Get Booked – Mental Health Advocate Hazel Butterfield Sharing Her Blogs On Mental Health

Hello, I'm Hazel Butterfield. I am the presenter here at Get Booked. I've been doing this show for quite some time now, and of late we've been having a lot of mental health ambassadors in to discuss their charities, their books, their blogs, their Instagram feeds. Instagram is turning into a new arena of people just— people don't need websites anymore. They, they are writing things down there. They are making sure that they're sending supportive messages out there. They are utilizing the social media form in such incredible ways. Mental health is becoming such an issue. It's been an issue for a very long time, but it is coming into our arena, something that we really have to address. It is something that we should all be getting involved with and opening discussions about. And that is what we do here at our wonderful in Covent Garden. We chat to people, we talk to people about books and writing, and we just try and get as much information out there as possible and try and make sure that you do not feel alone in whatever is going on. Over the last month or two, I've tried to get a variety of different mental health advocates in talking about eating disorders and about health and safety around mental health in the workplace, and people have set up charities based on issues that they've suffered from feeling pressure going into university and schools. And there has just been some— we had a fantastic mental health ambassador in a few weeks ago talking about her friend who committed suicide. And it's just about giving you a broad perspective on what is happening. Now, I do actually write my own blogs around mental health and mental wellbeing at hazelbutterfield.com. And I'm just going to tell you about a few of these. And I've— I'm part of such an incredible mental health and mental well-being community from doing this fantastic show here at Women's Radio Station that I want to make sure that I can share with you some of the things that I've come across, some of the things I've learnt, and just to help you get involved and make you not feel alone. Please do follow my Instagram feed @getbookwrs, and by all means get in touch. Maybe you a story to tell, maybe you want to come on my show and talk about something that you are going through or what a friend's going through, or maybe a book that you've read that you suddenly just went, "Wow, this changed my life. I want to let more people know about this book," then please do get in touch. If you don't fancy the idea of coming and doing a whole show with me, I'm not that scary, honest. Maybe you just wanna send in a 1-minute clip to us here and you can let us know just a book that you've loved and just do a quick 1-minute review on your iPhone, your Samsung, or your any other phone that possibly other people may have deigned to have. You can send it through at presenters@womensradiostation.com. Now, there's one of my blogs that is, it's quite raw, but I'm gonna tell you a little bit about it. It's about trying to get back to me. I'm sure we've all been in one of those situations where we've suddenly gone, I've been running around so much. I don't even know who I am anymore. I'm so busy trying to finish my to-do list and get this done and make sure the kids are sorted or make sure my friend's sorted or just making sure that dinner's on the table. Life can really run away with you. It can be weeks, months, or even years sometimes, or someday you will realize that you've lost your way. It will hit you. Like a thunderbolt or trickle through bit by bit, so much so that you hardly realise it's being realised, then you have to figure out a way back through the fog. Depression, self-worth, and loneliness are so inextricably linked. Uh, don't let the loneliness make you make the wrong decisions, which is happening with so many people myself included, try and stay focused. I recently read Teal Swan's latest book, The Anatomy of Loneliness, as part of my research for this Get Booked show. You can also find out, you can listen into the show again on our SoundCloud. And this book just struck a chord and it got my mind whirring, such is its intention. The clarity it provides, the TED Talk style of narrative, which will be due to her experience in the field. She has over 500,000 views per talk, and she doesn't do TED Talks, she just does talks to a camera, but it's still that kind of style, and it just felt like a cathartic experience. Depression is so hard to rationalise in so many ways, but I've done my damnedest and I've got over a threshold. It came pouring out like a 'Terrain of clarity amongst the chaos,' which is just what so many people have experienced. It is chaos. We live in a chaotic world. I mean, there may be some people living in this cute little cottage somewhere out in the sticks going, 'No, I'm fine. I'm good.' Some people are fine. Some people live in the chaos and they deal with it. Some don't. And we just need to help and support each other and find ways to hopefully find our way through. Firstly, when you do suddenly realize that there is something wrong, yes, there are tears, but it's cathartic, an outpouring of grief or the loss of whatever you lost, whether that was a death, a friendship, relationship, job, money even, or just plain simply your sanity. You need to grieve to appreciate what you've lost, and that makes you human. We are human, no matter how often you sometimes feel like you are robotically going through life. People can and will get bored or will not understand your depression. Some people feel like they're teetering on the edge themselves and may react in a way to protect their own mental state and abilities. Others will just rear themselves as a passing phase. I did actually repost a blog recently on my Twitter @KnottyButty. Um, it— somebody else wrote the blog completely, but it was so good, It was entitled, "I'm so sorry the way I behave because of my depression." And although you shouldn't be apologizing for your depression, it was the way that it had impacted her friendship. Sometimes when she'd lied, when she just wanted to stay inside, or when she'd said she was okay when she wasn't, 'cause people get upset that you don't tell them when you're struggling. And so it wasn't necessarily, "I'm sorry, I've got mental health issues." It was, "I'm sorry if I ever offended you with the way that I needed to behave to get through." It's a brilliant piece. Go and trawl through my Twitter See if you can find it, or actually just Google it. I think it was actually weirdly on the Metro a couple of years ago, and it was, I think I slightly inaccurately said the title. It was I'm Sorry If Depression Made Me a Bad Friend. That was it. It was brilliant. Absolutely fantastic. Depression can destroy you and force you to rethink everything that you are and what you stand for, but it's an opportunity for you to remold who you want to be. Do not be afraid to start over. It's a chance to build something better this time. I was discussing in a recent interview with one of the mental health advocates about how failure, don't shy away from it. Failure is a chance to learn how not to do something. And so you can build on that and do something better the next time. I mean, I actually didn't know how much more I could take. And it turns out that I was stronger than I thought. And do you know what? These pressures, take them for what they are. Sometimes you will uncover incredible strength and it will build you up. You can't stop people talking trash about you, but you can appreciate having a clear out of the ones that choose to try and bring you down for whatever reason. They could even be fighting with their own battle and you're just a scapegoat. In the process of trying to rationalize and forgive behavior toward me, I'd been searching for all that is bad within me just to justify and therefore accept said behavior. This needs to stop. Paradoxically, I've also done the opposite in not being honest about behavior or others that have been upsetting me, just not to upset them or to cause friction. It's so contradictory. We live in such a fragile state of emotional existence at the moment that it's too easy to project that onto others rather than think open-mindedly. Sometimes you experience moments where you feel enlightened about who you really are. A person or a place urges a realization that helps you to understand more clearly a fresh pair of eyes to spur on a more succinct level of introspection. This is life, ever-changing and eye-opening and enriching. Whatever those situations are, hunt them down and make sure that you find ways to just figure out how incredible you are. I'm a huge fan of productive anxiety. I like to take something horrendous that happened to me or a friend and see how I can get it to be in our favor, you know? If that happened, if that friend treated you that way, that means that you no longer have to waste your time being friends with that person. If a relationship ended, it ended for a reason. And if it was a mistake that it ended, then you learn from those mistakes. It's all about just finding a productive way through. Take up a hobby, meet new people, whatever it may be that you have lost and the gap that gives you in your life is an opportunity to use that empty space to do something positive. Do a course, get fit, read more books, listen to my show, teach yourself a skill you've never had the time to absorb yourself in before. Take stock, realise what you need to put your— to kind of do to yourself, what you need to do to yourself to get nearer to where you want to be in 1, 3, or 5 years, and what you need to do to focus on to achieve that. We need to appreciate our uniqueness, embrace it, and accept its It's not everyone's cup of tea. People have their own demons to handle, and sometimes, just sometimes, you need to leave them to it. Do not waste your precious time, energy, and sanity where you know it is not appreciated. You know who appreciates you. Go towards those people. Do not obsess over the people that do not care about you. If they act like they don't care, believe them and go find your people. Go and find those ones that just make you feel like a bottle of champagne. That is what life is all about. Now, we're gonna head off to a break very soon, but when we come back, I'm gonna be talking about a couple of my— other of my blogs that hopefully will strike a chord with you. And please do tag me on Twitter with your blogs as well on mental health and mental wellbeing. You can tag me Nutty Butty. That's N-U-T-T-Y B-U-T-T-Y. We'll be back in a second, just after these messages. Welcome to Women's Radio Station. I'm Sarah Louise Ryan, and welcome to Love Lessons Live on Women's Radio Station. Hello and welcome to Future Classic Women Awards with me, Stefania Passamonte, on Women's Radio Station. Hello and welcome to Julie May Is Listening. Hi, this is Anna Kennedy and we're at Women's Radio Station supporting women's well-being, and we're talking all things autism. Women, the possibilities are endless. 