I tried my hand at a couple techniques last year and this year for mental health, specifically social anxiety and fears of the unknown. How well did they help me? How likely do I think they are to help you?

First, I would like to describe my mental health issues so that you can identify if these techniques are for how you are feeling. I personally last year battled with my social anxiety a lot, and I always have throughout my life. My social anxiety comes and goes with differing degrees throughout the periods of my life and I would say the worst time was high school. So last year was nothing that I normally haven’t had to tackle but it was still persistent. The major variable that changed in my life was that I graduated college in 2020 and was now expected to find a job. I was unprepared to move onto the grad school program I had chosen and was content going out to make myself some money. Then it hit me, strong aversive emotions to not look for work or reach job postings and I learned something about myself, that there is a good chance I am ergo-phobic, or have the fear of work. With all that going on I decided I would need to cope with more than just video games so what else besides that did I use?

Well I first and foremost started with deep breathing. This is always the first thing that you are told to do because it can be somewhat instant and requires little to no training. It can be done anytime anywhere and it was the only technique I picked by up that I had tried before in life. I still to this day do deep breathing when I feel the pain and stress start to form. It is something that has always provided a small buffer to my anxiety but it is never near a solution for me. Every breath slows my heart for maybe 30 seconds so it becomes a constant deep breathing battle that I have to do so for me it is a tool I always use because it can be done with little intrusion into my day but I would not solely rely on that and I never have.

The next strategy I learned from my general practitioner. She suggested that I try and drink some lavender tea in the mornings and night to try and calm my nerves. This was something that I tried for a little bit but could not stand the taste of lavender tea. Couple of months pass by and I found that I simply did not like the brand and type of tea, as it was tea dustings and not loose leaf. This lead me to try different loose leaf tea types and brands and I found several I like. Now I love the taste of a good lavender tea especially if it is mixed in with another tea, but I do not find it too powerful a technique itself. When the warm kettle made tea is held in my hand and I feel the warmth and smell the lavender I do start to relax because it tells my brain that in that moment I am able to be alone and relax. But when I take it out with me to social situations it does not seem to calm me any more than a good deep breathe and does not add to the effect of a deep breathe. I do drink it morning and night most nights and that has no lasting effects but I do love a good cup of it.

The next one I tried because of an ad I saw on my father’s cable channel. It was a company called headspace and it is mindfulness meditation. Mindfulness has scientific proof that it helps stress, anxiety and depression, yet I found that it only helped while it was still novel to me. It gave me great techniques that have stopped some self rumination, telling myself about the horrible things that happen or that people hate me, so it did help give me a confidence boost to a degree, yet when my anxiety flares up it just isn’t enough. I try to keep practicing it as it may be a lack of practice that is keeping me from reaching its full potential, but as of right now it isn’t helping as much.

The last technique I feel is the most powerful one for me and probably for anyone reading this would be the one I recommend first and that is journaling. Throughout college I was always told that the best thing you could do for you mental health was to keep a journal and just write in it for 15 minutes if the mood strikes and if not to still use that time as journal time and just think and write whatever you feel like. I have found that this is something that has helped me the most as I do it every night and it allows me to get my rampaging thoughts and feelings out into the world without judgment. It lets me reflect and see that I have left something in the world made some influence on something physical, and allows me to read it back and question whether what I fear or worry about actually makes sense to me. It has been a tool that has helped my confidence as someone who always hated seeing my own work or receiving criticism. Journalling has made me a lot stronger and makes me fear criticism so much less that I am now able to bring my thoughts to you through this blog and actually post and promote myself on social medias more than I ever have before. I had never ever posted a single thing on social media be it comments or my own post or even share and like posts simply due to fear and worry. Now I can take solace in my journal, but this has not completely stopped the anxiety or pain, but more given me the courage to try and fight through it. Looking through jobs right now is still super painful for me but I manage to get through.

Lastly I have reached out to therapists and am in the process of setting up an appointment to talk with them over Zoom. I feel like that is the best thing anyone can do for themselves and I hope to demolish that negative stigma that only “crazy” people go to therapy. My own father felt that way and thought that I wasn’t “crazy” enough to see one but I know better. I got an education in that field and for me the only question I have is if a therapist is right or a psychiatrist, in case there really is a brain chemical imbalance in me and the only route is medication. I plan to ask the therapist if they think seeing a specialist is a good idea or not.

I hope that reading through how they helped me out or not can at least give you ideas of things to try and help your mental health. Always look into these techniques and give them a try yourself as everyone does react differently to types of therapy and I hope that one of these can help you and that my experiences can inspire you to seek help if you need to. As always if you liked this post please like it and consider following me here, every follower I have gotten so far has been a joy to see and I would love to see you back here commenting and interacting with me. I would love to build a community to talk games anime vtubers and mental health and I can’t wait to see you here or over on my twitter. Thank you for reading from end to end and have a great day everybody.