Mental Illness Is Terrible And Can Make Life Really Difficult, So I’ve Compiled This Masterpost To

Mental illness is terrible and can make life really difficult, so I’ve compiled this masterpost to try and make things a little bit easier.

DISCLAIMER: Just because I find something helpful does not mean it’s best for you. Also, I am not a mental health professional.

TIPS FOR IN SCHOOL

See what learning support is available, and if possible find out what others have used. What, if any, extra support is available to you? You might be able to have extra time on exams or take them in a separate room if that would make things easier.

Also look into emotional support. If you have a competent counsellor/nurse/any kind of support worker in school, talk to them. That being said, I had an absolutely horrible experience with a school support worker, and it’s 100% okay to ignore the in school support offered if it’s not helpful or even bad for you. If you need to, seek support outside school and keep seeking until you find something that’s right for you.

Talk to your teachers. Explaining that your mental health is not great, even only vaguely, can be really helpful in the future as it can make them more lenient with deadlines and more tolerant of absences for appointments or self care.

Speaking of absences, take days off if you need them. Email your teachers to find out what you’re missing and get notes from people in your classes to catch up on either during your day off or when you feel better. Your health should always come first.

Write down your homework and deadlines, either on your phone or in a diary of some kind. This should make it easier to keep track of what you need to be doing and stop you worrying about forgetting things as much.

If you feel like you want to be left alone, bring headphones. Find a quiet spot in the library and try to get some work done, and people should see the headphones as a sign you want to be left alone. If not, wanting to work in peace is a good enough reason to not want people coming over.

TIPS FOR STUDYING AT HOME

Write to do lists. If long lists stress you out, make multiple small lists based on the urgency of the task and ignore the non-urgent ones until your workload seems more manageable.

Work for as long as you feel comfortable and able to. If you can do two hours, great. If you can’t even do five minutes, that’s okay. As I said, your health is more important.

I’m going to get a lot of gasps from this, but work in bed if getting up and working at your desk seems too overwhelming. If it’s a choice between not working or working in bed, bring your work into that pillow fort. You’re accomplishing something, and don’t let anyone tell you it’s not good enough.

Whether you’re in bed or not, make your workspace as comfortable and organised as you can. Studying is rarely fun, but making it as comfy as you can sometimes helps you gain the motivation to get it done, and organised spaces can help to decrease stress.

Listen to something calming while you work. I recommend making something with noisli or the Animal Crossing soundtrack.

Remember to take breaks. Don’t push yourself until you can’t work anymore or you have a breakdown, pace yourself.

MOTIVATION AND SELF CARE

Keep a record of what you’ve done. Seeing all you’ve accomplished can be a nice morale boost and help keep you from feeling too down. Having a studyblr or some kind of journal is a good way to do this. This can also help if you have problems with memory.

Don’t sacrifice hobbies for school. If you’re mentally ill, finding something positive and fun is a rare thing. Cut down around busy times if you really have to, but don’t let it go.

Find a healthy emotional outlet. This might be exercise, talking to friends, using a site like the thoughts room to vent, making, drawing or writing something, hitting a pillow or scribbling your anger and sadness away. It might be something I haven’t thought of. Anything that deals head on with your emotions and doesn’t hurt anyone is a good outlet.

Similarly, find distractions for when you don’t want to deal with your emotions. Some of the above can also work as distractions, but so can pampering yourself, playing video games or app games, reading a book, listening to music, watching a film or TV show, going out somewhere you like, looking at pictures or videos of cute animals, cooking something, organising your space, or anything else that’s not harmful and lets you escape your emotions for a while.

Try not to compare yourself to others. In studying or anything else, you do you. Try to focus on meeting your own needs rather than whether or not a popular blog has the same study techniques or self care routines as you.

Don’t push yourself more than you can handle. Motivation is great, but if it leads to a mental breakdown, you’ve gone too far. Try to be aware of how much you can manage realistically. I don’t want to stop you giving 100%, but know what your 100% looks like and don’t harm yourself trying to go further. Instead, try and slowly change how much your 100% is.

Sleep is important for your health and for the quality of your work. No one works well on three hours of sleep. If you have trouble getting to sleep, try some kind of familiar background noise. I recommend the Harry Potter audiobooks read by Stephen Fry because I am in fact a giant loser.

Listen to other mentally ill people’s tips and advice on coping to try and work out what strategies work best for you. Tumblr (and the internet in general) has a lot of resources, and hopefully I’ll be adding to some of those in the future with more specific posts.

SOME RESOURCES

MIND - mental health charity, provides guides to a lot of different conditions and ways to cope.

Online Mental Health Support - a list of IM, chatroom, and email support options.

Worldwide Suicide Helplines - a list of phone numbers for multiple different countries.

That’s all I have for now, if you have any other suggestions feel free to let me know either here, through my ask box or through tagging me in a post!