necessary weather
mental health guides
my experience with mental illness
If you’ve been following my antidepressant journey over the course of 2019, you’ll know I began gradually lowering my daily dose of 150mg of Venlafaxine in February, the idea being to eventually come off it entirely. Due to my own past experience, friends’ recollections and the vast number of horror stories out there regarding coming off antidepressants too quickly, I decided to take a whole year coming off of mine.
I'm losing my way with the embroidery. There, I said it. I've still got all the same great ideas I've always had but i'm finding it hard to put them into action - I sit down to do the work and my mind draws a blank. Suddenly all these invisible and indefinable barriers go up. I need to try really hard to figure out what they are otherwise i'll never move forward.
From someone who's been there, doubting whether i'd make it through one day to the next, I wanted to write this piece as something of a care package not only for myself and my loved ones, but for anyone else out there who may be facing mental illness. If you know you're prone to depression, maybe you could bookmark this piece, print it out or forward it on to your family and friends as something of an 'emergency plan' for next time you could do with a helping hand.
#stitchingformentalhealth perfectly sums up my philosophy and what I aim to achieve with @emilyrowanstudio. Through encouraging the process of craft as therapy, the next step I wish to take for my business is to use CBT techniques and the new ways of thinking I have adopted along the way to create supportive embroidery kits.
Navigating the mental health wave via a severe and unpredictable bout of depression and anxiety earlier this year is what made me finally take the (in my mind) humungous step of opening an Etsy shop. Contradictory, you might say, but it is realising the therapeutic qualities of embroidery and a need to at least attempt a different career path that continues to keep the debilitating thoughts at bay.
