Happify yourself?

Want to be happier every day? Well who doesn't?

Personally I am interested in exploring ways of helping me manage my wellbeing as I try to cut down on the anti depressants I have been on for the last 12 years (a process that seems to have stalled around the 20mg mark). I've also recently been exploring the concept of happiness and what we mean when we talk about it.

Professionally I lead on the exploration and implementation of online learning within YouthNet. This means I am interested in how simple online activities can help our young users make the most of the information and expert knowledge we have available and really embed positive skills and actions in their lives. After being sent the link by a blogging friend (thanks Lauren) I decided to sign up to Happify and see what it had to offer.


Happify hails from America and is a collection of activities designed to encourage you to spend more time each day on positive action for your wellbeing. It emphasises that it is based on the 'science of happiness' and every activity includes a brief explanation of 'why it works' (perhaps a little too brief at times and starting with the catch all  'research shows'). You start by taking a 'happiness' test which asks you a number of questions about feelings you regularly experience and gives you a score. I got 67 - but it's not completely clear what this means (is it a percentage?). However it was useful to spend some time thinking about the range of emotions and feelings I had experienced over the last month.


This is perhaps one of the benefits of something like Happify. Regardless of the content of the activities you take part in, the very fact of spending some time focused on yourself and your moods and emotions is a positive step. This is particularly true for those who haven't spent much time doing that in the past. I wonder if there might be a place for a more detailed 'happiness (or wellbeing) audit' to encourage people to reflect on this in even more depth.

After completing the initial test you are given certain suggested 'tracks'. The tracks seem to be based around five main types of interaction with the world - savour, thank, aspire, give, empathise - with each activity within them focused on one of these interactions. The suggested tracks are identified by a quiz but you can choose whichever ones seem most relevant. I was directed towards the  track that helped you cope better with stress, but in the end I went for the 'appreciate what you have' track. The tracks are timebound - taking place over about six days, with new activities being released over the week. I initially found this frustrating as I had some time on the first day I signed up and wanted to explore - but I predicted that the aim was to encourage people to keep doing small amounts over time rather than all at once. This was borne out by the email I received today (below). I also appreciated the email that I received yesterday which gave me some (actually quite timely!) information about most things people worry about actually having a neutral or positive outcome. I have since read that the emails are perhaps too frequent. Too frequent communications tend to make me ignore them, or filter them off, so I hope that isn't the case.

The activities I have done so far are, in most cases, nothing new. They are all things that many of us know can help improve our wellbeing.  The simple and speedy tasks include writing a list of things you are grateful for, spending time really looking at a scene in detail to identify and appreciate the smaller details, pledging to do something unexpected and kind for someone else and planning to appreciate an area of your neighbourhood you might not usually. The benefits of mindfulness seems to be a running theme throughout. The activities often seem quite simplistic - but this isn't necessarily a bad thing. I get the impression each one is designed to get you thinking, albeit briefly, in a slightly different way from ususal.

The advantage of something like Happify is of course that it takes those things you know you should be doing and puts  them in a structure to encourage you to actually do them. For those of us who suffer from depression, we all know the tricks our minds play which can demotivate us and prevent us from keeping up those daily positive habits. Happify, and other structured online courses and interactions might be starting to identify ways of harnessing technology to help  remind and guide us in these activities and thought processes - at least until they become more habitual. The disadvantages might be if the activities encourage you into a certain bias, or to make you feel like you 'should' or 'shouldn't' be a certain way in order to be 'happy'.

A positive element to the activities is that a lot of them encourage reflection after the event - whether you completed an activity on or offline you are encouraged to return to the page and write a little about how you felt while completing it. Reflection seems to be a vital element in all kinds of online learning - we've seen hugely positive responses to the forums for reflection we've added to online learning at YouthNet.

Something I do like is the community element - viewed through a Pinterest style board of recent actions and activities from others (including uploaded pictures and the options to comment). Despite having only completed one track so far, it gives you a good sense of what is to come and what others are doing. The comments and likes from others on your activities and actions could add a peer support element and an incentive to keep going. I would be interested to know how they moderate this, and what their moderating guidelines include. Will they allow for debate or less positive interaction?

Finally, I thought the suggestions for crafting fitted very well with my own thoughts on  'Crafting for Wellbeing' - so I thought I would add it on the end.

I've got five invites to the beta version if anyone else wants to explore.  I've only done a few activities so far and I get the impression there might be some more controversial ones ahead.

Happify might not have got it completely right but there's a lot of learning to take from it. We're seeing more and more of online learning for wellbeing and mental health and I think further harnessing technology to help us stay resilient is certainly an idea worth exploring. I'll keep you posted.

What's in a letter? Creative letter writing for self guidance and managing mental health

A blast from the past

Last week, through the magic of social media, I made contact with a penpal I'd last written to over a decade ago (she has since written a wonderful piece on catching up with old friends here).


Exchanging letters is a wonderful way of making and cementing a bond. You share a little bit of yourself on paper and then give that unique incidence of it away to someone else. There were no 'sent mail' folder or saved files back then.

From one meeting (and exchange of postal addresses) on a boat when we were 7 or 8, a friendship grew in letters that survived well into our teenage years, through cross country visits to each others houses and now to brunches in London as we approach our thirties.

Arranging to meet this weekend has necessitated the use of faster forms of communication and it was in an email this week that Bee told me she still had all of my old letters. I'm excited and a little nervous about reading them.

