marimeiastories - Tumblr blog

marimeiastories · 12 days

Text

To me, depression feels like a glass dome, in which I'm trapped.

I can see the beautiful around me but the glass prevents me from actually living it.

1 note · View note

marimeiastories · 13 days

Text

out standing in its field..seedling pear

169 notes · View notes

marimeiastories · 24 days

Text

Just had more therapy. Fuckin rocking it.

7 notes · View notes

marimeiastories · 1 month

Note

Hey i would like to use your poem as a opening line to my blog. Please let me know if you're comfortable table with it.

I am new to writing just trying out things.

Sure, as long as you quote my blog/tag me!

I'm honored, which poem is it?

3 notes · View notes

marimeiastories · 1 month

Text

You don’t have to be good enough, it’s ok to just be, that's already good enought even if it doesn't feel like it.

8 notes · View notes

marimeiastories · 1 month

Text

Hwo to get rid of this sense of numbness in which nothing is fun and nothing matters?

#mental health blog #mental health #depression awareness #depression

0 notes

marimeiastories · 1 month

Text

- marimeiastories

I don't want to be in love with someone

I want to be in love with life

so fiercely

that I forget all the pain

and all the days in which I thought

I couldn't do it anymore

#mental health #mental health blog #healing #positive mental attitude #self care #writeblr #writing community #positive quotes #positivity #poetry #poem #writers and poets #depression awareness #positive thinking #self love #short poem #poetblr #poets on tumblr #writerscommunity

485 notes · View notes

marimeiastories · 1 month

Text

#artists on tumblr #mental health #mental health blog #positive mental attitude #healing #self improvement #self care #my artwrok #digital drawing #digital illustration #digital art #life quotes #quoteoftheday #artwork #art #affirmations #my art

3 notes · View notes

marimeiastories · 1 month

Text

Counsellor in the making - 2

Today is feedback day! Thankfully, it’s not actual feedback, because I do not think I could pass a counselling related assessment by giving names of my classmates – it’s all I have learnt so far (and not very well).

Today’s class in on giving and receiving feedback. I never thought about the fact that giving and receiving feedback is a skill to be learnt, not something you just do – that might explain why my manager at work is useless at that.

After some theory on how to give useful feedback, we got asked to reflect on a time in which we gave feedback to a friend or a family member, to let us focus on the fact that giving feedback happens in our lives more times that we think – a lot of it outside our jobs.

Unfortunately, the first scene that comes to my mind is when my dad asked me “Why do you think I cannot keep a girlfriend?” I replied something like “Mmmh, you know, maybe I have an opinion, but I do not know if you want to hear it?” My dad sighed, and, after some terrifying 5 seconds, he went “No, probably not”. This convo would score low on a “usefulness” scale but high on a “honesty” scale. All in all, it went better than I thought.

Today marks the official start of our counselling skills practice. This works in a straightforward way: one student is the counsellor, one the client, and one the observes the session. Counsellors progressively use skills they learn, clients bring “real life material” to the session (as they told us several times, “If it’s not real it does not work – ugh) and the observer makes mental notes for feedback. Counsellor need to counsel with asking little to no questions (only the useful ones, they said… ok?), without giving advice and without making assumptions.

This is as easy as being dropped in a pool and not knowing how to swim.

I sit in my chair, which becomes more uncomfortable by the minute, and stare at my would be client, who is shifting constantly. And, here we go!

While the client is talking, my mind is a constant ok they said this so I can connect it to that but I will not ask anything and oh yes yesterday they felt overwhelmed and… And, they stop talking. And, I have no idea what they said, because I was in my head. I mumble and blabber and end up saying that I cannot fathom how to answer because I got questions I cannot ask. My classmate replies that they would not have a clue either.

We find out at the end of the session that this is our second day and of course we did not know what to do, we have been told what to do. This session it was to show us how hard it could be to start a session. OH, WELL, THANK YOU. IT FELT GREAT. (I wanted to cry the whole time).

I think today I learnt this: – I need to listen to listen, not listen to answer – Training is going to be brutal – I am probably going to love this

And hopefully I will learn how to swim.

#mental health blog #mental health #counselling #studying #therapy #psychology

0 notes

marimeiastories · 1 month

Text

Counsellor in the making - meeting strangers

Today is the day! The day in which everything starts, my first day of training to be a counsellor! This thought cheers me up for like 5 seconds, after which reality kicks in: I paid 2280£ for an access course to the Counselling and Psychotherapy master I would like to do. Problem is, I do not know if I will get in.

