Guess what? I am different. Shoot me

Coping with: Stress, Depression, Anxiety and Bullies.

I have suffered from all of these ailments, usually all at once or in selections, and it sucks like an baby on a dummy. But they are universal, be you black, white, yellow or blue; Christian, hindu, muslim, buddhist, atheist, agnostic or a Jedi. The chances are at some point you are gonna suffer with something related to your metal peace of mind, and when you do you are going to need some form of coping strategy.

People crave love. You; me; your best friend's, third cousin's, next door neigbour's, hairdresser's, dog's, mother's, owner included. And unfortunately it is this inate struggle that causes the problems toward our sanity. When people feel rejected or unloved it makes them unhappy, or angry, they then go about all scowly and cross, which then makes their friend feel rejected or unloved, passing on the scowl. Imagine it like that advert where the room is full of mousetraps with pingpong balls on the 'trap' bit, when the guy drops the pingpong ball onto the floor with in seconds all the traps have gone off and the room looks like the inside of a snowlglobe. Well bad moods are like that, but imagine that instead of all the pingpong balls being white, they are all painted with patterns and colours all different, some may be similar, but no two are the same. Well that is our reaction, everyone reacts differently to bad emotions, some may bottle it all up until they explode, some may take their emotions out on others, few may just become a big whirlwind of tears and soppy words (I am one of these) and some people just wallow in the sadness drawing more negativity on themselves.

An example of how negativity affects us. Recently I was PMSing, and yes I will admit that I do a mean impression of Oscar the Grouch when I am due a Red Muffin (my friends get the referrence) and it was a pretty mean one, I mean I was biting the inside of my cheek until I had ulcers the size of pennies, (A/N I bite the inside of my cheek when I get cross, don't know why, I just always have done) and everything that could go wrong, went wrong. People who I would have considered my close friends took my purse, left my form room, hid and refused to return it, saying I had to go find them, this annoyed me to no end because I was reading a pretty important chapter of Lay Me Down (A/N check it out if your into abuse, drug use *naughty* books) So I got 'in a piss' as I refer to being royally pissed off as. To top this off whilst leaving my form room, my form tutor, who lately has been seeming to go out of her way to humiliate me, belittle me, be generally nasty toward me, one of the only girls in her form who makes an effort academically, decided to confront me on the issue that my coat is burgundy, therefore against school policy. To ice the cake I proceeded to drop my money all over the bus floor. Fun times, note the sarcasm.

So how did I deal with it. Not very well, I am not very good at being angry or holding grudges, but I get upset very easily, and well, am prone to bursting into tears, as my mum says I wear my heart on my sleeve, I mean the other week I burst into tears at how down south they are building a boat out of donated pieces of wood, that have a story, and the boat will be called the collective spirit. So I drowned myself in chocolate, sobbed into my cat, cried because cat hair was in my eye, hugged my bestests and refused to speak to the girls who upset me in the first place. And that is hard, I am just not an angry person, I just feel like, I would never do that to some one, just because you don't understand how much I treasure my break and lunchtimes as I feel they are the only time I get to just sit, and read, there has never been a time when I have enjoyed trapesing around school. And as for my form tutor, I am continuing to be short and icy because I don't feel that she will react well to the tsunami of emotions that are contained within me.

So anyway onto coping strategies. When I went through some stuff recently at my school, I was offered support from our school councillor. If ever you are offered this, ACCEPT, my councillor gave me an outlet for all the negative things that I suffered with. I could discuss all the doubts and insecurities that I had, whilst going through coping methods. A few times I took a close friend with me, who I felt would support me, someone I would literally trust with my life. And this helps, it took me 15 years but I have finally surrounded myself with two of the best girls in the world. As soppy as it sounds I don't know where I would be with out them. As I am writing this Siân is currently putting up with what I refer to as an emotional tsunami.

The most simple coping method I use is what I am now naming white blood cells. A white blood cell does three things to pathogens, engulf, produce anti toxins and antibodies. We need to do the equivalent to negativity.

ENGULF- we need to surround the negative person with happinerss. This will 'digest' the bad energy. This means that if someone is sad, angry etc, you need to with your friends surround them with positivity, smile, talk to them, but not about why they are sad, ask them if they are doing anything fun at the weekend, and 'distract' them from negativity.

ANTIBODIES/ ANTI TOXINS- for this method to be effective, it has to be random and spontaneous. For example, if you see someone looking ' a bit down' go to them and say, "I love your dress," or "You did really well in that exam, are you proud, because you should be" or "Your so lucky you are fantastic at ________, I am absolutely terrible at that". This will just give them something nice to think about rather than the bad things.

Eventually I have began to overcome the despair that had suffocated me. If ever you need someone to talk to I am here, i seriously don't mind being a listening ear.

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Hope you enjoyed it.