I expect that they will take me right back to the time when I was writing them (dotting the i's with stars or smiley faces of course), drawing in the margins, writing the address (I can still almost remember it now) and putting them in the postbox across the road from the bus stop. Not just the details of life aged twelve, but back into a sense of what it felt like to be me when I wrote them. Luckily, we were writing before the particularly difficult mental health years kicked in so I don't expect them to be painful reading - but I expect the physical reality of a letter, the feel of the paper, the biro scored into it and the handwriting upon to make it clearly from another place, another time and another 'self'.

What's in a letter?

Google searches reveal lots of information about writing formal letters and structuring cover letters. There's lots of advice on how to write letters (or emails) which are effective in getting you what you want. What is not immediately evident  is anything on the letter as a creative and personal tool for communication, self guidance and exploration of thoughts and emotions.

The dictionary describes a letter as 'A written or printed communication directed to a person or organisation'. I think that part of the power of a letter comes in that word 'directed'. Unlike a diary, a letter is written 'to' someone or something. There is an assumption that you are, in some way, giving the receiver new information, thinking towards them. As a result sitting down to write a letter necessitates a clearer explanation of your thoughts, actions and ideas than a diary entry might require; even one which starts 'Dear Diary'. It feels as thought there might be a lot of ways that letters and letter writing can be used to understand and manage mental wellbeing.

Letters in mental health

I recently wrote a piece about mental trickery in mental health which described depression as an island. 

"It's as if my depressed mind and my healthy mind are two totally different islands. I don't live on just one island where sometimes it is sunny and sometimes it rains. That is the island of someone without depression, someone who in the normal course of life sometimes feels happy and sometimes sad. That is the island I inhabit when I'm not depressed. It rains sometimes too, but I can remember what the sun feels like when I'm there.

My depressed mind is not an island where the sun used to shine but now it is raining. My depressed mind is an island where there is always dark fog and rain....When I am an inhabitant of depression island I can't even imagine the sun. Something or someone external tells me that there is an island where I usually live where the sun shines.But while I have become someone that has always felt the rain and seen the fog, I can't know what sun even feels like. It's hard to trust in something you can't feel. Trusting that you will feel better in a way you can't imagine now is hard."

To Clare from Clare

The piece goes on to talk about ways that you can communicate between the islands in an attempt to remind yourself what the sun and the light feels like. In turn, this can help you to recognise the depression for what it is - not your reality but a temporary, if currently all encompassing, state.

Recognising this when you're feeling on top of things is the first step and reminding yourself when you're feeling low is the second. Who better to remind you than yourself?  In your handwriting and on your paper you could recognise yourself. Even if you can't 'feel' it you might be more likely to believe in what your other, happier self, might be saying.

On the last session of my MBCT (Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy) course we wrote a postcard sending a message to our future selves reminding and encouraging that self to continue with, or restart the mindful meditations. We handed them in and they sent them on to us three months later - recognising that hearing from ourselves might work better as a reminder than a note from them.

A book of letters?

So how should you start? I've explored the benefits of journalling a lot. Letters are a wonderful way of getting starting with the often alien but ultimately fantastic process of playing with words and putting them down on paper in a way that may well be purely for your own eyes. 

I'm tempted to say start with a nice book. However I tend to find that the nicer the book the more reluctant people are to actually get started. I would say write your letters on loose leaf paper. Then you can rip them up, start again, throw them away, send them or bundle them together as you please. There's no right or wrong way of doing this after all.

Writing to your selves

Write a letter to your depressed self - Send a letter from the sunny island. When you're feeling good, sit down and write to yourself as you are when you're depressed. Remind that self how you feel when things are going well; try to describe the positive and hopeful feelings, the things you take pleasure in and the things you are looking forward to. Recognise that your depressed self is going to be unable to really imagine any of these things but remind them that, like before, things have changed and improved in ways that they can't imagine when caught up in that negative fog.

Write a letter to your happier self - One of the tricks the mind plays is that of 'discounting the future'.In general, being happy in the present (today, this week, this year - depending on the time scale) seems to be typically more desirable than the prospect of being happy in the future (tomorrow, next week, next year).But it can be more difficult when what you are discounting is a period of depression. Sometimes we need something of the memory of depression when we're feeling good to help us manage it. So write a letter to your happier self, reminding yourself how bad feeling depressed feels. The idea is to motivate your happier self to keep doing those things that keep them well - be it eating well, getting enough sleep, mindfulness, exercise or controlling your alcohol intake. You might even find that the process of sitting down and writing a letter when you are feeling low helps take you out of yourself and gives you some perspective on your current mood.


Write to or from your future self - If you're feeling low or lost a good exercise can be to imagine what your future self might look like. What goals might they have achieved, how might that feel and what will that look like to others? You could write to your future self, explaining where you would like them to be and how you would like them to feel. Or you could put yourself in the shoes of your future self and write back to yourself now, letting you know how things are going and what you have achieved. This is a nice way to pin down your goals and start to solidify what feeling happier might look like for you and how you might start to achieve it.



Write to your past self -  It's become quite common for celebrities to publish a letter to their sixteen year old self, passing on some insights from how their lives have developed. It's a good opportunity for reflection on where you are now and what you now know about yourself, your moods and the world. In the same vein, what advice might your future self give to you now? You might find reading some other peoples' published letters helpful too.

