hi my lovelies welcome back to my
channel
uh apologies i didn't put video out on
friday that's why this one's coming out
now
i didn't get to live stream i was at my
where was i
we were trick-or-treating last night and
now it's sunday night and the kids are
back at school tomorrow
um i went away thursday
to friday uh to see my best friend
of nearly 30 years and we had the best
time
we actually did a little photo shoot uh
for the upcoming sex and mental health
series i'm hoping she'll actually be in
some of the videos
as well because she's got like she's
just got so much to say
on the subject and i think you'd really
benefit from hearing it
um some of the pictures were quite
raunchy
and i was like so i don't know if
i'll be putting those ones out unless i
can tame them down a little
bit uh but yeah it was really good fun
it was just like playing dress
up like as a kid but with
adult clothes uh so yeah did that
got back for halloween and took the kids
out trick or treating
basically they had their little buckets
pumpkin buckets
and i every time we saw a house that was
decorated i'd give them each a sweet
and so they loved it they got to dress
up they got to go out
uh there was there was lots of other
people doing it as well with mums just
giving their own kids the sweets so we
didn't have to knock on doors
uh we had movie night uh
so lottie we watched room on the broom
uh which is from the kids book and it's
only 25 minutes so it's a short film but
she felt included in movie night then
uh then she went up and i watched hocus
pocus with the two boys and they loved
that then they went up and then i stayed
up and watched practical magic
with mimi um and she loved that
so yeah it was really really good
um so today i wanted to talk about
something that's
very relevant at the moment i don't know
what's going on where you are i know a
lot of you in america australia
different countries in europe like
you're all over
over in the uk well in england we've
been told we're going to full look
down from thursday
slightly different to last time because
the kids are still going to school and
nursery and that
and that's good for me uh because
that was in last lockdown
that really didn't help my mental state
uh i kind of thought um at the beginning
i would sell through lockdown because
i'm a bit of a hermit and i don't
really go out i like being at home
uh but about a month and a half in i was
pretty much tearing my hair out
i couldn't keep the house tidy no signa
did i tidy the kids just
wrecked it and so i felt like i was
fighting a losing battle so i just
gave up i lost the will to clean and i
couldn't be bothered
started sinking into depression and
i never realized how much little things
like
doing the school run helped like just
those little 10
15 minute chats in the morning 10 15
minute chats in the afternoon
how much they helped me so after a month
and a half i felt
really really isolated um
so i thought i'd do a video on it today
i'm going to kind of briefly go
over some of the issues we may have
uh i think it's important to do this
because we know
in the last lockdown
so many people suffered with their
mental health it deteriorated
like quickly for so many people and a
lot of those people
were people that didn't even have
pre-existing mental health
illnesses so for those of us that do
it's kind of obvious it's going to be
really tough
one of the things for me that i found
tough um
was i only realized this i had an
appointment this week with my supply
psychiatrist
and i realized in lockdown i had two
appointments with him
uh and usually i go in and we chat for
like
45 minutes an hour and i just get
everything off my chest and i literally
always leave there feeling so much
better
but the two appointments i had were
phone appointments
i had the kids running around so i
couldn't talk to him about
how down i was i couldn't about the
eating disorder coming back
there was so much i couldn't say uh and
i i completely forgot about that
uh until he reminded me uh luckily
like because of everything that's gone
on i when i phoned i was like i want to
come in and see you
so i was allowed to go in the time
before last and this time as well and
i've been really lucky they're seeing me
more regularly
and but
i know how hard it was doing on like on
the phone
so a lot of you
might find the same thing uh especially
when it's a phone call
it's very easy you might be in the
shower you might just miss that call
and it's like an appointment if you
missed the call
you've missed your appointment and then
you often have to wait what another
three months for a new one
so that's hard so
i am going to talk about some of the
problems but i do want to talk about
what we can do about it as well because
i think that's really really
important um
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so one of the things
is like having intrusive thoughts
worrying about the future what is going
to happen
uh what if someone we love gets covered
how bad is covid obviously there's so
many conspiracy theories out there
do you believe them don't you believe
them you know
um being cut off from family
and like your support network uh
finances if you're working
you might be thinking like what if i