What determines my eligibility for this master is completing the access course and passing an interview, which I already did last week. How fun is it that they asked me “So, what motivates you to study this master course?”

Mr interviewer, I would like to study this course because I want to help people. Because counselling helped me. And because I spent 2280£ on a course to get into this master. Mr interviewer, doesn’t this amount already quite vividly show you that I am very much motivated in getting in?

That was the answer I’d very much liked to give, but I decided to weight more on my desire to help others and how and when counselling helped me. Thought it would give me more chances.

I arrive an hour early, because if I arrived any late I would have freaked out on the bus. I think this might be something I will need to share with my future therapist, should I get into the master.

I look around what is going to be my classroom for the next 15 weeks. White walls, grey carpet, red sofas, black chairs. No windows. Ideal place to open up to 20 other strangers without feeling in a cage. The sunlight coming in might distract my life story sharing, I suppose. Because this is what we are all going to do form now: let a group of strangers know why we are here, and let ourselves be counselled by a fellow student.

That’s what real life counselling is anyway, right? Opening up to a stranger. Should be easy, I think, while gnawing at my nails and looking like I am about to be sick.

People start to come in, and we all say hi and our names and smile awkwardly at each other. My head is in full survival mode: who is my friend? Who is not? Who has better chances than me? I then think that these thoughts might as well be more useful in the Hunger Games arena, so I drop this and try to focus on what is being said to me. Unfortunately, by the time I come back to present, I already missed 5 names. Ah, well.

It is now time to start, and as the two teachers come in, we all fall in dead silence. Everyone finds their seats, and we look like a primary school class terrified of their teacher, rather than a group of grown ass adults.

But, I’ll tell you what: to me, this is scary as hell. I will need to open to strangers from today on, otherwise this course won’t work. Counselling is all about the awareness of the self and others, and making up stories of why I want to be there and pretend that I have always been fine in my life will not work here.

A quick glance at the room and I saw my expression reflected in anyone else here. I see the same fear.

I also see something else that comforts me: under this roof there are people ranging from 21 to at least 50 years old. I am 28, so I am somewhat in the lower end – I am not too late for this. No one is, really, but of course I overthought this while signing up for this course. I am too late, what am I doing, I will never pass this, why can’t I just be fine in my safe admin job. Over and over.

I signed up on the premise that if I didn’t I would be going why did I miss the opportunity, I am now stuck forever in admin, what a waste.

I suppose this can be summarized with “I regret stuff that I didn’t do more than stuff I did do”, which looks wise. Or maybe boredom is my biggest enemy and I have to avoid at all cost.

After the icebreaker (who does not love one) we go through the semicircle of people; everyone needs to say their name, their occupation and why they are here right now. I am roughly in the middle, which means I have time to worry about what to say for around 10 minutes, simultaneously forgetting all the information everyone else says.

The person next to me closes their mouth, and I am next. 40 pairs of eyes turn to me. I am as a comfortable as when that (fake) friend in mid school shouted “Maria has a crush on xyz” in the middle of the school courtyard (it was quite traumatic – never fully recovered from that one).

And so it goes: “I am Maria, I work in university administration, and I am here right now because I did not think I could study anything related to psychology before as depression hindered me so much I would be triggered”.

Came out more dramatic than I wanted it to sound, but also more real than I thought it would. Everyone else nodded, and for a second I thought they would go “Hi, Maria” like in those AA meetings (I swear I was never there, I saw it in the movies).

Well, so this is how it starts. More to come. More to share. I am scared to death, but also, somewhere, I am kinda excited.

#counselling #mental health blog #mental health #self improvement #mentalhealth #wellbeing #psychology #therapy #student #university

3 notes · View notes

marimeiastories · 2 months

Text

I told my psychologist how I feel constantly stuck and I have always an urgent feeling to change my setting. She told me to focus on the feeling of change, the active feeling, rather than the stuck feeling, the passive one, as the wishing to move feeling was causing the feeling stuck feeling. If I focus on my desire to move, he said, I will do great things.

I realised that I felt like I was focusing on a shadow, rather than the light behind it.

So, I drew my feelings.

Focus on your desire to move, rather than your feeling of being stuck.

#mental health tips #mental health blog #mental health #healing #positive mental attitude #self care #self improvement #writeblr #mental illness #writing community #therapy #mental support #illustration #digital drawing #digialillustration #my art

1 note · View note

marimeiastories · 3 months

Text