Writing to others

Unsent letters - When out and about getting on with our lives, we often find ourselves thinking to people - having conversations with people in your head and thinking through what we might say to them. The act of writing a letter can help pin down these swirling thoughts and ruminations. It can help you clarify this these thoughts, working out if what you're saying is what you actually feel.

If you have a difficult conversation ahead, write it all in a letter first - and then work out from that what actually needs to be said. If you decide it all does, you can give it to them in full. If not (sometimes leaving a letter overnight, or until you feel calmer can change your viewpoint considerably) you can pull out the key important points. Choosing to share your letter could also be very helpful in making sure those who you are receiving help from - be it a GP or a counsellor, really understand what you need. When I finally decided to seek proper help for my mental health at uni, it was a letter which I shared with my parents, tutors, friends, boyfriend and GP which explained how I felt and got the process started.

Sent letters -  So far we've been looking at letters as a creative tool for reflection and personal support. We've explored the types of letters you might write to your other selves. But letters that are actually sent can inspire the thoughtful honesty and clarity that nurture and improve romantic, friend and family relationships. As I say in my piece on managing depression and anxiety in a relationship, putting something down in words to someone who you see every day can feel weird but the odd exchange of letters can help give you the space to spend time framing things exactly right, clear your head and share your state of mind. 

If your friend or partner suffers from depression, a letter of support encouraging them to open up to you might help them get started.

This post has been focussed on handwritten letters and the impact that something in your own handwriting and written to you directly can have to remind you of your other selves when you need it - but of course many of these exercises can be done online too. I've explored writing more generally and the role it can play in helping you manage mental wellbeing here. What do you think? Have you ever written a letter to yourself or someone else that made a real difference?

Happiness - an emotion, a mood, a goal or a way of life?

"The idea that humans can capture a mere mood - 'happiness' - and somehow preserve it seems absurd. As an aim for life it is not only doomed but infantile."

Sebastian Faulks - A Possible Life

The idea of 'happiness' seems to have been popping up everywhere recently. The 20th March was the International Day of Happiness. This was established by the United Nations General Assembly who said in doing so that they were 'conscious that the pursuit of happiness is a fundamental human goal'.

Later that same week I attended the launch of a new information app for young people in London called WellHappy. The twitter hashtag conversation for the event was 'what makes you #wellhappy?. In attendance at this event was CALM (Campaign Against Living Miserably) and Mindapples (five a day for your mind) - both of whom aim to promote action against misery and towards wellbeing. One of the (very impressive) creators of WellHappy Kat McCormack ended her speech with the wish 'that all young people would be well happy'. Her app, a directory of mental and sexual health resources in London, was described as a step in that direction. But what would any of the people there, charity representatives and young people alike, have described as a 'happy life'?

The notion of happiness deserves some unpicking. This is particularly true in the context of mental health where I think we tend to think about it more than most. I have written before about how

easy it is to make comparisons, comparing our actual experience with how we feel our life 'should' be. An example of this might be 'I am on holiday, I should be happy'. In that post I explore the fact that these kind of thoughts actually make us feel worse. We start to question ourselves and make further negative thoughts and judgements about why we are not feeling how we think we should be. In this post, I'd like to look more closely at what we really mean when we say we should be happy. Do we know? What is it that we think we should be? 

If we don't know then the kind of comparisons we find ourselves making become even more dangerous. We may be imagining we 'should' be something that turns out to be an intangible and unachievable aim.

Is happiness an emotion?

Anthropologists and psychologists have identified at least six 'basic' emotions; joy, distress, anger, fear, surprise and disgust. Some people use happiness and sadness in this list too. Others disagree - suggesting that 'joy' and 'distress' refer to emotions and 'happiness' and 'sadness' to moods. The definition to the left describes emotion as an instinctive state of mind deriving from one's circumstances or mood. If I am going to define happiness as either an emotion or a mood then defining it as a mood makes more sense to me. If I am in a happy mood, I am more likely to experience the emotion of joy and it would take a lot to create the emotion of distress. If I am in a sad mood I am likely to experience distress more easily and with less provocation. In the context of my mental health: if I am in a depressed mood I am also more likely to experience distress or perhaps fear. This echoes the experience I talk about in my post on the mental trickery caused by depression. I can experience exactly the same event in different moods and it can cause different emotions in me.

So is happiness a mood?

Faulks in 'A Possible Life' seems to agree. The quote above suggests that happiness is a mood similar to sadness or irritability. A mood is described as the way someone is feeling, something temporary but not as temporary as an emotion. Moods influence emotions and presumably vice versa. However, what Faulks seems to want to emphasise is the fleeting role of moods within a whole life. His character regards happiness as something she will feel sometimes. However she feels that aiming to have a 'happy life' doesn't make any sense in the same way that aiming to have an 'irritable life' sounds odd. Even if you spend most of your time being irritable you are unlikely to describe your experiences by saying 'Ah yes, I have had a very irritable life'. In the same way, are we using the word 'happy' wrongly if we say 'I have a happy life' to describe the fact that we regularly experience the mood happiness?

In reality I think most people want to use the notion of happiness to refer to more than just a mood. They want to see it as something more complex - as the United Nations suggests, something they pursue.

So can happiness be a goal?

But this causes questions too. If happiness is a goal we still need to define it. What kind of goal? What would achieving this goal actually look like? Would achieving the goal of 'a happy life' mean that at some point we found ourselves in a happy mood all the time. At this point could we say we have 'achieved happiness'? What would being in a happy mood all the time be like? Would we even know we were happy if we had nothing to compare it to?

