What Works For Me? May Not Work For You But Here’s What Helps The Loud Mouth Brown Girl

Disclaimer

Legal Note: You must be of legal age, or have a medical dispensation to use cannabis in your area. The information here is not intended to replace the advice of a medical professional and is only intended for educational purposes from one patient to others.

End of Disclaimer

However there are only so many times you can say “they’ve stolen my fucking cutlery“,(yes that happened, I’ll explain,) before the cops start to think you need to be committed again. So like many victims/survivors, I’ve stopped reporting it. Because honestly, what’s the point? I know that the medication I take for sleep helps with my anxiety, and honestly, I have no interest in living in a mental ward, so I’m choosing to just ignore it.

Many years ago when I was hanging out with some friends of a friend, I started sleeping with a guy. It happened after he and his girlfriend had broken up – now I met her at a bar, but I didn’t know they were together when I told her to leave, largely because I was drunk and she was bitching about what a loser he was, so I said: “honey, you don’t need this shit, just leave.” So she left, and she left him with a knife, a fork, a plate, and a spoon.

That’s how I know he’s the one that’s been breaking into my house and stealing my shit, that’s how I know, because she took everything when she left, except a room full of crap I saw the day after I was raped in the same house that she ran from.

But I DIGRESS Because this massive loser with no real friends and very little sanity keeps breaking into my house even though I’ve repeatedly asked for new locks on the door (for the second fucking time since we’ve lived here I might add,) and that hasn’t happened, I’ve developed some coping mechanisms that help with the anxiety that I thought I would share.

Take Your Medication

The first rule for anxiety, depression, PTSD, and whatever other diagnosis you might have is to take your medication. I assure you I hate taking pills more than anyone. I’ve been on everything from Rexulti to Ritalin, and everything in between. Since I was five years old I’ve been medicated for being “weird”, and honestly all that medication as a child only adds to my PTSD with taking pills as an adult.

I made a conscious choice to start taking cannabis about seven and a half years ago because I quit my job and I needed to relax. I had been through so much trauma from my own life, as well as working with the people at the church, that I needed to calm the fuck down, but I wasn’t ready to take pharmaceutical medication. So I, because I also didn’t want to get lost at the bottom of a bottle, decided that I would only drink occasionally, but I would predominantly use cannabis.

Now here’s the thing: I made sure that my psych nurse, my doctors, and my mom, as well as the rest of my friends and family, knew I was using cannabis, and we had many conversations about making sure that if I thought it wasn’t working the way I’d been told it could, I would stop using it.

In my case, not using cannabis is actually much worse than not using pharma meds, for me personally and only for me, cannabis works. I smoked a joint before I started writing this, and I’m not “high” but I do have enough cannabis in my system to help me be productive enough to work on the brand stuff I have to do today.

So. In short. Whatever your medication is, make sure you’re taking it regularly, and that you’re checking in with your network of support so that if things seem strange or weird, you know what’s up. Sometimes you need someone to ask if you’re okay, and you need to really think about the answer before you snap out the words “I’m fine.” ARE you fine? Let’s go into how to do your own wellness check-in

Monitor Your Routine

I’m not going to tell you to set a routine that works for you, because you already have that, I will say that you should sit down and think about what that routine is.

For instance, for me, one of the first things that I usually do when I get up, even before I start writing is to make or order coffee, then I play some Angry Birds and Coral Isle, and then I check in with the news. These things help me to slowly wake up to the world. I try not to speak – not that there is anyone to speak to – I check my Twitter feed, respond to messages, check emails, and usually in this order.

When my routine is disrupted by my irritant spineless little bitch of a stalker, I get frustrated and confused, I struggle with remembering what it is I want to do, and I focus on what I have to do, this is not healthy.

Largely because I spent so many years doing what I was told, these days doing what I “want” to do, takes precedence over the things that other people think I should do. Yeah, my house is still a mess, but you know what? Loud Mouth Brown Girl is doing well, that’s 1 thing that I can control, that “I” have control over.

