Pippa Buchanan - Photo by Mark Niehus

“Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.” -Helen Keller

Hi, I'm Pippa, an Australian living in Berlin, Germany.
I'm passionate about learning, particularly lifelong and self-organised learning styles. I currently work as an educator and developer of learning related technologies.
I make things such as clothes and at least one small boat and cook, eat and read. I like stories. I also like maps, hot cups of tea with milk, Arnott's Western Australian gingernut biscuits, well written songs and plants.

Archive for November, 2009

In case of emergency…

Thursday, November 26th, 2009

There’ll always be times when keeping up with your mindapples (the mental health 5-a-Day) just aren’t enough – and you find yourself overwhelmed with anxiety or the sads. For example, I know that the heavy grey skies of Berlin can really affect my mood, regardless of any steps I’ve taken to avoid depression.  So I’m always looking for ways of walking and talking myself out of a sad or anxious mood.

, originally uploaded by .

A couple of years ago I posted a step by step approach to dealing with bouts of anxiety or depression. It was some home brewed cognitive behavioural therapy that got me through some heartbreak. The bad times passed and then I deleted the post.

And even though I still followed some of my own advice, I’d forgotten how specific and useful a paper (or electronic) set of the reminders could be in times of the crazy sads.

A few months back an old housemate asked me where the post was and I couldn’t find it in either my archives or anywhere online. But yesterday I hit paydirt and found the text again. I twittered it and was told by a follower that she’d forwarded the link to a friend who’s going through some tough times – and that her friend had printed up two copies to keep by her side.

Which of course made me feel all happy, that maybe this list of actions might help more people than just me.

So… here is the In Case of Emergency list again. Please feel free to leave comments or further advice.

In Case Of Emergency

Work through this process in your head, on paper, or out loud. Customise to suit your needs.

What’s wrong?

What’s the very worst thing that could happen?

If the very, very worst thing happened, how would you cope? Because you can handle anything.

What is actually wrong right now? Is there anything you can do to make it better?

Something – however small – something good happened today. What was it?

Go off and do something nice for yourself as soon as possible. Take a walk, buy something small and pretty, drink some tea. You’re worth it. Ask for a hug, even a virtual one from the universe.

If there is something you’ve been putting off, start doing if for just 10 minutes. That’s all you need to do.

There is so much power and potential stored up in you.

Everything is going to be fine.

Posted in List, friends, health, mental health | 4 Comments »

on self esteem and bugs.

Saturday, November 14th, 2009

Over the last while, and most especially the last couple of days I’ve been struggling against thoughts of poor self-esteem and self-criticism all tied up with a sense of perfectionism which would never allow me to complete anything even if it let me actually begin something. Tricky.

Luckily I can recognise these thoughts for what they are, thoughts. But they are thoughts clever enough to swoop in when I’m tired, under the weather or hormonal. The thoughts, once they’ve invaded, perch along the edge of my outlook crowlike and squawking.

“Hah! We’re better than you, you’ve never done anything worthwhile and you never will!”

, originally uploaded by . CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

In some ways it’s a little bit like being back in high school.

So exhausted by those thoughts I stay tired and the thoughts hang around for a long day longer.

In those situations, if I ignore my Mindapples, my mental health 5-A-Day I’m even more vulnerable. I’ve recently started running the C25K program which is helping. If nothing else I can say to the thoughts “Writing? Designing? Sure I kinda believe you when you tell me I haven’t got a chance, but running… I haven’t given that up AND I love it.”

And who knew that drinking large amounts of water helped to keep you sane? Well, I do, now. So even though I feel guilty about BUYING water, I figure that the ethical vice of one 1.5 L bottle of sparkling mineral water per day is a minimal vice compared to an over reliance on chocolate, shopping or booze.

So yeah. Thanks to water, exercise and going outside I still fill sane. And primarily happy. But there are these heavy boots that make it harder for me to take steps to improve my life, particularly along the borders of creativity and career. Forget about the odd hints that I could write professionally, for the last month I’ve been quaking about writing for myself and the nebulous audience of this blog.

It took days for me to sit down and write this. And honestly I didn’t want to share too much of this motivational challenge. As is the way with words, they do come out eventually as if with a life of their own.

I wanted instead to talk about the small things that gathered together to fascinate me today:

Everything that I’ve read by has entranced me, so when I saw on a friend’s bookshelf I had to borrow it.  Based on what I knew of her previous books I knew that family, food and nature would be part of the experience.

“Every quiet step is thunder to beetle life underfoot, a tug of impalpable thread on the web pulling mate to mate and predator to prey, a beginning of an end. Every choice is a world made new for the chosen.”

And oh! Prodigal Summer was amazing. It was about nature and food and sex and love and evolution and family. I could practically smell the crumbling wood humus of the Appalachian forest and felt the ponderous, ent-like movement of life and change. However I was reading the novel so quickly that I had to take a break and go running, just so I could prolong the ending of the story.

As I walked my cool down along the canal, I noticed that even though it’s halfway through November, there were still beetles living on tree trunks. There were harlequin beetles which totally give me the heebie jeebies when they swarm, but there were also the fattest glossiest ladybirds (Marienkäfer) that I’ve ever seen.

Prodigal Summer had put me in an even more noticing mood than usual, so I payed particular attention to the varieties of ladybirds, red with black (9?) spots, a yellow version of the same and then most excitingly a variety I’d never noticed before, the Twice Stabbed Ladybird which is black with a large red spot on either wing.

Oh. They were beautiful.

On the topic of beauty, while I was reading a line from a song kept on going through my head, “the beauty in everything, the beauty in everything”. It took me a while to recall that the song “Woman’s Touch” is by No Through Road, a band from my hometown, Adelaide.  Their latest album, Winner. has been one of my favourite records over the last year.  When I actually relistened to the song I realised that the refrain is preceeded by “I can no longer find the beauty in everything.”  Despite having felt low for weeks, I was reminded that while I might feel terrible, I can always see beauty in the world and that counts for so much.

Posted in making, mental health, writing | No Comments »