Intertwined with the project of defining and exploring happiness is that of identifying what causes us to be happy.  Mill and utilitarian philosophers assert that happiness is as a matter of fact the ultimate aim at which all human actions are directed (and therefore the ultimate standard by which to judge the rightness and wrongness of actions). I explore utilitarian ethics in the context of relationships here. Mill goes on to distinguish between lower and higher pleasures, saying that 'higher pleasures' such as pleasures of knowledge and intellect, artistic and cultural activity are all 'ingredients' which make up a life of happiness.

But Mill is perhaps mixing up two different definitions of happiness. And maybe that is part of our problem too - that we need more words in our language to describe different types of happiness. As we see above, sometimes happiness is defined simply as a mood or experience (a hedonistic conception of happiness) and sometimes as the objective character of someones life (a eudaimonistic conception). This latter conception links happiness with the fulfilment of ones potential. But how are they linked? It is certainly possible to have a whole life which is described as 'happy' without constantly feeling the mood of happiness. But one couldn't have a eudaimonic 'happy life' without ever feeling the mood happiness.

This brings us back to the idea of happiness as a goal. Faulks is right that it doesn't make sense to try and preserve the mood of happiness constantly - that is doomed to failure and is only going to make us feel worse if we try to achieve it. The world is not set up to allow us to be in a happy mood all the time. If nothing else then external factors and influences will ensure our mood is not always a happy one. But despite this we can still work towards a life which is fulfilling, manages difficult times well and contains joy and satisfaction. In fact, there is a lot of satisfaction to be gained in overcoming difficult times and knowing that we can manage them well if they come again. Perhaps knowing we are safe in the ability to cope with most external or unexpected difficulties is part of feeling happy? Perhaps there is something in the nature of this project which gives us a better definition of happiness?

What do we mean by happiness as a way of life?

Interestingly 'eudaimonia' is described as the state of having an objectively desirable life. I wonder if this is problematic. In this age of social media, many people seem to put a lot of work into creating an impression of their life as objectively desirable. In fact, as we all know, this is often an illusion - and one that can cause others distress. Many peoples' Facebook pages in fact suggest they have achieved what Faulks said was impossible - they are in a happy mood all the time. No wonder others beat themselves up when they make those comparisons and find they can't reach this unachievable goal.

Instead, lets think about a subjectively satisfactory life, one which we ourselves feel is fulfilling and enjoyable. Happiness by this definition seems to be something that takes practice (you can't practice a mood in quite the same way) and involves learning about yourself, recognising what it is in your life that gives you joy and seeking it out where you can. I wonder if the process of learning itself is a vital ingredient of this sort of fulfilment and satisfaction. This is what Mindapples is starting to help people think about. Similarly, CALM is perhaps recognising that individuals can achieve happiness in many ways - and its role is to help them move towards this and away from a more miserable life.

It also perhaps involves feeling an element of control, knowing that you are not at the mercy of the whims of moods and emotions but have the ability and awareness to maintain a level of life satisfaction in the face of external difficulties. I think this is part of the reason I would tend to say I have a happy life despite managing depression and the difficulties that can bring. This brings me back to Kat's app - and TheSite.org of course. In helping young people find information and start to overcome difficulties they are helping in this process of growing self awareness and the ability to manage our lives.

Know your own happiness

There is an enormously complex range of philosophical and psychological writing and

An old and well consulted 'happiness manifesto' at my parents' house.

research on emotions and happiness. This post tries to explore a few of these issues from a mental health perspective but I'm aware that it simplifies some concepts and barely scratches the surface of others.

For an insight into some of the ways people think about and view happiness - and some responses from philosophers have a look at the AskPhilosophers site under happiness. One question that struck me as relevant was one that said "If philosophers are asked 'what makes people happy?' why do they sit around and speculate on what should make people happy instead of walking out into the street and asking people 'are you happy? if so why?'". You can read the answer given by Allen Stairs here. He says that of course there is a lot to learn about happiness by getting out or your armchair or away from your desk - but to do this we need to have some well thought out ideas about what we are asking and what counts as an answer.

In the same way, to find our own happiness and manage our own mental wellbeing we need to read and think about what we want and what we mean by it. We also need to go out and chat to others - friends, loved ones, family, peers, others who are experiencing similar things - and find out what they think and what works for them.

I hope that this is what this post has got you thinking about. The concept and language of happiness is used in a whole range of ways in our day to day life and it's worth thinking about how you use it and whether your definition, or lack of it, helps or hinders you.

Managing depression and anxiety in relationships; early days and long term.

Managing mental health when meeting someone new - the early days of uncertainty and strong emotions.

In my ongoing search for metaphor I have likened the experience of meeting and falling for someone new to juggling. Four years ago I had found equilibrium, all the balls were in the air and I was genuinely happier than I had been for a long time. Suddenly another ball was introduced into the equation. This is a ball which brings with it strong emotions; uncertainty, interdependence and allowing others some element of influence over how I feel. Fitting this ball into the show without dropping all the rest proved difficult.

