YOU ARE NOT ALONE - A companion online community discussion board for The Mental Illness Happy Hour podcast with Paul Gilmartin

This is a free app you can get through your public library anywhere in the English-speaking world. There are a lot of independent films, documentaries, college courses and a lot of resources around mental health issues. The films and documentaries are limited to four per month but the courses are unlimited to download. It’s free except for data usage and if your public library doesn’t have it you can ask them to get it.

https://www.kanopy.com

Will check out Kanopy, thanks.
Public libraries are the best!

Got a documentary at my local branch yesterday that's pretty heavy. Group sessions in Folsom prison.....

Watched the trailer this morning, and I think I'll need to wait till later this evening to take it in....

SD

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cca5QWdSTMQ
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Work_(film)

I started reading this ‘before’, but it seems more poignant now. It’s not self-help, more like Longform journalism by an art scholar, but art is the least of it:

How to do Nothing - Jenny Odell

Also if you’re staying put this app might make it more inviting by opening your eyes and mind to your surroundings:

iNaturalist

I spend the evenings with the lights off.

So I thought I would update this. It’s not uplifting stuff. Just logging how I’m occupying the isolation. Please don’t feel like you have to follow or emulate.

I’m watching ‘The History of Eastern Europe’ on Kanopy. I’m 3 episodes in.

I’ve started mapping my bioregion as suggested by ‘How to Do Nothing.’ I’m doing it one creature at a time. On the way to the market there’s a little finch. I worked out from Google it’s common name is Willy Wagtail and it’s local indigenous name is djidi djidi (it makes a sound like ‘chitty chitty’).

I intuited this exercise that is really banal but it’s surprising in how it lends a point of focus. I don’t really know what to call it so I just call it ‘keeping a table’. The rule is you keep a table clean and clear at all times. Then you only put things on the table that you are going to do. Breakfast, fold clothes, a shopping list. You can only put one thing on at once so you’re constantly removing stuff from the table and finding a place elsewhere for them. It creates a simple but effective process. I end up having to put my phone on a shelf rather than leave it on the table. Everything starts to be organized around the use of the table. This might be what everyone does and I’m just messy. Anyway it’s low pressure but consistently focusing for me.

Hello Beany,

Thanks for posting about the wagtail, What a nice little bird!
Found a couple of links;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AN8MF8daTWg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cd5QNyeRwnA

Any other wildlife sightings you have will be appreciated...Australia is such an exotic place.

(And the devastation from the recent fires was terrible. What's the situation now?)

Take care.

SD

Thank you SD,

That’s the one alright. The next step is to find out where they live. Different birds frequent specific types of trees apparently. On today’s expedition I discovered two different bee colonies on my street. It’s nice discovering new neighbors.

Fire is fairly common in Australia but this was different. It went from June last year, ramping up in November and wasn’t contained until March. I visited an area adjacent to the fires at Christmas and the visibility due to smoke was very low some days.

Retail air purifiers sold out locally there at one point because particulates in the air were filling peoples living spaces. People were trying to buy them online but freight service cancellations meant they couldn’t deliver. It’s a lot to have this new event right on the back of that one.

Available from the library

Based in neuroscience and CBT

Great section on the neuroscience of triggers

Questionnaire exercises too

“Rewire your Anxious Brain” C. Pittman

https://www.npr.org/2020/08/21/90468057 ... -woop-woop

This looks quite useful. It’s in the CBT realm. There’s an app as well called WOOP