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Hi, I'm Hazel Butterfield, a blogger, book lover, and mental health advocate, and you can listen to my show, Get Booked here at Women's Radio Station daily at 5 AM and 5 PM. Throughout my shows, we'll talk about the books I've read, new releases, chat to authors, publishers, and book enthusiasts, all with a theme and aim of supporting women's emotional well-being. If you have a book to tell us about, get in touch at presenters@womensradiostation.com. Join me on my show and share my love of books and writing. Hi, I'm Valentina Barbacci, and I'm the executive director of Media Matters for Women. We're a registered charity operating in Sierra Leone and the Democratic Republic of Congo, and we produce and share podcasts via Bluetooth on mobile phones, focusing specifically on women and girls excluded from information due to extreme poverty. We empower those living in rural areas with media that transforms how they access, own, and share information. To find out more and be part of this movement, come check out our website at mediamattersforwomen.org. You're listening to Women's Radio Station, supporting women's well-being Women's Radio Station's creating a global network for the empowerment of women, and we want you to be involved. Join us on Instagram and Twitter @WomensRadioStation, that's Women's Radio Station, or Facebook Women's Radio Station to keep up to date with all our exciting programs. Welcome back to today's Get Booked radio show here in Covent Garden, supporting women's emotional well-being, opening discussions, and offering support via the incredible writers out there. And as I was saying in the first half of today's show, we have been talking to an incredible variety of bloggers and writers out there who have been coming in and chatting to us about what the incredible opinions and insights and helpful snippets that they write about on and just helping us just open up conversations. Now, I was telling you about a blog that I had written on my website, hazelbutterfield.com, about how to get back to me. Sometimes when we kind of feel like we've lost our way a little bit, a little bit, try a lot, sometimes. But I have another blog that I want to tell you about. And as with anything here at Get Booked, please do get in touch and get involved. If you've got a blog you want to tell me about, maybe a book you want to tell me about that you think will help and contribute what we're trying to do here at our studio, then please do get in touch at presenters@womensradiostation.com. Now, the blog I want to talk to you about now is called 11 Life Hacks for Help with Being Overwhelmed Even When You Don't Know Why. Do you know what? I feel like I'm kind of overwhelmed even now. I think, but I think I need a coffee. I think it's a coffee that I need. Sometimes I'm overwhelmed, sometimes I'm lacking in caffeine. I keep on, I've got kids, I've got quite a few friends, I've got quite a few different jobs just to get by as we do in London. And so it's quite easy to be overwhelmed, but I get to encounter a lot of people, speak to a lot of different people in different stages of their life. And what I constantly hear is, "What is going on?" We're all in a state of shock as to what appears to be a lingering reality that we're not quite keeping our stuffed together. It's a mixture of being overwhelmed, not feeling in control of our emotional state, or lacking our usual joie de vivre. It comes in fits and spurts and appears to have no rational reason. Now, does that seem to be something that's been happening to you? Overtired for no reason, or just have no idea? You just— I used to be a completely organised person. Sometimes now I'm like, you know, an hour before I go to work, "Wow, I should really sort some childcare out." I'm like, that's just not me. I am down to a T organised. I mean, don't get me wrong, it does get sorted by the end. We are mothers, it's what we do. We could be thrown into a complete tornado and we'd still make sure that spaghetti bolognese was on the table at the end of it. That is just what we do. But you know what? We'd like it if it was a little bit easier. Even the other day, I was chatting to a Pilates teacher, a vision of picture-perfect life, impeccable ponytail, and she was middle class personified. She was telling me how she can't even hold a thought for more than a few seconds and how she feels like she's living in an oblivious state at times, not even picking up on really obvious signs and detail, a bit like, you know, Spending a whole year not realising the colour of your front door, you know? Does that ring any bells? And it's just, you know, forgetting to text that friend back for 3 months. Things just go out. And do you know what? I find myself being really obnoxious sometimes, butting in on conversations or blurting out with things because I kind of go, "Oh, if I don't say this now, it's going to be gone forever." Unless we just constantly went round with a pad in our hands or constantly recorded things on our phones, Please remember to make that point because it just, it goes in and it goes out. I come up with, this is partly to do with why we have a lot of anxiety because, you know, we sit there in bed and we're about to go to bed, we come up with something incredibly interesting. We're like, "If I don't pick up my iPad and write this down, I know I'm going to forget it." And it feels like such, it's incredible how things in bed at whatever time of night feel more important than in the daytime. But I have a pen and paper at the side, but then I've got to turn the light on, whereas I don't have to if I have the iPad. So it's just, oh, it's ridiculous. And you will find most writers have this where they have writer's block all day, then just as they're about to drop off to sleep, the most incredible enlightening thing comes to mind. Yes, it's That's the way it works. I know that there are so many of us trying to just give less of a flip and we are failing, then trying again. However, we are not just set in stone, so I've put together a few of my tips on how to try and combat these issues. I've aimed for non-annoying calmness, gaining control and getting to grips with life as we know it. Some of them are obvious, and yet sometimes we just need A reminder of what we need, a push to break habits. Now, one of my best hacks is identify what