Getting to know him, particularly those early weeks of texting and emailing endlessly between meeting up for ‘dates’ was very destabilising  - it became much harder work to stay on top of things and maintain the high levels of contentment and happiness the few months before had bought. Without my noticing the obsessive, inward focussed, over thinking part of my brain - the overgrown slightly monstrous part that makes me ill - had stirred. It breathed it's negative fog breath over everything and made it harder to gain pleasure from other things. It felt as if healthy normal emotions associated with falling in love (excitement, uncertainty and perhaps slight obsession) had fed it and encouraged it to rear it's ugly head and distort normal and manageable emotions until they smeared across my whole life. I asked myself, could I risk letting these emotions run their course or is there too much of a risk of disturbing the beast and getting lost? If I feed the monster with real human negative emotions and vulnerability there's a real risk of it taking over until I can't tell what is a real reaction and what is a distorted, depressive reaction unlinked to reality.

But despite becoming irritated and angry with myself for allowing this to happen, it did make me realise something about my struggle with uncertainty. With no real choice but to continue to meet and discover this guy (and hell, am I glad I did), I wondered if perhaps managing something like this - really liking someone and all the risks it brings - was a good test for my newly growing happiness. Could I keep the vulnerability of a growing liking for someone, coupled with the uncertainty and risk of rejection (and the fact that, should that happen, I would inevitably universalise it and take it as an example of my possible inability to conduct real romantic relationships any more) separate from the obsessive, depressive element of my personality? I wrote a little more about how I worked through some of these emotions in my post ‘Writing my mind –writing in the immediacy of the moment’.

Managing depression and anxiety in a committed relationship

That was the early days. And despite the uncertainties being countered by excitement and the rushes of dopamine and norepinephrine, I'm glad they're over. But how do you manage when depression or anxiety are part of a committed relationship? It isn’t easy. Depression and anxiety can magnify and distort emotions. You need to be on your guard. When looking through their unnatural lens, you can start to feel that there is a problem with the relationship, or with one party within it. It’s something we get asked about a lot, either to help someone understand their own reactions to relationship issues - or wanting to help and understand others whom they love.

Everyone's ride sometimes gets bumpy...

Recently, I have come across this diagram of a 'rollercoaster of change'. I like how it externalises the course most relationships run at some point, and shows how support can help a couple avoid crisis.

A more detailed diagram shows the ongoing post-crisis path at different levels. With the right support a couple can return to the original path. But without it they may come out of crisis level but continue to function at a much lower level, taking very little to send them down to that point of crisis again. When you have to manage mental health in a relationship you need to ensure that that safety net is strong and maintained by you both to avoid regularly hitting crisis.

So what works? Well, in my experience;

• Establish it as something external to you both - distinguish between what is you and your relationship and what is the depression or anxiety. 

Form a team

Step back and set yourselves up as a team, dealing with and managing the illness together. Viewing it as external to you both stops it being associated purely with one individual or becoming too intertwined with the rest of the relationship. It's hard to do as it isn't tangibly physically separate in the same way as  a difficult family member or awkward landlord - but try to approach dealing with it in the same way. A lot of people say they find a metaphor such as the black dog useful as a way to clearly define the illness as an external party. This brings me nicely on to;

         

• Find your own language to talk about it and use this to help your partner understand.

The better your partner understands what is going on in your head, the easier they will find it to help. If your partner hasn't experienced depression or anxiety themselves they might well imagine that it sits on the same spectrum as normal human emotions of sadness to happiness. This might lead them to wonder why you can't pull yourself out of it or worry that it is something in their behaviour that has caused your depression. How can you describe it in a way you will both understand? I find the description of a negative fog or cotton wool that bounces every thought back into my head, magnifying it as it goes, quite helpful - but I've also explored the metaphors of islands and weather. Doing this also helps you to talk about it more simply in the future. Saying 'I feel a bit foggy tonight, I think I'm going to go to bed' will immediately help your partner to understand you and what you need. And when you don't feel able to say much more they will better understand why than if you say 'I feel like shit, I'm going to bed, don't talk to me' - something that will inevitably lead to their worrying that it's something they've done.

• Try and explain how the depression affects how you feel and behave - and recognise these as symptoms not reality.

Personally, when I get very low I get needy and dependent. Because these are more negative experiences one might have in a relationship anyway, it's important to identify that these are a result of the depression or anxiety and not of something else going on. Try and identify how the illness makes you interact differently and explain this. Saying 'when I'm low, I feel really needy, so I might be a bit dependent and irrational today' sets you up much better to manage the day than communication purely based on the current feeling of neediness 'why are you going out today, I really want you to stay in, do you even love me?'. This leads me on to;

• Examine your motivations before you act.

If you are feeling depressed, a symptom of that might be that you feel needy and dependent. If your partner doesn't realise this is a symptom of your depression they may well feel your behaviour is irrational - and tell you so. You might feel that they don't understand you and respond by ignoring them or going quiet and refusing to open up. But what is your motivation here? Fundamentally, what you might want is for your partner to pay you the attention your 'needy feeling' wants today. But playing these kind of games isn't the most straightforward way to get there. It may well start an argument or cause upset when it doesn't go your way and, for example, they just leave 'because you're ignoring me'. So instead - before you take an action which might affect your relationship - try to establish what it is that you really need and think about whether there is a clearer, more open path to get it.

• Use what works even if it feels weird.

It's really common to feel as though a relationship should flow along wonderfully and if it doesn't then there is something wrong with it. In fact this is quite a disempowering viewpoint. Relationships take work and management - but this also means you have agency in them. You have the power to make it work if you both want to. Sometimes this involves finding tools and techniques to help.