don't have a job at the end of this
uh i know there have been loads of
redundancies being made
uh so people like i know what
um i'd be absolutely freaking out
like if i thought i'm just going to lose
everything
because also with my head
i would make everything a catastrophe
and make it so much
worse with regards to that i would say
we can't tell what's going to happen in
the future
um you've got to distract yourself
from that and try and keep things in the
moment my last video was on intrusive
thoughts and i said that and that
like we have to kind of stop that um
the catastrophizing again we can't tell
the future
it's not going to help us to keep making
stuff up in our heads about how bad it's
going to be um all we can do is focus on
the here and now
um having the kids home
all the time is hard that can get you
down
there are literally so many different
reasons for us and i think fear is a
huge one
and you read papers you watch the news
and it's kind of
all doom and gloom basically
about how bad it is how many people have
died
and i would suggest like obviously we
need to be kept up to date with
what's going on obviously because we
need to know what's going
on to a certain extent like what are the
new rules coming in
but don't just focus on that because i
went through a state i had to do it
every night i'd be reading every
article about it and it did
not help me at all uh
because like i said i've got that kind
of mind that will catastrophize and make
it even worse
even worse than the newspapers and so
that's something hey
uh my advice i want to give you today
basically is this
put together a plan now like
for if you're going into lockdown or
even if you're not
we don't know what's going to happen
maybe you're not locked down now what
you might
or maybe will come out of it but this
put in a plan
now to look after yourself
because i did not i had no routine
so that's one thing i would say guys get
rooting it can be a really basic one
um it can literally be i wake up at
seven or eight or nine if you want to
sleep till nine
yeah but i wouldn't say much later than
that you're gonna waste your day
go to sleep at a set time so start with
a wake up and upset bedtime and stick to
it
you need your sleep you need to have
that kind of pattern that sleep weight
pattern that's really important
um again i didn't do that i had no
routine so i would just sit down here
scrolling on facebook
uh and gets read really late
and then i'd struggle to get up in the
morning and it didn't make me feel good
at all uh check your diet
again lock down i was just sat round
i'd eat a pack of crisps i'd have a
chocolate bar i'd eat a pack of
chocolate bars i didn't care
um that didn't make me feel good eating
disorder came back
so i literally i literally ate
so much sugar so much sugar
and we know we sugar you can get that
spike in your mood
but it will bring you you will have a
little downer
um from it so just check what you're
eating
how much were you drinking again the
amount of people that start drinking
more and more and more in lockdown
i was drinking in lockdown it did not
make me feel any better
but i was doing it i was stuck at home i
i was feeling down i did it
um i've i've cut it out now
because i realized it was not good for
me
uh especially if you've got all these
intrusive thoughts
and feeling scared and fearful
and worries trust me
you were gonna feel worse if you
carry on like obviously if you're the
sort person that has
a couple of glasses of wine on a
saturday night
or even a bottle on a saturday night
that's
you know that's not gonna be the worst
thing you can do
but if you find yourself daily drinking
then you need to possibly
check yourself because it's
it's just not going to make you feel
better in the long run
um exercise
so for me i was like no we've got a
garden we don't need to go out
so we didn't even go for walks
so i was literally i was i wasn't
getting any exercise
and usually like i can build up quite a
sweat doing the housework
but i stopped doing that so i i wasn't
even
having that as a workout i was literally
doing
nothing this time round i'm not doing it
i'm
going to make a point of continuing to
exercise
um getting out into nature
i thought well the garden and yes i am
lucky i
have a garden uh it needs a lot of work
at the moment it's got kids toys all
over
it um
but i'm gonna make a point this time of
getting out into nature
uh reading i was just scrolling
my phone now social media
has like i mean there are good points in
the fact you can connect with people
but there's so many bad points and when
it comes to the point like it was with
me
where i was just sat scrolling like
looking at the screen it's not healthy
especially when you see people doing
amazing things with your life
and you're just sat there feeling like
um
it does it doesn't help does not help so
like i've said to you before i'm not
doing that now when i get up in the
morning i'm reading look
i look at my books all my books
i've not read a lot of those
so i'm making a point of going through
them and reading them
uh one two
two of those shelves are just self-help
or self-help
and i'm gonna work my way through them
because i
realize the importance of doing that now
