and we all went to the dean together. Three of us (who the professor adored) agreed to check the student's work to make sure it met the professor's rubric before he turned it in for the rest of the semester.
It was a Whole Thing, but the dean did have words with the professor and the student did pass the class.
The syllabus isn't *binding* and professors can adjust them and professors can work out specific changes with specific students (for instance if you visit a professor in office hours they may give you an extra credit assignment when the syllabus says 'no extra credit').
But if the syllabus says "late work will be accepted for partial credit, 10% reduced credit each day it's late" and halfway through the term the professor says to you "no late work accepted" when you turn in a project late you can very politely say [in an email if at all possible] "It was my understanding, based on the syllabus, that late work is accepted for partial credit, reducing a letter grade for each day that it is late."
If the professor then responds "I'm not accepting this project late" you can say "The syllabus said that you would accept late work, is there a reason you won't accept this project late?" and the professor had better have a damned good answer because if their answer is "I feel like it" or "I changed my mind" or "It's your responsibility to turn in your work on time" then you escalate.
Because, see, the thing is if they told the ENTIRE CLASS ahead of time that "this project will not be accepted as late work" that's one thing. That's fair, that's reasonable, that can be considered making an adjustment to the syllabus.
If they're telling YOU, alone, and never mentioned it ahead of time, there's a decent chance that you specifically are getting fucked and THAT is why the syllabus is something that can protect you.
The student with the low grade in my lit class? He was the only ESL student in the class. The professor had mocked his accent repeatedly in front of the rest of us. She was treating him unfairly because she was a fucking racist.
Having the rest of the class say "hey, the professor is mocking this student's accent" is the kind of thing that SHOULD make a difference to the administration but that can be very difficult to prove. "The professor is grading this student on a different scale than the syllabus states" is very easy to prove.
But also: If you are ten weeks into the term and there is no midterm on the syllabus and the professor suddenly says "actually there will be a midterm in one week, it is fifty percent of your grade" you need to get like five other students in the class and approach the professor during office hours to challenge that. If the professor doesn't come to their senses and walk that back, then you need to approach someone else in the department.
The syllabus is to allow you to plan for your term. If the professor does something that profoundly upsets your term, like adding in a last-minute test that is half of your grade, you are now in danger of failing a class that you thought you were prepared for. They don't get to do that. Adding random quizzes? Rescheduling projects a bit? Sure. Adding a major exam or announcing that tests won't be weighted suddenly? Challenge that. Get other students to come with you to challenge that.
And these things aren't the norm! They're not common! But they DO happen and you need to know that you have a right to challenge unreasonable changes.
Also it's a good idea to get on friendly terms with a few people in each of your classes. First of all, it lets you pool resources like textbooks and means you will be able to work with people better on group projects. Second of all, if you have to go to the department head or another professor or the dean about your professor treating you personally or the class as a whole poorly, it works best to go with a group.
ONE student complaining is almost always initially interpreted as a personality mismatch or a student who doesn't understand how the class is organized. Five students is MUCH more serious.
Passive aggressive maybe, but like...healing and getting better isn't easy. When I see people make posts about "LOL google says I should make a schedule to help manage my ADHD but I can't make a schedule bc I have ADHD" it's like. People saying that stuff know it's hard. That's part of why you gotta do it.
Sometimes healing is easier. Sometimes it's something really small that becomes routine. But sometimes it's hard! Sometimes you gotta push yourself to do something and it sucks! But I don't know what to tell you, other than that you don't need to be good at it right away.
Using the calendar example, I have ADHD + semi-frequent memory loss, so it can feel really difficult to try and make a calendar when both of those things can directly get in the way. So I started with making sure recurring events were in it, like therapy and med reminders. Now I'm usually able to remember to put in appointments or other one-time events in as soon as I know about them. It takes a lot of work.
I don't know. I just think sometimes people on this site are sitting in mud and complaining about being dirty. You really do need to try.
I relate to this but for cptsd and routines. It's hard. Healing isn't supposed to be comforting all the time. It's an everyday every minute thing. But I do the work to get better
Thinking on it more, I think part of the issue is that people view things as either in their "comfort zone" or in their "danger zone," which is not really how things work. There's an area in the middle where things suck and feel bad but aren't so bad you're in danger (mental, emotional, physical) and that's where growth happens.
Because I'm a visual learner:
Trauma can make you think things are like this:
When in reality, things are more like this:
Trauma etc can make that challenge zone (often also called a window of tolerance) really fucking small, so it can be easy to overshoot into the danger zone, which can lead to having panic attacks and being triggered. Sometimes that can reenforce the idea that everything outside our comfort zone is scary red danger zone! But with gentle prodding into our little orange areas, we can grow our window of tolerance. Growing our challenge zones, then turning our challenge zones into comfort zones.
Using a more concrete example, say you try going to a party and you get SUPER overwhelmed! That might put you in a situation where you visualize things like this:
Figuring out what's in that orange "challenge zone" can take some trial and error, but maybe you can try something like this:
Forcing yourself to go to a party where you'll feel overwhelmed and triggered is just going to reenforce the seperation of the red and the green. But pushing a little bit, in a way that feels scary but safe? That's where growth happens! Then maybe eventually, things look more like
That makes a lot of sense. You explained this so well, thank you! And totally, that orange area is super hard to figure out bit it's possible.
Since my coping mechanism is to make challenges into adventures:
I tell myself my orange zones are quests that will help me get to my goals or newer areas. And like any other person, I gotta rest in between them and not overwhelm myself. When I am rested and taken care of my needs, I have a better chance to avoid quick burn out when picking up the quests again. This storytelling keeps me excited and keeps me in check to let myself rest.
thinking of when vincent van gogh said that “poverty stops the best minds in their tracks” and how art would see a new era if we funded struggling independent artists instead of hiring talentless nepotism babies.
