It must be a very worrying time for anybody who has dumped a body in a reservoir

I still remember the smell of your skin and the shape of the tiny scar on your shin, I remember that when anxiety took hold you would twirl your hair and then you'd drink as much as you could without a care.

I still remember the sound of the groans you'd make when you'd start to wake and how many consecutive afternoon walks you would take.

I still remember the way you would give everyone a nickname, fondly using it anytime you got and how the leaves falling to the grounds in autumn made you feel like losing the plot.

I still remember how you found comfort in a routine, making sure it stayed in order and how you always, always had a large bottle filled with water.

I still remember your bottom tooth that was jaggered, and the how you'd laugh about your bed hair being haggered - you used to chuckle in the mirror and say 'Old Greg!' And how you wore the terrible tattoo I made for you on your leg.

I still remember the first time I saw you and how I felt inside and I still remember all the pain you would hide.

I still remember how much love we shared and how coming between us, nobody dared.

Until I stopped trying to remember and tried with plenty of will to forget. Until that day, with the news I was met.

I still remember ...

I still remember. I remember the smell, your skin, your hair, your care, your wake, your take, sameness, newness and laughter too, all the first times and last times with you.

Manage anxiety with Cognitive Behavioral Therapy

You can manage anxiety with Cognitive Behavioural Therapy. Anxiety is a part of life and even a useful addition but too much anxiety can destabilise and overwhelm you. It's not possible to eradicate anxiety completely. Many of my clients expect that Cognitive behavioral therapy will stop anxiety completely but this is unrealistic. Aspects of anxiety There's two aspects to anxiety. On the one hand, anxiety is a symptom of the way we are built. We needed anxiety to keep us alert and safe. If we never experienced anxiety we'd probably be extinct by now and more wiley predators would be top dog. Anxiety alerts our survival instinct and keeps us away from danger. So far so good. Our biology hasn't kept up with modern technology though. The fast-paced world we live in has sped up exponentially but evolution takes a while to catch up. Changes that need to be made in the way we process information in our brains to keep up just aren't possible. So we have an outdated reaction to many of the stressors we face today. This brings me on to the second aspect of anxiety. When we face stress today, our old brain still reacts in the same way as it would when we were faced with a deadly predator from our caveman-days. The old brain senses the same fight/flight/freeze response and acts accordingly. It gears the body up for the perceived threat. Adrenalin is released, we might get sweaty palms and a racing heart. Anxiety can feel really frightening and unmanageable. Read the full article

#anxiety #worrytime #worry https://www.instagram.com/p/CQJDBToL1uB/?utm_medium=tumblr

The next page of my online comic, ‘Brighter and Brighter’ is online. It’s available in both mobile friendly and traditional formats. You can find both versions here: https://tapas.io/enchantedviolin Please share and subscribe 💕 Use sign up code ENCH407M to get 200 free coins #onlinecomic #comic #graphicnovel #brighterandbrighter #recovery #blackandwhite #greyscale #art #illustration #autobiography #autobiographical #me #mentalhealth #abuse #metoo #diary #diarycomic #therapy #worry #worrytime #lookrookie https://www.instagram.com/p/BnOqDrfhLz0/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=15vokf90r6cjt

5 Reasons to Hire a Professional for Bathroom Renovation in Geelong

If you are a busy homeowner looking for "Bathroom renovations near Geelong", you’ve got to the right place. Over time most bathrooms need updating. A full bathroom renovation is no small task. Most of the time, it will be best for you to call in a professional to help oversee, design, and implement your project. A full-scale repair of your bathroom will require technical knowledge, proper planning, and project management. An expert can manage everything for you and ensure you get the design and products that suit your space. We want to share a few reasons to hire a professional for bathroom renovation tasks.

Planning is Key

Planning your bathroom renovation is the foundation for a successful project. A renovation does not begin with demolition. So much must happen before the real remodel works, and careful planning, design, and budgeting will be vital to a successful project. An experienced professional has the expertise and training to help you get the most out of your budget and available space.

