Mental Health Awareness in the Digital Age

Something I would like to emphasize is that social media can be used for good. Despite it being a vice for many to spread hate, propaganda and quite rightly utter bull, a plethora of goodness is also out there.

Matt Haig; successful author of books including Reasons to Stay Alive, How to Stop Time, and several children’s books is someone who openly discusses his experience with depression and the wider scope of mental health on social media.

Here are some recent examples of his tweets that I  would like to share;

On developing a stronger understanding: “Mental health is not a niche subject for a few depressed people. Mental health is everyone. Mental health is what we all have. It is our minds. And understanding what impacts our mental health would lead to happier lives and societies. There is nothing more important.”– 24/05/18

On taking care of your mental health in the digital age:

“Got called ‘fragile’ for deleting a tweet. Yeah, I am. Men can be. People can be. It’s okay to use social media the way you need to use it. Delete tweets, press mute, unfollow, edit, block, step away, leave, whatever you have to do for your mental health.” – 27/05/18

On the severity of stress:

“A third of people have felt suicidal in the last year due to stress. It’s time we took stress as seriously as diet and exercise.” -14/05/18

To read more on this go to https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/may/14/three-in-four-britons-felt-overwhelmed-by-stress-survey-reveals?CMP=share_btn_tw 

On mental health as a valid excuse: “The common idea people ‘use’ their mental health as an excuse for things is a bad one. There are far more times you see someone acting ‘normal’ and silently struggling to do so than you hear the inner context for a behaviour. Listen without prejudice, as George Michael said.” – 28/05/18

On it getting better: “Last time I was in the Balearics I nearly threw myself off a cliff. This time I go running along them. This time is better.”  – 28/05/18

On living with anxiety: “Anxiety isn’t weakness. Living with anxiety, turning up and doing stuff with anxiety, takes a strength most will never know. A trip to the supermarket can mean you defeat more monsters than in The Odyssey. It’s not WHAT you do. It’s what you OVERCOME to do it.” – 26/05/18

It is people like Matt Haig that I think we should be thankful for in what can at times feel like a neverending cacophony of pings, updates and notifications. It can be easy to lose focus and direction amongst the sheer amount of digital traffic. How do we ensure we only see content that we can identify with, seek enjoyment out of and find comfort in? And furthermore, content that can help contribute to a better-informed society about issues such as mental health? We need to be mindful of what we allow ourselves to see on social media. Which I digress, unwanted posts at times are often unavoidable, but when action can be taken to filter out toxicity and filter in positivity; action should be taken.

For more from Matt Haig, check out the following links;

‘ Happy’ – Fearne Cotton’s podcast episode featuring Matt Haig (available on Spotify)

Follow Matt Haig on Twitter

‘Books Save Lives with Matt Haig’ – Waterstones Article

‘Notes on a Nervous Planet’ – Haig’s new book on mental health in the digital age (available for pre-order)

I also can’t recommend enough his books; Reasons to Stay Alive and How to Stop Time

Thank you for reading!

Is Technology Changing The Way We Think?

Our relationships with technology in the information age is something extraordinary. It is something which would have been incomprehensible in the minds of human beings 50 years ago. We are essentially walking around with supercomputers in our pockets. But these tiny devices that can give us information from all over the world are so much more than coding and hardware. As astonishing and advanced as I’m sure the physical making of smartphones are, it is much more the content that is flowing through our devices that is interesting to think about. They are an outlet through which we perceive anything and everything, from our best friends birthday party we unfortunately couldn’t attend via pictures on social media, to the biography of some wise old prodigy from the 16th century, or how to bake the perfect cheesecake, to name a few examples. We can get the information to anything at the click of a button and time and space limitations are superseded by the immediacy of it all.  With all this, it can be questioned as to whether our increased access to information in the digital age is making us as a population smarter, or lazier? Think about it, we are having to use less energy and effort to go about finding things. Public libraries were often the only way to find resources and you’d have to travel at least some distance to get that information. It’s actually quite hard to imagine as someone who’s practically grown up with the internet. Moreover, has our ability to comprehend and navigate through information become more efficient? Flicking through social media feeds and search engines is something we do every day. Wading through reams of content which is either done with intent or often mindlessly. But the significant thing is that we’re at both the receiving and the giving end of an abundance of information all the time. With this in mind, are we overwhelming our brains with content? Or as a consequence, are our brains adapting to suit the demand of living in a ubiquitous technological environment?

The Cacophony of Ignorance: A Short Story

‘Don’t you think it’s exceptional?’ Pete was sat at an almost full coffee bar when he asked this question. And when I say asked, I mean he more like yelled it for the whole of the coffee house to hear, and it was certainly loud enough to prevent the young man on his right from hearing what his business associate was saying on the other end of the phone.

No one answered Pete, so he yelled it again. This time with an even bigger grin on his face, in his attempt at creating a friendly exterior, despite his loud tone. ‘I SAID, DON’T YOU THINK IT’S EXCEPTIONAL?’