Some of the suggestions for managing really difficult times in relationships include ones using numbers to help you communicate when you're not feeling up to a long conversation. Deciding what the numbers mean (1 might be 'I'm just about doing ok, but could use some love today so be patient with me' and 5 might be 'I'm really struggling, I don't even feel able to talk about it but I need you with me today so much I need you to prioritise me over other plans') and then using them to communicate how you feel could help when, in the moment, you're not able to put it into words.

Another tactic if you are struggling to put everything you want to say into words is to try writing it down. It might feel odd initially to hand your partner a letter or send them an email when you live in the same house - but you might find that it works. You have more time to formulate what you want to say and they have more time to absorb it and work out how they feel about it. These techniques might not work for you but my point is that you shouldn't feel odd about using whatever does. It's actually a really normal and healthy way to negotiate difficult times effectively. 

On a slightly different note - be prepared and open to trying things that you might not think is 'you'. This might be a mindfulness course or some counselling - as a couple or individually. Finding new spaces and ways of managing and talking about how to strengthen your couple 'team' can be really valuable - and in ways you don't always expect.

• Enlist the help of your partner in helping you to recognise when you're struggling and reminding you it won't last forever - and don't disregard it when they do.

In a previous blog entry, I wrote about how when you are in the midst of a depressive episode it's hard to imagine that you will ever feel better. You can't remember what it feels like to feel good. You often need help in this state to be reminded about what feeling better feels like. Your partner can help with this. When they do remind you it's very easy to push it aside - that's what depression makes you do. But try and remember to listen to them - even if in the moment you can't genuinely believe what they are saying. Knowing your partner knows you and wants the best for you means it is easier to trust them when they are encouraging you that taking a shower, taking a walk, going for a run or attending your appointment is actually a good move.

Similarly, a partner can help you to notice when you are showing the warning signs of a relapse - especially if you identify what these are and put them up on a list somewhere. I explore this in more depth as part of my series for Mind on MBCT called 'How can I best take care of myself'. Identifying the warning signs is a useful exercise for you both.

• Read up on it and ask about it.

There's loads of useful resources, on and offline.

Know your enemy. There are loads of useful resources both on and offline which can help you both to understand the issues and how you can help each other. These include factsheets and articles - for example from TheSite, Rethink, Mind, Sane, Couple Connection or magazines like Mental Healthy. If you find something that seems to make sense to you or describes how you feel or the interactions you have as a couple - share it with your partner. 

There are also loads of forums and support groups that can help. This leads me on to;

• Look for support from others.

As a couple, you will be managing depression or anxiety as part of your relationship. But both partners can benefit from getting external support. I've done some work with Mind on their Elefriends  community. In the workshops I attended a number of participants said they either came to the community to ask about how they could support their partner - or they liked the fact that their partner who was struggling had access to support on the Elefriends site during the day when they were alone. Similarly, on TheSite.org, we get lots of people asking about how to manage mental health in a relationship. Hearing other's stories or just having somewhere else to talk about it - whether this is online, or with a friend over coffee or a drink - can really help.

• Don't underestimate the pressure that being the one relied on can cause.

This follows neatly on from the previous point and is mainly for a partner who tends to spend more time supporting the other. In many relationships I think this role can be one played by both partners at one time or another. When you are close and open about managing mental health in relationships together, it can be easy to become too reliant on each other. It can feel as though they are the only ones who understand. But being the only one relied on can be a lot of pressure - even if it feels like you can manage it. Think about who else around you can also help to support you or your partner (maybe friends or family?) and get them involved. 

If a loudspeaker helps - go for it!

Finally, and most importantly, keep talking. For me, open and honest communication - however it works for you - really is key.

So that's my thoughts. What works for you?

A shortened version of this article has since been published in ONEinFOUR magazine.

Understanding mental trickery - notes from depression island...

I would describe managing depression as an ongoing balancing act. A lot of that is knowing and understanding how my thought processes work and what influences my mood.

Alas, the mind is a tricksey thing and knowing it is a complicated process. I've been thinking about some of those nasty mental tricks a mind prone to depression can play. In the course of trying to make sense of them I have been thinking about depression through the metaphor of inhabiting islands. But I'll get onto that...

Tricky thing 1: The reverse motivation caused by depression

My Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) course spoke about the reverse motivation often present during depression. You can read a bit more about that session in my Mindfulness diary for Mind here - 'How can I best take care of myself'.

So what is reverse motivation?

Usually we want to do something and then we do it. When depressed, sometimes we have to do something in order to want to do it. The motivation comes second.  I know that sometimes I end up feeling better by making myself put one foot in front of the other and doing something I initially really do not want to do - often exercise (which I write more about here in 'Running stops my thoughts running wild'), visiting friends or getting to work.  However, it can be hard to persuade myself when in a very low mood.

Why? Well partly I think this is down to another sometimes quite devastating trick that a depressed mind can play.

Tricky thing 2: The difficulty of trusting in something that you can't feel or imagine

When in the midst of a depressed mood, you can't imagine that you will ever feel better. But it is not just that. You can't imagine that anything you might do to try and improve your mood could possibly ever work. Whenever I feel better, I feel better in a way that I couldn't have possibly imagined when I was feeling low.

Depression island

It's as if my depressed mind and my healthy mind are two totally different islands. I don't live on just one island where sometimes it is sunny and sometimes it rains. That is the island of someone without depression, someone who in the normal course of life sometimes feels happy and sometimes sad. That is the island I inhabit when I'm not depressed. It rains sometimes too, but I know what the sun feels like when I'm there.