Leave the Day to Day Problems To Your Designer/Installer

Hiring an expert renovation company means you do not have to act as your general contractor, and you won’t have to miss work to make everything done. It also means that you will be involved in all the critical decisions but not have to deal with the day-to-day problems and more minor complications associated with a project of this size. You will be involved in choosing colors, styles, and products for your renovation and other important decisions. Meeting with a designer will help you translate your inspiration and ideas into a beautiful and functional bathroom. After considering your needs, wants, and budget, your designer will create an initial design that you can edit together until it matches your vision and goals.

Professional Product Knowledge Will Help You Get Exactly What You Want

There are many choices involved in a complete renovation of your bathroom. After achieving your bathroom design, you will order the cupboards. The lead time for cabinetry will differ depending on the cabinet manufacturer. Usually, cabinetry takes 4-6 weeks to build and deliver. As you choose devices, keep in mind that their sizes affect cupboards. Communicate any device changes with your designer before ordering cabinets to verify that they fit your final design. A professional will have an in-depth knowledge of product lines and advise you to create stunning color combinations, add texture, and put together a plan to achieve your style goals.

Professionals Help You Create a Realistic Budget and remain Within It

Setting a budget for your bathroom renovations in Geelong and staying within it sounds simple and obvious, but it’s more complex than you think. If you feel working with an expert will result in a more expensive project, this is not true. An expert will help you create a realistic transparent budget to understand all the expenses involved in your project upfront. 

 Professionals Save You Time and Worry

Time is a valuable commodity; a complete remodel renovation is time-consuming. Hiring Bathroom Waterproofing Geelong professionals means you can leave the day-to-day activity in the hands of your renovation team. You will be involved in the process, especially in the planning stage, but you know your routine can continue while your project progresses.

Conclusion

Professional bathroom designers offer resources you may not have, mitigate the risk you can’t afford, and share ideas you didn’t think were possible. Hiring an expert can do so much toward ensuring a successful project.

The Other Pandemic

‘No man is an island’. If there’s one thing that will bring home that truth, it’s a global pandemic. We’re living through a time when the only way not to impact on other people is to lock ourselves in our houses, a humbling reminder of the community we are being cut off from, the bigger picture we are each a small part of. But if social distancing is successful in stopping the spread of Covid-19, it’s useless at stopping something far more contagious: anxiety.

This week almost everyone I’ve spoken to has told me that they’re mentally exhausted, that they can’t concentrate on anything, and most significantly that they can’t stop watching the news. I’ve spent the week forwarding and receiving bits of hearsay and snippets of news stories as they drip feed in and I’ve had countless conversations with people at work, each of us relaying and embellishing our own morsels of gossip (I freelance in schools, hence actually ‘at work’). As the week has gone on, I find myself staring at our huge snowball of collective anxiety and wondering… does it have to be this bad?

It’s understandably a very worrying time, for a huge number of reasons, but the great con of anxiety is that it’s actually useful to us. In reality, it’s a feedback loop. We feel unsafe and so we act on any impulse to alleviate that feeling, but many of those actions do nothing except strengthen the idea that we’re in danger. Before we know it that ball of stress in our heads has overwhelmed us and we’re choke-slamming our neighbour over a fourteenth 32 pack of Andrex.  

Our hyper-connected world means there’s always something we could be doing, saying or finding out. In difficult times, that connection has huge benefits, but if we’re not careful it robs us of the natural anxiety relief that our ancestors have always had to help them cope with tough times: the space, time and stillness for our minds to stop and restore order. For us, every tea break is a chance for an update, and it feels more essential than ever to stay informed. All it takes, however, is a little cross examination to realise that not every check-in is helpful. A few minutes of mental silence restocking your mental shelves will help you and everyone else around you more than a fifteenth news scroll ever will.

Having struggled with OCD, I’ve worked hard to recognise behaviours that feel like they might provide relief from my fears, but which instead sneakily feed them. Meditation is an incredible way to practise this skill, but any way to introduce space into your day can help - just to let your mind settle and gain perspective - whether it’s a phoneless errand or standing and just waiting for your toast to pop. It might be worth just taking a mindful pause before you post, share, forward or say something to ask yourself why you’re doing it. Is there a reasonable argument for it or are you trying to appease the voice in your head? Because that voice in your head is a trickster - it might just be tricking you into feeding it, so it can shout louder.

