Tag: gardening
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Mental health benefits of gardening (Part 3)
Slowing down helps me manage mania – gardening is one way I do this…
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Chips with everything – growing and eating (Part 2)
Gardening self-care is not just about flowers, it’s also about fresh food, albeit in small quantities. I have a track record with tomatoes, which I have grown in pots or grow bags as well as in the ground. Similarly peppers (capsicums) do not need much space although more warmth and may be happier under glass,…
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Is gardening is self-care? It is for me (Part 1)
Someone suggested gardening as self-care for my next post – even though they hate gardening themselves. The first thing to say – the activity you choose for self-care is very personal, the benefits more universal. In some areas your health professional may be able to prescribe an activity you are interested in trying. Oxford Languages…
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How I stay happy, not manic
It’s only in the last decade really that I have settled on ways to manage my bipolar effectively. They’re founded on routine and enjoying and recognising simple pleasures. Not that my life before was all sex and drugs and rock and roll, it wasn’t, but the ingredients that work for me now include: Mild contentment…
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Navigating stigma with a mental illness
Are there signs before diagnosis? I was diagnosed with manic depression (as it was then known) relatively late, at thirty-one, after several years of depression and the requisite manic psychosis. I sometimes look back to see if there is an archaeology to it: those times at school I was sent out of class to walk…
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Recovering from psychosis
I have experienced six psychoses in my thirty years of a bipolar life, each one different from the last and each with its own dominant theme. To my well self, these episodes can be shocking even when I can’t remember all the details, and making sense of them is quite hard. I’ve yet to meet…