High Five for Friday: April 3

Made it through another week at home! Let’s see what brought the sparkle:

• Y’all, I’m tired. Week #1, I was going out for walks every day and doing yoga and living my best quarantine life, and now I’m just… tired. 😂 I don’t feel especially anxious or depressed, I just feel exhausted because I haven’t been sleeping well. So I’ve been letting myself get some rest when I can. I’ve seen some posts that are like, “Just because we’re in quarantine doesn’t mean you have to do all the Zoom happy hours and online yoga classes and all the things” and I’m like, HALLELUJAH! So that’s where I’ve been at this week. Just trying to go with it. 🤷🏼‍♀️
  
  

• I had a similar thought to the one below when this whole thing first started, and it really made me wonder what my anxiety is actually doing for me—because as much as it tries to foresee the worst, it absolutely did not see a pandemic coming!

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the AUDACITY. @jpbrammer #SocialTwerkers #COVID19 #LivingWithAnxiety #StruggleBus #FlattenTheCurve #Apocolypse • • • • #HumorIsMyCopingSkill #LifeOfASocialWorker #TheStruggleIsReal #ClinicalSocialWork #SocialWork #OverworkedAndUnderPaid #DamnYouDMH #SocialTwerk #CopingSkills #Humor #MentalHealthAwareness #SelfCare #BreakTheStigma #MentalHealth #Therapy #SocialJustice #SocialWorkHumor #MSW #MFT #SocialWorkProblems #Therapist #LCSW #LMFT

A post shared by Alissa 💁🏻 BS Psychology, LCSW (@socialtwerkers) on Mar 30, 2020 at 11:43am PDT

• In terms of things that are actually fun and exciting, on Tuesday, Timmi and I had a delightful remote Moonstruck viewing party!

QUEEN OF SASS, pt. 2

• ICYMI, I posted about the few things I bought in March! (Spoiler: The sneakers are GREAT!)

• Lastly, let’s end with some funnies because we all need them, and I’m tired.

Stolen from Bri!

I mean, probably not because #introvert, but maybe I’d greet one or two people and that would feel the same. 😂

Hope you have a great weekend! xo

March 2020 Budget

It’s so weird to be talking about what I bought during a time of national emergency… but I’m also trying to keep things normal here on the blog, and it’s Budget Post time, so here were are. I picked up a few things in early March, pre-“stay at home” order, but since then, I have quit shopping cold turkey. Have you guys been shopping online? I’m having a hard time justifying bringing anything un-essential into the house!

Here’s what I got when life was still normal:

1. Teleties (Target): $8

2. Ryka Devotion Plus 2 Sneakers (DSW): $70 - coupon = $60

3. Dr. Pawpaw Tinted Lip Balm (Amazon): $7

4. Colourpop So Juicy Lip Gloss (Ulta): $9

TOTAL: $84

I’ve tried several different brands of the phone-cord-esque hair ties and never liked them. They were usually too tight on my wrist but not tight enough in my hair. So I’m not really sure what possessed me to impulse-buy Teleties at my last trip to Target (😭), but alas, I did, and I love them? Even though I have very thick hair, I believe I got the “small” size, and they have been great! They’re thinner than other phone cord ties I’ve tried, and they feel more secure in my hair, even though they’re also a bit stretched now, which makes them more comfortable on the wrist. Bonus that they come in lots of fun colors! Definitely recommend.

I’m really glad that I picked up a more supportive sneaker just in time for all the walking I’m now doing! The Ryka sneakers are very comfy and plushy—initially, they felt slightly like a walking boot, like a similar rocking motion. Apparently, they have some sort of special technology that’s supposed to lessen the impact on your feet, which sounds great to me—I broke my foot a few years ago, and that foot can still be temperamental from time to time.

Honestly, I haven’t worn the lip glosses a ton since I haven’t been going anywhere! The Dr. Paw Paw is fine but a bit thin. The Colourpop gloss is pretty good (and very minty!), but it can be a bit too thick and sticky sometimes. I feel like Goldilocks, haha! It’s a good thing that I’m not shopping, because I would probably just be stress-buying lip gloss, aka my fave thing to buy.

Have you guys been shopping online? What did you pick up in March?

High Five for Friday: March 27

Well, we’ve got another week under our belts! Hope you guys are doing okay under such wild circumstances! ♥️

• As of Monday, everyone where I live in PA is officially supposed to “stay at home” except for essential outings… which is somewhat business as usual for me, since I was already working from home and not leaving the house, pre-coronavirus! Maybe that sense of normalcy is why my anxiety has been strangely okay so far. And how can I obsess about nonsense when there’s a legitimately huge concern in the world?!

• Also helpful in maintaining a sense of normalcy is that I’m still able to “see” both of my therapists—they’ve just switched over to video sessions for the foreseeable future. When this whole coronavirus thing started, I was nervous that therapy (aka the main reason I leave the house and the main thing that keeps me sane) would be paused indefinitely. So this has been a relief!

• I really stepped up my work-from-home fashion game this week:

• On Thursday night, I finally got out for a walk around the neighborhood and was delighted by all the chalk art that has suddenly materialized. It was definitely a bright spot in these strange times!