Lastly, an important thing that I have to remind myself all the time is that misery serves no-one. Mine doesn’t, and neither does yours. It feels like anxiety and fear is the only reasonable response to a stressful situation and that it would be insensitive to feel any other way, but in reality we are a much better help to those around us when we are compassionate towards ourselves and take steps to feel better. We are all connected, and in tough times anything you can do to fill up your tank will help everyone else grow stronger too.

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When my brain can’t stop chewing a bone I check in with the following habits, tips and tricks. I’ve done a rubbish job of all them this week and it shows. These are the things I do to give my brain a break that might help you too:

Worrytime. This is a great technique that I learned in CBT therapy for distinguishing between helpful and unhelpful worry, and it’s really great for slowing your brain down at times when you would love to stop thinking about something but you feel like you just can’t. There are many articles and youtube videos about how to do it that will explain it much better than I can briefly here, but anyone would like any guidance, get in touch and I can help! If your brain is a waltzer right now, it’ll help (there’s a great app for it but you can do it on a piece of paper too).

Find ways to reintroduce boundaries that humans used to have to give yourself a break. I’m mostly thinking in terms of technology here - going cold turkey on phones or apps or social media rarely works because we rely on them for certain things, but you can create new habits for yourself that help you use it in ways that do help and stop using it in ways that don’t. Have times, places or situations where phones do or don’t come along. We have a box in our house where phones go, and it’s become second nature to dump it in there in the evenings or when working so you can hear if the phone rings but you can set texts to silent and spend big chunks of your day giving your brain a break if you want to. I got tons of ideas from Cal Newport’s book Digital Minimalism, and there’s loads of different ideas for different lifestyles online too. 

Find slower ways to consume the news. It’s so much less stressful. There’s not as much benefit as you think to breaking news, it’s often incomplete, inaccurate or incorrect and feeds your fear-brain big time. We’ve started getting the Sunday paper and apart from that I listen to the news on the radio. It’s made me realise that even in a global pandemic, the news doesn’t change quite as quickly as you think it does. In depth (and more importantly, accurate) journalism about current events is still relevant for a long time after it’s reported and since I stopped frantically checking news sites I am surprised to find myself much better informed. (You don’t have to be so drastic - you could just limit where and when you get your news from - but maybe include what other people share in these rules) 

Actually wind down in the evenings. It’s not a time for working anything out, work, social or otherwise. Chatting to your family on Whatsapp about what you’re going to do for income this year at 10.30pm = bad sleep and a horrible tomorrow (self-employed creative here, I’m speaking from experience). Even if you think you’ve slept well, you probably haven’t, we can wake up many times in the night without even remembering it in the morning. If you can, turn your brain off way before you go to sleep.

Meditation meditation meditation. It’s so much simpler than you think. Meditation should be called how-to-be-a-functioning-human-in-a-world-that’s-not-set-up-for-it. Bit of a mouthful..

Make this week Independence Day from your emotional blocks! Freedom from stress & anxiety! Achieve the life you desire and deserve! Here’s a great idea,that if you apply, will make this week and the clean slate life ahead of you something to celebrate! Commit to push off anxiety and worry to a predetermined “worry-time” make a timeframe for 15-30 minutes in the evening to review all that you are worried about. During the day, do your best to push off or just write down your worried and deal with during “worrytime”just this one idea will do wonders, try it for one week and the benefits will last you a lifetime. Check our my website www.benjaminhalpern.com for great free content Subscribe to my YouTube channel for great free videos https://m.youtube.com/c/liveyourdeservedlife #liveyourdeservedlife

app recommendation: WorryTime, basically you just set a time in the day where you can just sit down and think of problems to your worries, throughout the day you just type something thats worrying you into a note on the app and it is just so helpful and for anyone struggling with mental health I highly suggest it.