Sit down and think about what you would “normally,” do, and ask yourself three questions:

• Is it what you want to do?
• Is it helping?
• Is it pushing you forward?
• Is it teaching you something?

If the answer to these questions makes you realize something that makes you unhappy, as Wally Wilson would say, it’s time to readjust the way you’re thinking about your situation and make adjustments that are healthiest for your best self.

Checkin With Your Spirit Guides

My spirit guides are my higher power – each of them has names and voices, and I hear them 24 hours a day whether I take my meds or not. On occasion, I might go for a walk and actually sit down and talk, or listen to what they have to say, but checking in with them is imperative to my mental health.

Now, for some people, their spirit guides are people in this physical world that we live in, and for others, they are ancient spirits that come from all over a variety of dimensions to say hi and how are you, your spirit guides – the entities that guide you along your journey – the ones you choose to hear and welcome into our life – are up to you. No one can decide to enter any part of your life without your permission.

BUT THAT BEING SAID, sometimes when you’re meditating, even if that meditation is dancing, listening to what you’re hearing. I was dancing in my living room once when I swear I heard Julia Styles say “this isn’t my house,” I laughed for hours, and even if I lost my damned mind for a minute, it felt good to realize that the energy that I was wrapping myself with was warm, friendly and most importantly safe.

Because of that, I think about her when I dance quite often (not that I do anymore,) but that reminder that positive energy brings about positive experiences sticks with me when I need to be reminded that I’m not ever truly alone.

If You Want To Know If You’re Crazy, Keep a Record of What You’re Noticing.

Whether it’s on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Tik Tok, or this journal, everyone who knows the identity of Devon J Hall, the person is known as The Loud Mouth Brown Girl, has access to a vast record of what has been done to me in one way or another.

I have not kept anything a secret, I may have declined to share some details in public, but the police know, my network knows, and the people who care about me know what happened to me and who did what.

That being said, due to mental health issues I do admit that I got some of the details wrong, but most of them I would say about 83% of them are correct, or as close to correct as possible given how much violence I’ve faced.

ALL OF THIS BEING SAID: Keeping a record that other people know exists, that other people know how to access should these things happen to interrupt your day or your routine, is imperative because when you go to the police next time and say “hey this happened, and here’s six fucking journals to prove that I’m not crazy because I wrote it down over six days while high on cannabis because I was so stressed out I couldn’t sleep,” you have an entire social media platform, AND conversations with Doctors and Psych Nurses AND parents, to prove that they don’t need to commit you to a hospital again. (Point made yet RCMP?)

These days when I have to report things to the police I don’t even bother to write it down on paper, I tell them to check my social media accounts and I give them the website address. Because as much as this website is about my mental health and teaching others, it’s MAINLY about keeping a living breathing proof of life.

When I say I’m taking a break from the site – people genuinely get worried – because I haven’t taken a real break from the “brand” creation for more than six years.

The thing is when I post my circle knows I’m safe…it’s when I’m not posting that I’m trying to cultivate a new routine, so make sure that you’re checking in with your network to let them know you’re okay you really just need some time off.

Make Sure Above All Else, You’re Doing What You Need To Do To Be Healthy

At the end of the day it doesn’t matter what other people think about your routine or what they think about your journey, are you happy? Should be the only question that you’re asking yourself. If you’re taking time off to sleep because your body needs to catch up to your brain then do that, if you need to walk just to see the architecture of a city so that you can plan out a future novel, then do that too.

If you swim, ride horses, work with kids, dance, or yell at the top of your lungs, do whatever you need to do to be the person that you want to be.

Every day millions of people suffer from PTSD for a variety of reasons, and the reason that so many Soldiers – specifically the ones who are tied to government wars – face so much stigma is that we’re conditioned to believe that PTSD only comes from those who have been in living breathing war zones.

The truth is that a fall from a crane, a car accident, a bad television show, anything can trigger PTSD, but learning to work with it the way that one would learn o do anything, slowly and patiently, is the key to health and wellness.

You can read as many books as you want, but at the end of the day the rule of thumb is:

Take What You Need And Give What You Can

Sending all my love,

Devon J Hall