The customers probably thought he was high, or drunk from the night before. And again, no one answered. Maybe it was because he didn’t have the cleanest shirt on, and his hair was kind of muffled from when he removed his beanie hat just before he entered the building. Maybe he wasn’t being bold enough, people these days tended to be so engrossed in their mobile phones, they’d rather walk into a lampost than look up. Or maybe his volume was simply no match for the endless whirs created by the coffee machine, the blending of crushed ice, the constant line of voices ordering an array of different types of coffee, most from rushing commuters. Pete’s question was perhaps not a strong contender for the cacophony of his coffee-infused surroundings.

When he was almost out of hope of receiving a response, a girl, who appeared to be no more than ten years old, approached Pete. She asked if she could try on his beanie hat, and Pete obliged. She then opened her mustard coloured drawstring bag, and pulled out a collection of items; an mp3 player and earphones, a pair of earmuffs and a pair of woolen mittens. Pete perplexedly stared at the girl, baffled as to why she had come across to him. She put the earphones in, pressed play and ensured the mp3 player was at a sufficient volume.Next she put on her ear muffs and woolen mittens, and then began to look at Pete expectantly. ‘Hi, can I help you?’ Pete was obtaining a much more soft and quieter tone of voice now. Did she hear him? Pete remembered she had her earphones in, so probably not. He began to look around awkwardly, where where her parents anyway? Then suddenly she stepped on a bar stool as to match Pete in height, being less than five foot tall herself, and placed her hands over her ears. They were now staring right at each other.

Frozen in a state of confusion, Pete didn’t say anything nor did he attempt to move. The girl then said,’I want to hear your question, kind sir.’ So Pete once again said it, although half-heartedly as she surely couldn’t hear him anyway under her music, his beanie hat and her earmuffs.

‘Do you want to know what I think is exceptional? That even though I have music playing in my ears at what is probably an unhealthy amount of decibels, and ear muffs on, that I still heard exactly what you just said? No one in here was listening to you, nor were they going to acknowledge you either because these people are not in this moment, they’re ahead. They’re too busy worrying about getting to work on time, worrying about taking an ‘Instagram worthy’ photo of their coffee, worrying about what they’re going to cook their kids for tea. Thinking ahead,don’t you see kind sir? It’s always ahead’

And in that moment the girl vanished.

Pete walked out of the coffee house and hoped that his pursuit of finding communication would be fulfilled elsewhere.

 

 

This post was inspired by the Daily Prompt: Exceptional 

 

The Back to University Round Up

So this is going to be more of a chatty post, which I haven’t really done yet on this blog, so here goes…

Moving Out (Again)

Come September the 12th and it was time for me to move back to my university city and into my new house in readiness to start my second year of university. I’m not going to lie, I was nervous about this whole process, even though the first time I’d ever moved out from home was last year, when I started my first year of university. My nerves were becoming more apparent the closer the date came, caused by overthinking (completely normal in the human mind, but that doesn’t make it any less annoying) my living situation, as I was moving into a new house with five other girls, and of only two I knew well, the others I’d briefly met over the previous year. ‘What if it doesn’t work out?’, ‘What if i don’t settle in?’, ‘What if I don’t feel comfortable enough to be myself, or in other words, will I have to constantly restrain my weird self?’ But as usual, I was worrying unnecessarily and creating imaginary situations. I’ve been here just over two weeks now and I am absolutely loving it! I settled in almost instantaneously. I’ve made my room super cosy, and have already started decorating it for my favourite season, Autumn (I will insert pictures). My housemates are all lovely, and I’m already making some great memories with them, one being our weekly Bake Off evenings! I’ve been pleasantly surprised at how nice the house is, it was newly decorated for us moving in and is furnished with canvases, giving it that extra homely feeling.

Here are a few snaps of some details in my room;

 

Back to the Grind

September 19th struck the start of my second year of my university course, beginning with a lecture which i’m actually pretty excited about. For those who don’t know, I’m doing a degree in Media Studies, which is possibly one of the most diverse courses, purely being that a lot of what we study is interdisciplinary, as we often cross over into other schools of thought. For example, Sociology, Psychology, Law, English Literature, and the two more obvious ones; Film Studies and Media Production. Because basically EVERYTHING is mediated in some way in today’s society, meaning most fathomable things you can think of can be, and are, consumed through some form of media. Anyway, getting back to my first lecture of the semester, it was for my module titled Popular Genres, which means we will be studying twelve weeks’ worth of stuff about different genres, including fairy tales, horror, science fiction and children’s literature to name a few. This will include studying these popular genres with reference to the historical and cultural context that they were produced in. I also get to the choice to focus on literature in this module which I am very happy about! I’m currently reading Northern Lights by Philip Pullman as suggested by my lecturer ahead of our session on children’s literature, and I have to say, it’s very good so far. As well as my module on Popular Genres, I am also doing two other modules this semester; Visual Cultures (all about the complicated relationship between and creative usage of words and images) and Issues of Taste (exploring ideas of freedom and taste in relation to society, and in reference to the ever-changing contexts, issues and circumstances that occur over time). It is still only early days of teaching for all of my modules, so I feel like I can’t fully judge them, but this far, they all seem very interesting and I’m certainly eager to learn more about them.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this post, and I hope I haven’t made you fall asleep by talking about my university course.