resets your mood. For me, it is cooking and running. I know that I like the order I get from cooking. I'm a flexitarian. I've got a son that doesn't like mashed potato, another one that doesn't like cheese. You know, you kind of, I like doing 3 or 4 meals together, get some friends over as vegan or whatever, and then making a variety of different meals and making them all together at at the same time while sipping on a glass of wine. To me, that sounds like hell. To some people, to me, that is heaven. It's putting together something, having chaos and creating order, and I adore cooking. It is just incredible for me. Also, just running as well. You get to clear your mind. Netflix works for me as well, just having a bit of a giggle and turning off, but you have to make sure you really do turn off. Don't Netflix and iPad. That is not the saying. It's Netflix and chill. Just remember that. And just make time to do it. And do you know what? This is not wasted time. This is not, "I do not have half an hour to do this. I do not have an hour to cook that from scratch." Do you know what? It's better doing that and being recharged and having productive hours than a shedload of absolutely rubbish hours. You need to speculate to accumulate. Now, a really good one is, this is obvious, but we forget because we feel exhausted. Surround yourself with people that do not stress you out, that don't leave you feeling inadequate, paranoid, or not as important as you should feel. This is so important. Find your people and spend as much time with them as possible. Be the person for them that you need for you as well. It is reciprocal. Be productive. Save some money. Life is so expensive. Knowing we have saved money can give us a boost. Phone your TV provider and say you're leaving and are there any discounts for you to stay? Uh, get yourself on all these comparison active websites and don't just let your next year's insurance run through. You'll be surprised how much money you can save and it'll take you 20 minutes, half an hour, and suddenly you'll, you'll just, it'll give you a boost. You've saved money, you felt productive. Trust me, it does work. Also check out what direct debits you've got going out in your bank or PayPal. Make sure that they're actually still relevant. You could be saving loads. Also, another hack that I like is create a mind map of what is overwhelming you. It's a bit like therapy. Detail what you are feeling, the cause needs, the positive and negative elements in your life. Write this down and it helps develop clarity rather than muddled about in your head. Get it down and actually visualise it and you'll be surprised how helpful that is. I'd love to know if anybody tried this, get in touch with me and let me know how it helped you or not, or not. It's gonna help, it's great. It's one of my life hacks, it's gotta work. Also, another one is do something altruistic. Be there for somebody else. Put the time in and be the person you want to be there for you. As I said before, you know, just maybe even just make sure that you're helping somebody across the road. Maybe phone somebody that you know has been struggling with something. Even if you're feeling low, just do it. And it's that thing of just trying to be, do something, be something for somebody else. It will help. Obviously, you've got to be careful that you're just not letting somebody drain you, but yes, doing something altruistic is a mood booster. Also, really, really simple one, borrow a dog. It is incredibly simple. Come and borrow mine. Although she's a beagle, she's not that simple. And learn to check your phone less. I get it. Not only do I have WhatsApp, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, not to mention the fact that I've got 5 accounts on Instagram, 3 on Twitter. I need them for work, but I use this as too much of an excuse and get distracted. I need to make some time. I need to have ground rules. Spend a day logging how often you go onto each platform. Depending on your results, trim your usage accordingly. Slowly or cold turkey due to how best works for you as a human being. They all just add to feelings of loneliness, FOMO, paranoia, and before you know it, you've been drawn into hours of nonsense. The amount of times I've suddenly just gone and checked Instagram and I've missed 2 birthdays, and I'm just like, I'm never getting this time back. Never. Also, laughter. What makes you laugh? Your kids? Milton Jones? Trashy telly? Make time for it. It releases mood-boosting endorphins, but you already knew that anyway. And also, "We don't want frown lines. We can't all afford Botox, and also we don't want droopy skin. We want happy skin, and you get happy skin from happy faces." Yes, yes we do. Please don't find me and take pictures of me grimacing down the street. That's not gonna be helpful. And read, "It's a fabulous distraction and can train the brain to stop going off in a loop. You can also learn something new, have a giggle, or live somebody else's life temporarily." You can find more book blogs if you're wanting bit of a suggestion on hazelbutterfield.com. And set yourself productive yet achievable tasks. 10 minutes of yoga a day, one important task dealt with before you switch the telly on each evening. I dunno, drink a detox tea a day, anything. Just do something productive. It really, really helps. And smile, even when you don't feel like it. It's hard to be angry or sad or overwhelmed and knackered when you have a grin on your mush. Be kinder to yourself, my lovelies. That is the main thing. Failing that, I've got plenty of other blogs on how to pretend you have your stuff together, but really you don't, you know, fake it until you can make it. Well, thank you so much for listening in to today's show here at Get Booked. 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