Nothing but fog...

My depressed mind is not an island where the sun used to shine but now it is raining. My depressed mind is an island where there is always dark fog and rain. When I inhabit it, it is as if I always have done. Something, now I think about it, like CS Lewis's nightmare island in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. Or JK Rowling's Dementors (written from her experience of severe depression). The characters that experienced those horrors forgot they had ever been happy. They forgot what happiness felt like. And if you've forgotten that, how can you ever believe you'll feel it again? It's just a word with no emotional link in your mind.

When I am an inhabitant of depression island I can't even imagine the sun. Something or someone external tells me that there is an island where I usually live where the sun shines. It might be my writing, or my partner, or someone I look to for support. They tell me that somehow, perhaps due to an action I take, or perhaps just with the change of the days and the chemicals in my system, I will be back there. But when I have become an inhabitant that has always felt the rain and seen the fog, I can't know what sun even feels like. It's hard to trust in something you can't feel. Trusting that you will feel better in a way you can't imagine now is hard.

I think not understanding this can often be the cause of some of those really frustrating phrases - 'pull yourself together' or 'we all feel sad sometimes'. That is the understanding of someone who has only experienced the rain intermittently as part of a permanent life on the sunny island. They can usually remember the sun even while it's raining - and they can't imagine how you can't.

Mindfulness can certainly help with this trickery by encouraging you not to think your way out of a negative mood but instead to take a breathing space and some positive action.  Other people can help to by reminding us of when we have been in this situation before and the fact that then, we did come through it. Our services on TheSite.org provide the space for people to make that connection if they need it. Writing and words are valuable tools, notes from the sunny island, to connect you back with your healthy mind. I write about this more in 'Writing my mind'

Life on the sunnier island

But what about when I'm feeling good? When I am getting on with life on the sunnier island?

Last week I had a wonderful holiday in which I threw caution to the wind and had (god forbid!) a few glasses of wine each night. I knew these would affect me the week after, but kept saying yes all the same. This week, of course, I've slightly regretted it with some really nasty foggy days. The sort I knew would come but discounted their impact when someone topped up my glass.

Tricky thing 3: Discounting the future

I've talked about trying to trust in the existence of positive feelings when low. I also think that sometimes we need something of the memory of depression when we're feeling good to help us manage it. Why?

Helping us stop potentially damaging behaviour

I recently chatted to someone about 'discounting'. In general, being happy in the present (today, this week, this year - depending on the time scale) seems to be typically more desirable than the prospect of being happy in the future (tomorrow, next week, next year). I'm sure we can all easily imagine situations where we have discounted the importance our future happiness in favour of our present enjoyment.

But it can be more difficult when what you are discounting is a period of depression. Again I think it is down to a lack of memory and imagination. When on the sunnier island, we dont have a memory of the actual feeling of being in endless fog and rain. We can feel the sun, and can't really imagine ever not being able to remember it. This influences further our decision to do whatever we are enjoying here and now, despite it sometimes being a one way ticket back to the fog.

That isn't to say that, even with postcards from depression island in my mind, I wouldn't still sometimes choose a drink. I would just be in a clearer position to decide.

Helping us act

I don't always discount the future by doing something potentially damaging. Sometimes, without a strong memory of what I am trying to prevent, it is harder to actually do things that we know will help long term - like daily mindfulness. It is easy to plan to do it everyday but when it comes down to it (and you feel ok in the moment) to end up choosing to avoid that practice. A memory, or reminder of the existence of that other island can help us to make more sensible decisions and make an effort to override that natural discounting tendancy in order to prioritise the future.

The final tricky thing - how can we send messages between the islands?

A message across the sea?

Unfortunately, the all-encompassing nature of depression means that it's very hard for inhabitants of that island to remember their lives on a sunnier rock. And vice versa it seems. Real depression weather isn't found much on the sunnier island. However, to stretch the metaphor about as far as it will go (I love a good metaphor), I think that there might just be ways you can send messages between the two. By even just recognising the tricks our mind can play we are in a better position to counteract them.

In fact that's what much of the personal mental health elements of this blog are about. My search for my own tools and tricks to ensure there is something of a connection between those two different islands my mind inhabits and to help me work out how best to spend most of my life  somewhere where I know what sunshine feels like.

E Learning and Digital Cultures - initial insights from a metaMOOC!

Do you ever start something new and find yourself thinking 'I should have been doing this for ages'? I had a very strong case of that this week as I began a new Coursera course called 'E Learning and Digital Cultures' online. 

Last year I watched a fascinating TED talk by Daphne Koller, one of the founders of Coursera. I could identify with a lot of the learnings she spoke about. They were similar to conclusions I had reached from the initial forays into e learning I had been making at YouthNet using Moodle. These included ideas around the improved experience online learning can provide (particularly for a range of differently abled and variably focused students), the importance of a community of learners and the potential of using peer grading to scale feedback. I wrote a blog post about these ideas and how we had been putting them into action when developing our online training in support skills at YouthNet. But at the time I didn't explore the possibility of doing a Coursera course myself.

E Learning and Digital Cultures - a metaMOOC?

I'm lucky to have really inspiring colleagues - and in this case it was Helen Williams  (@nellsberry - also blogging about the course) who told me about this particular Coursera course. It sounded enormously interesting and relevant so I leapt on board as well. And luckily, with Coursera, it's pretty easy to leap on board. The course is a MOOC (standing for Massive Open Online Course) which means there are literally thousands of participants. While it opens and closes at a particular time and there are deadlines for our final assignment, individuals all over the world can choose when they read, watch and comment on the weekly papers, articles and films. 