If you have any questions about university, or anything else, I am happy to give you some advice!

Don’t hesitate to get in touch 🙂

 

Philip K. Dick’s Electric Dreams: Initial Thoughts

After seeing numerous advertisements for the first episode titled “The Hood Maker”, and seeing that Richard Madden who you may well know as Robb Stark from Game of Thrones was playing the male lead in it, I decided to give it a go.

I recognised Philip K. Dick as the author of The Man in the High Castle (a book I still haven’t got round to reading) and from seeing his name lurking around in the Science Fiction section at Waterstones, so I was interested to see what Electric Dreams would be like.

To summarise, Electric Dreams is a 10 part anthology series, based on short stories written by Philip K. Dick, with each episode focusing on a different story. The first episode which aired last night at 9PM on Channel 4, was based on the story titled “The Hood Maker”, which was originally published in an American fantasy and science fiction magazine in June 1955, which looked like this;

The first episode starred Richard Madden as Agent Ross and Holliday Grainger as Honor. The original story was adapted by Matthew Graham (Life on Mars, Ashes to Ashes) for Channel 4’s televised version, and so does as expected appear to differ from the original. Anyway, the plot basically takes on an ‘us vs them’ concept, which I admit is quite commonly found in the sci-fi genre. The narrative follows Agent Ross in the fight against the hood maker, who first appears when a man is seen wearing the hood in a protest against an Anti- Immunity Bill. The significant thing about wearing the hood is that it prevents the characters with telepathy (also known as Teeps) from reading their minds, while wearing it. Honor, one of the Teeps, is utilised by the state and becomes Ross’s sidekick in figuring out what the Hood Makers are plotting. But with this, we also learn that the Teeps are conspiring and relationships are tested between Ross and Honor when a unexpected twist is revealed.

The Hood Maker definitely reminded me of Humans, which also aired on Channel 4, with the whole humans versus ‘the others’ concept. But that didn’t hinder my enjoyment, and i’m definitely looking forward to next week’s episode “The Impossible Planet”.

I would also like to read the original of The Hood Maker, so I can look further into how it differs from the TV version, (one that I know of being that the original hoods were actually more like metallic headbands) and to see if the endings are different.

Anyway, thank you for reading! Let me know in the comments if you have any thoughts on Philip K. Dick’s Electric Dreams so far!

                                                                             🙂

Growing Up

“… And these children that you spit on

as they try to change their worlds

are immune to your consultations.

They’re quite aware

of what they’re going through…” ~ David Bowie

Being a teenager is challenging. The number of subliminal messages and expectancies placed upon young people are countless. Even though most of these ‘so -called’ messages don’t appear to be harmful at first glance, speaking from individual experience, they certainly are.

One of these messages which causes a lot of problems during teenage years, is the need to fit in. Follow the trends, use the same words as everyone else, dress the same, refrain from speaking up in class to avoid being labelled a ‘nerd’, undergo underage drinking just because everyone else is doing it. Peer pressure is something that we can get so caught up in, and it can be distracting from the precious years we have to be young and experiment with who we are. It’s all a part of growing up, it should be fun filled with wonderful experiences, good and bad. But I do however think retrospectively, that learning how you want to spend your time, (including saying no, and sometimes saying yes to things out of your comfort zone) is integral to discovering things about yourself as a person. It’s important to be aware of your limits.

I sometimes feel as though there’s this predetermined path set to follow in society. Go to school, and then onto University, get a job and then what, eternal happiness? But, of course life isn’t as linear as that. Life is like being on a never-ending roller coaster, it has its ups, it has its downs, and you often don’t know what the hell is going on.

Furthermore, individual expression isn’t something that you should hide away inside of you where no one else can see it. Because we’re all unique in our own way, and I believe you’re given a voice and mind for a reason, and to hide away and try to be something you’re not, well you’re only cheating yourself really. Life is beautiful. So go out and chase whatever it is you want and express your personality whether it be through your quirky choice of clothes or the words you use. We need to make a change and encourage others to start embracing who they are, and work towards the world being a more accepting place. After all, as Sean McCabe said,”You will never influence the world by trying to be like it.”

One thing i’ve also come to realise is that a way to feel free, is to be undeniably yourself. Whilst this is probably one of the hardest things to do, because I don’t know about anyone else but as much as you may want to be yourself at times, there’s always that voice is your head talking you out of it, telling you to act a certain way, say a certain thing to adapt to the person or situation you are around/in. But with the right mindset and persistence, and keeping focused on doing things you enjoy as well as surrounding yourself with the right people, it does get easier.

Lastly, a little bit of advice from me for those hard times when things are getting on top of you;

Think of yourself as an individual, and know that it is okay to prioritise yourself over others. Allow yourself time on your own to work on feeling comfortable in your own skin.

During anxious times view yourself as a single star in an endless cosmos, acknowledge the immensity of the universe, and know that you are merely a speck of dust within it.

This way of thinking often reminds me that my problems are not as big as I think they are, and that they will pass, much like day passes into night and sapling turns into tree. Life keeps going.

 

 

As always, thank you for taking the time to read this post!

🙂