There's nothing like a bit of D.I.Y. is there? No, not the get-out-the-hammer-and-nails, off-to-B&Q kind of D.I.Y., (do I strike you as the sort of person who is going to build it myself?) I mean Do It Yourself in a Self Help kind of way.

The current trend for mental health is "Tell someone" - which I totally agree with.

"Don't keep it to yourself; ask for help" - yep, done that. Unfortunately, I have not had positive experiences. It has felt like that trust exercise where you fall straight back and somebody catches you - except that on every occasion they just let me drop, smack bang, flat on my back. Ouch!

Husband (now ex) told me to get a grip. Having 'shared' with my parents and siblings, they just pretend that they don't have such a difficult person in the family and hope (even after all these years) that I'll either grow out of it or (now that I am in my fifties) snap out of it. Professional help has proved to be incredibly difficult to access and then inappropriate and inadequate if I have got it. (No disrespect to all the effective and committed practitioners out there, unfortunately I didn't get sent to you.) So ultimately what I have learned is that if I want help, I have to do it myself.

When I am depressed I feel out of control and powerless; I panic because I think I can't cope. One of the ways that I seek to regain a feeling that I am in control is by searching for ways that help me to deal with the illness when it's there or, even better, prevent it from returning. Being part of the Moodscope community is one of those things and the few blogs that I have written for Moodscope are about things that help me that I hope might help YOU too.

All sorts of people write blogs for Moodscope and mostly they do not, to my knowledge, write for a living or have any professional background in advising on depression, bi-polar or anxiety (I say "mostly" because I know some do). What we all have is PERSONAL EXPERIENCE and this gives us a unique understanding; in many ways WE are the experts! Who is the expert on you? YOU are! Hopefully we are all on a journey to recovery, finding things that work for US as individuals to manage our conditions.

This is becoming a blog about two kinds of D.I.Y. Firstly the help yourself kind. Be your own project, the on-going aim of which is to bring about improvement. Secondly (and this has just dawned on me) if you find anything that works, put it out here on Moodscope. Don't just be a consumer of the blogs, write one! Do it yourself! There's a glorious range of contributors, with so many different styles and such varied approaches to life - but ALL of them are helpful in their way, and YOUR contribution would be helpful too. I am not good at D.I.Y. (the put-a-shelf-up kind) but I am trying to improve at the helping myself kind of D.I.Y., and I would really appreciate YOUR input!

Thank you.

Marmaladegirl

A Moodscope member.