167- 52 weeks of gratitude - Week 5 - Something someone gave me

52 week gratitude challenge - week 5 : Something someone gave me.

Instead of an object someone would have given me and for which I'd be thankful, I'm choosing for this post the piece of paper my regular therapist gave me, with phone numbers of CBT therapists that lead me to find my current CBT with whom I made progress in my anxieties and which will ultimately I can improve my overall mental health. 

Thus ends January 2017 posts for this challenge, which goes on to week 6, the city I live in, that I'm not sure I'll be able to discuss in name, but to be posted weekend of 5/2. 

166- Statute of limitation - the battle that won't happen

This month has been quite difficult for me. Not because of the return of the cold weather and its lot of slow-downs, but because it's the one, last chance that I would have to bring any kind of legal action against the man who was my sperm-donor and should have been a loving, caring father, raising me properly and making basic mistakes like all parents... 

165- Feeling raw / cyclothymic depression

I'm feeling raw, very irritable and my mood pendulum swung so low, even music didn't alleviate me at all.

For some reason, when the apartment becomes untidier and less clean, my cyclothymia tends to sink into a very deep depression that makes me want to stop a lot of my favorite activities and give up on more sporadic ones such as art, where I exaggerate my feelings of lack of talent into a total and complete inadequacy and that I'm wasting my time in even trying them.

164- 52 weeks of gratitude - Week 4 - A family member

Week 4 in the 52 weeks of gratitude challenge regards a family member - a logical continuation from week 3 which is was about family. 

I am most thankful to my paternal grandfather, about whom I've been thinking a lot in the past few months. (read post 107 for instance). 

163 - #365daysofselfcare (January 2017)

Second challenge of 2017, I now start #365daysofselfcare. Indeed, I had been slacking my self-care way too much lately. To avoid growing my blog entries count to huge numbers way too fast for short posts, I decided to make monthly entries sharing the same heading, which means that this first shall be shorter, covering only two weeks of this month. 

The blog entries shall be a bit more detailed than their twitter counterparts, and I'll direct all my followers there to read the rest here.

162- CBT2017- 14

First CBT session of 2017, it's the 14th meeting with my current CBT therapist (my second, if you recall). 
I decided to use continuous count, because later this year we'll start another CBT, which won't be targeted at my social phobias but about 3 other ones (there should be a tag for it in due time).

161- 52 weeks of gratitude - Week 3 : Family

First challenge I participate in 2017 is this weekly post of gratitude which I had started late on the 10th of this month. Now finally on-time, I announce Sunday 0:00 UTC as the posting hour of my entries in this challenge. 

160- Domestic violence awareness (1) - from reading a news article to posttraumatic growth

***trigger warning*** : domestic violence. Trauma

I have previously shared with you parts of my life stories, which included my post about growing up with domestic violence and abuse. 

In short, I witnessed the mad aggression that my father hit the woman I thought was my mother and turned out to be my step mother. 

I was also physically abused on numerous occasions, quite often. 

159 - Mental health Shout-outs shutdowns

 

Back in June 2016, I had started sharing shout-outs to various mental health bloggers I'd met in twitter MH community. Now, by June 2021, I have lost touch with most of the people I did the shout-out for. Some actually had stopped blogging, retreated from social media ; others used me and I don't feel leaving a shout-out for them on my own blog anymore, as I don't accept some of their actions towards me. 

158- 2017 awareness & posts calendar

Last year, I knew very few awareness raising days or weeks ; then, I learned of entire months devoted to any number of given causes, social and otherwise. This year, I want to prepare early, for a change, and not stumble on something out of the blue a week after it ended, which is why I'm going to select a few of 2017's awareness calendars here & here   which has far too many subjects for me to chose from, so I'll have to select those that either concern me directly, such as mental health month, or those that I already started addressing (Feminism, Gender...)

157- 52 weeks of gratitude - Week 2- Spouse

Second week (what should have been January 8) in this 52 weeks of gratitude challenge that I found on Fiona's blog  is about one's spouse or significant other, which is an easy topic for me because I am so grateful to my spouse who has been most patient and trying to help me throughout our 12 years of friendship (we first met online on 4th of January), and 11 years of marriage. 

156- 52 weeks of gratitude - Week 1 - Why start this challenge

I just read Fiona likes the blog's entry and thought to join my first 2017 challenge : the 52 weeks of gratitude.

As I want to finish it before 2018, I'll post weeks 1 and 2 concurrently and weeks 3 onward will be programmed for Sundays. 

If you also chose to join, here is the breakdown of the challenge. 

155- Shopping with social phobias (2) - learning to cope

Usually, shopping can be quite daunting and causes much anxiety. It happens on the way to the store, in it, and on the way back. But, over the years, I've been avoiding rush hours, preferring the off-hours of early morning - when the medium age of all shoppers with me is over 65. 
Yes, I admit, for many years, I have been getting up early enough to reach the stores to avoid waiting in line for too long, and to have fewer shoppers around me (just like I told in post 26)