you don't have to read the whole book in
a day but
set some side time aside like kind of
try to plan your week
it doesn't have to be really rigid like
i said have a routine
get up and go to sleep time
eat regularly factor in breakfast time
lunch time
dinner time and then
if you've got small children as well
these children thrive on routine
it will help them it will help you
especially if you've got
them a set bedtime so they might go down
that if they're young half six
seven then you've got a little bit of
evening time
and yes you might put around and do a
little bit of housework
but make sure like that hour or
longer if you can before bed you take
time for you you could read
you could watch tv you could
meditate these are all little things
that will
help you and make you feel better
um plan it's
meal time plan set meals um
just to make your life easier because
again i'll just sit there and think oh
what will i do i'll just fling something
in the oven
just fling something so again that's not
going to always be
like some days that's great frank
throwing fish fingers
and chips in the oven is great and the
kids love it i know they will eat it
but every day that's not the healthiest
for them um
also what i found is i don't fancy fish
fingers and chips daily
uh so i would do that for the kids and
then i wouldn't eat
i might skip a meal so then i'd get
hungry and then i'd eat rubbish
if you set aside time and you could
listen guys you can cook literally the
most
basic meals just like with onions and a
tin of tomatoes and a little bit of
garlic and you can do stuff with rice
you can do stuff
with pasta like there
are so many videos on youtube about like
basic recipes that
you can learn take time to learn because
the good thing is
one is so quick frying some onions with
a little bit of garlic a little bit of
tomato puree throw in a tin of tomatoes
you can add water if you want then you
can add veg and just let it simmer away
for ages
and then just have it over some rice it
sounds difficult it's actually really
really easy to do
and what you find as well when you do
that if you do a
big batch it can last two days and
by doing that you will be more inclined
to be eating healthily
yourself as well and so you don't have
to eat
when the kids eat it's nice if you can
but maybe you don't want to eat the time
they eat
and that's okay you can just put your
food aside and have a bit later
but it's all these little things
that will make your life easier and in
doing so
you are going to be protecting your
mental health
another thing i want to suggest to you
so i have a playlist
on um dbt videos
if you haven't watched them
watch them learn some of the skills i
talk about the different
skills for each thing whether it's
emotion regulation interpersonal
effectiveness etc
look at them pick out a different skill
and just say
every day i'm going to try a new skill
and see if i like it or not
just try it i think it's really
important we do this
because we don't know how long we're
going to be in lockdown
we don't want our mental health to
suffer and i think
if we act now like straight away get on
it and say okay i'm gonna do something
we've got a better chance of
staying mentally okay uh
step like stable um
like the eating the i'm healthily
cutting out alcohol um eating
regularly doing some exercise that's all
part of emotion regulation that will
help
regulate your emotions uh so you will
find that helpful
uh distress tolerance that's where
you're at crisis point what do you do at
crisis point it's worth watching some of
those videos getting some of those tips
and start practicing them just so if you
do
get to a point where you're
feeling out of control overwhelmed don't
know what to do
you will have some little skills there
that you've practiced um
a lot of skills are just really nice to
do as well it might be like have a
relaxing bath
i'll do that i like that and
you might find just by practicing them
they help you and you don't hit christ
this point anyway
so i really want you guys to look after
yourselves
right now and i'm going to be doing this
too
i'm not just i'm taking my own advice
this time
because trust me i learnt the hard way
really hard and uh i'm not going to do
that this time
i want to stay happy positive i've got
so
much coming up like um the sex and
mental health series
i'm super excited about doing um
yeah i do want you guys to stay safe
uh i will live stream
uh hopefully in the week
if that suits you tell me if it doesn't
and maybe we'll leave it till next
weekend
but
but i will be back tomorrow or tuesday
with another video keep your requests
coming
i'm writing them down so i don't forget
them
uh stay safe do try and take on some of
my advice if you can
i know you might say i just don't have
motivation
but listen we do not want to get to that
really emotionally painful place
and we have a high chance of doing so if
we don't put in the action like right
now
so that's why i'm saying guys do
something about it now
i think that's all i've got to say today
i'm sure i'll probably have forgotten
loads but
i can catch up like tell you next time i
suppose
i love you all loads and yeah i'll be
back with a video in the next couple of
days
love you guys bye