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Our neighborhood is really crushing the sidewalk chalk game! 🌈💖😍 . . #socialdistancing #walk #rainbow #heart #prettycolors #chalkart #colorful #heartwarming #brightspot

A post shared by Jess (@jessie_face4) on Mar 26, 2020 at 4:03pm PDT

• Lastly, I’m still plugging away with Gilmore Girls, and this may be my favorite Emily Gilmore moment so far. I legitimately cackled. QUEEN OF SASS.

Hope you have a great weekend! xo

Rebirthday #7

Friday was my seventh Rebirthday—the anniversary of the day I went inpatient for suicidal thoughts. 2019 was a year of intense loss and great anxiety, but I’m still here. That is something to celebrate, especially in these trying times!

It may seem surprising now (since I blab about it openly on here 😂), but I was initially horrified about other people finding out about inpatient. I wore my hospital bracelet as a reminder for a solid month afterward, but actively hid it from anyone who might ask questions. I told my co-workers some flimsy lie. I had a lot of shame around my mental health issues, especially—gasp!—suicidal thoughts. It felt like the suicide stuff put me beyond anxiety and depression into some other category that people didn’t know how to handle. It IS a lot. It IS scary. I get that. But at the same time, trying to protect people from my scary feelings almost killed me. I feel extremely lucky that I had a friend who listened to me without judgment and helped me to get help.

That’s not to say that I don’t still, at times, feel shame about the fact that I had a “breakdown,” and worry about having another one now that I’m in therapy and on better medication and doing all the “right” things. When I recently brought up this fear in therapy, my therapist replied with this gem:

“You can learn a lot from a breakdown, though.”

Definitely true. I learned more and grew more from the experience of falling apart, going inpatient, and then admitting my “imperfections” to people than I would have if I just had pushed through and pretended that I was okay.

Thank you for supporting my imperfect, human self in this space. And please know that help is out there, be it in the form of therapy or medication or inpatient or the suicide hotline (1-800-273-8255). Suicidal thoughts thrive in isolation—but there are people out there who will listen. In fact, that friend I mentioned above was Kristin, and our friendship was much deeper and more meaningful after we went through this experience together. ♥️

High Five for Friday: March 20

Hi guys! How are you faring in these crazy times? Feel free to chat with me in the comments down below. I hope you’re hanging in there and had some sparkle in your week! Here’s what’s been helping me:

• I’ve been able to get out for a walk nearly every day (yay endorphins!), and I’ve been following along with Yoga with Adriene videos too. (They’re so great, and also FREE!) I had been feeling pretty darn depressed (only marginally better since changing my medication dosage), but a tough love talk in therapy last week reminded me that I’M responsible for my emotional well-being. That I can control what I do, how I react, and what I tell myself. Which means that waking up and obsessively checking Google News or reading trashy articles about The Bachelor and then jumping straight into work and not getting any exercise might not be the best for my mental health? Especially in such an unsettling time? So I’m making more of an effort this week, and it has helped. I’ve had more energy and generally felt less self-loathing and sadness—even amidst all the uncertainty in the world right now. A darn miracle! Highly recommend! 🎉

• I mentioned in this post that I was thinking of getting a gaming system, and, well, I promptly pulled the trigger! I picked up a pretty inexpensive Wii + Mario Kart on eBay a few weeks ago, and I’ve been teaching Pops how to play! The perfect stay-at-home activity!

Pops’s 6 points are his best score so far… 😬

• If you don’t already follow Nathan Pyle for his Strange Planet comics, you should because his IG Stories have been full of gems this week as he taught people how to pin emojis and text onto videos of their pets. He made it a highlight on his IG profile, and I highly recommend checking it out—I was cracking up! And very jealous that I didn’t have a creature of my own to pin stuff on! 😫

• I was never a Gilmore girl growing up, but I’ve been watching it intermittently for the past few months (mainly fueled by my crush on Jared Padalecki LOL). I’m still not totally on board—both Lorelai and Rory irk me (I’m definitely a Rory, which makes her extra annoying!), and who can keep up with all the references? But I have to say, it is a very comforting show—upbeat and lacking in random hospital shootings. (It’s possible that I have Grey’s PTSD.) ANYWAY, I ended up watching a large chunk of Gilmore Girls season four last weekend, which means I got up to the infamous Rory + Dean season finale. I knew it was coming, and still I was like THIS IS JUICY, totally riveted. (Though Jared Padalecki’s hair at this time is atrocious WHYYYY?) Does this mean I’m a fan now?!

• Lastly, today is an important milestone for me: it’s my seventh Rebirthday, aka the anniversary of the day I went inpatient for suicidal thoughts. I’m working on a longer post about this, but I must say, I’m very happy to be here. This past year has especially felt like a battle, but I’m.still.here. I like to brush off “still being here” and roll my eyes like it should be a given at this point, but it is not a small accomplishment—it still, at times, takes a lot of (exhausting) work. But here I am. Thank you, everyone, for your support over the years. Thank you for being my friends! 💖💖

Hope you have a great weekend (…as great as it can be!)! xo