This course explores teaching and learning in the digital age, but from a very wide angle - starting this week with an exploration of utopian and dystopian representations of technology in our culture - with a view to understanding how our perspectives on technology and human interaction with technology can influence how we view and develop online learning. 

An exploration of e learning, being presented through e learning, gives an interesting 'meta' element to the whole course. As well as an enormous level of discussion about the content itself, there is a lot of dialogue about the way the course is being presented and taught. 



The experience of e-learning

Even before I had actually engaged with any of the content, I found myself making notes about the experience.

I liked the way that there were loads of conversations going on about the course at once on different platforms - but felt that it was a bit overwhelming and I could have benefited from more guidance around how to manage and get the most out of these. It got me thinking about our volunteers and how we can improve their experience of familiarising themselves with our online learning platform.

I liked the way that a twitter stream down the side of the page gave a real time buzz to the course and went a long way towards making the experience of e learning at my computer at home more social. But I found it distracting when I was trying to focus on understanding the initial readings and would have preferred to be able to turn it off until I was ready to engage in discussion about the piece. 

I really liked the level of peer engagement and reflection that was encouraged. Not only is the final assignment peer graded, but participants were encouraged to write a reflective piece about their thoughts on a platform of their choice each week - and share it with other participants. This has already inspired me to make some changes in our own e learning courses at YouthNet. I've added some forums encouraging our trainees to reflect on their own experience of completing a topic and asking them to identify some of the work of their peers which they found useful and relevant. Given that they are being trained in skills for giving online support, (something which is by no means an exact science)  discussion and sharing of perspectives is immensely valuable. It was good to get a new take on how to encourage this further and will be interesting to see how and if it works in practice.

Participants in the Coursera course are also encouraged to share their learning externally by blogging - and as a result I've already seen people who are not actually participating in the course benefitting from and taking part in the discussions - and providing some brilliant insight. We've always heard from volunteers that the skills they learn with us - effective listening, writing supportively, giving emotional support, clarifying and reflecting on difficult issues  - are really valuable to them in the rest of their lives. Helen and I have started to wonder if a good addition to some of the training would be to encourage our volunteers to think in more depth about how their learning might be helpful to others - and how they could pass this on. Doing this might help make their understanding of the nature of the skills they are developing much richer and more varied.

So, lots to think about already - and I haven't even done all of the reading for this week. Next time I blog about this course, I hope it will be less 'meta' and more theory. But the great thing about this course is it's providing both.

Compliments and wellbeing - #passonacompliment!

Yesterday and today, a twitter friend @TheAgentApsley and I were engaging in small scale hashtag creation #passonacompliment. It started with a TheSite.org member sharing an ‘emergency compliment’ website.

While I love it, and it brought a smile to my face, it's a little impersonal. Unless of course my hair does smell like a lawn - and somehow the website elves know....

...no, it's definitely random as the next one I got was;

Which DEFINITELY isn't true (my desk). However. I tweeted the link. In response @TheAgentApsley told me about a compliment booth he'd once volunteered in - where he would give people compliments in return for a donation.

I didn't ask, but I bet that's a good way of fundraising. Who can resist a compliment? It always gives you a little boost - and makes you feel closer to the person giving it as well. The only time I've ever actually stopped for a chugger on the street was when he started his pitch with 'I like your hair' (he might have been slightly-scruffy-but-in-a-good-looking-way as well - guilty). I still remember the evening a friend from the north messaged me out of the blue with a really kind and genuine compliment. It made my evening, and still makes me smile now when I think of it.

And, talking of hair, my old manager always told the story of the family friend who he really liked, and felt close to. He hadn't noticed until his wife mentioned it that this person seemed to make a point of complimenting his hair every time she visited. Subtly, complimenting him regularly had warmed him to her.

Complimenting and support

Whenever we're working with young people on TheSite.org, we always make a point of making sure that we remind them of the positive things that they have done as well as helping them resolve the difficulties they face. This might be their impressive strength in the face of odds stacked against them, their concern for their friend, the peer support they offer others - or simply the fact that they have taken the brave and difficult step to seek support at all. It's important that people are reminded of the things they're doing well - as hardly anyone does that for themselves. Many people spend much of their time being down on themselves one way or another. They often don't even really feel that anyone properly notices much that they do. This is particularly true of anyone suffering from depression or any other mental health problem that fogs up your thinking with negativity.


#passonacompliment

So we started complimenting people on Twitter - making our (more personal) version of the compliment generator and encouraging them to pass it on to someone else. Social media (and Twitter perhaps more than most) is full of people finding fault with other people, and telling them so in no uncertain terms. We wanted to brighten peoples' day, just a little, by doing the opposite.



Granted we didn't compliment loads of people so it was never going to spread that far. But the ones that we did, in general, passed it on. Interestingly, those who did pass it on were often people involved in mental health discussion and writing online. Perhaps they saw the value in that little boost of wellbeing for others. 

So, this is quite a simple blog post. It's not saying anything groundbreaking or world changing (unless everyone started to compliment others more, in which case it might be a little). It's just reminding people (as we were reminded) of the pleasure you can give and receive by genuinely complimenting people when they don't expect it - and encouraging you to do so.

And by the way, you're really kind to give my blog the time of day. And your hair looks great (probably)!