Thrive, final thoughts

The problem with my reviewing the Thrive app was that I always knew it wasn't 100% going to work for me. It's all well and good me road testing an app designed to help with symptoms of anxiety and depression, but I don't have anxiety or depression. Instead, I have a cuntish monster living between my ears that I equally adore and want to rip out with a set of pliers, so it was always going to be difficult for me to give an accurate review. 

As a relaxation app, it's pretty good. Logging your emotions is a tried and tested way of keeping track of your mood, and if you've got a few minutes to spare taking some time out to do a breathing exercise or two never hurt anyone. Based on these factors, it's one of the best I've tried and would have been very useful when I was younger and desperately trying to show my doctors/nurses/therapists/counsellors etc. how quickly my moods were changing. 

Thing is, for me, that's kind of where it ended. Working 9-5, I don't really have the time to step out of my office to lie on the floor and clench my toes on command, and every 'relaxation' method the app provided needed me to give my phone my undivided attention, which is incredibly impractical. What clinched it for me as a no-go, however, was the constant reminder of things I'd previously felt shit about everytime I tried to track my mood. I completely understand the thought process, after all, it's a lot easier to select triggers from a list than type them out each day, but do I want to be reminded of how much I hated my body last week when I'm having a good day? Do I fuck. 

Overall, I won't be using the app on a daily basis, although I will be keeping it on my phone for when I want to take time out to relax. I'd maybe recommend it to someone who has only just begun to identify the triggers of their depression or anxiety, but Thrive unfortunately isn't the app for me. 

xXx

Dishonour, Dishonour on you, Dishonour on your cow! ***REVIEW AND GIVEAWAY***

I've been taking part in a couple of blog tours lately, and it's been really fun. Basically, it appeals to all the things I love, reading, writing, and free shit.

The first book I got sent was Death Before Dishonour, by Kenny Hyman, which I really enjoyed. It started off in two parts which flip back and forth. The first is a reflective tale of a young American family raising their two sons in Japan, while the follows the brothers in the present day.

Within the first half, the brothers are enrolled in a martial arts school in an attempt to combat the elder's shyness, which leads them to a remote Japanese community from where the art they're practising was founded. The story describes their being raised by the community upon the death of their parents until they are forced to leave.

The second half of the story recounts the two brother's experiences working as assassins and dealing with the moral and emotional questions this raises. Trying to justify their actions and form relationships with people outside of their community who know nothing about their real lives. Eventually, the timelines run simultaneously and we see the two men attempt to live as killers with a deep set allegiance and emotional ties to those that raised them, and average members of society.

This book was completely alien to me, I've never read anything like it before, but I surprised myself and really enjoyed it. It's incredibly detailed, and as someone who knows fuck all about any form of martial arts, the description allowed me to visualise the fighting with no prior knowledge of what the attacks may look like. I didn't understand all of the words, but I knew what was going on. The quick pace of the present day text flies perfectly alongside the intense retelling of each assassination, while the edge of softness and serenity expertly matches the retelling of their childhood.

Like everything, it's not perfect. The author's description of women is eye-rollingly cliche at times, lots of light reflecting off of tumbling hair, but this is just something that is happening in literature at the moment. He also refers to someone's vagina as their 'sex', which made me throw up in my mouth a little bit. I get that combining erotica with Japanese history and murder may be tricky, but just use the word vagina. Finally, there are no police involved until the very end which confused me a tad. If you keep murdering people, surely someone is eventually going to notice?

Overall I thought it was a really good book and  I'm happy I picked up. I doubt it'll be something I read again, but I enjoyed it.

I have an eCopy of the book to give away, so if you'd like to give it a read simply fill in the Rafflecopter below and either follow me on Twitter or comment on this post (or both). The giveaway closes at 12pm GMT on Friday, June 8th, and I'll be contacting the winner on Saturday.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Happy reading.

xXx

Like to drink the hot stuff? Check out Blends with Benefit, a selection of 20 blends of kick-ass teas d37bee.kckb.st

Spilling the Tea.

Two of my favourite things on the planet are sex and hot drinks, which makes the name of this tea selection, Blends with Benefits, quite possibly the most glorious thing on the planet. I'm usually a coffee whore, but due to my tendency to pump my body full of stimulants, I admit I need to give my heart rate a rest from time to time and switch over to tea instead. 

I appreciate the irony in this. 

My problem with tea is a lot like my problem with men, I go balls deep in on one, think it's my new holy grail and then 2 weeks later realise I'm bored with it and leave it in the back of the cupboard to rot, much like the potatoes I've had in the drawer of my fridge for what I can only guess is about 2 months now. Too much of one thing turns my attention off like a red light in a brothel window, and I need variety to keep me interested. 

Luckily, Blends with Benefits does just that. Instead of being a box of just one flavour tea, it's a selection of their top 20 blends that carry a plethora of benefits, or just plain taste good. Want to unwind? Pick out Do Not Disturb. Stressed out like a year 7 with PE and Food Tech practical on the same day? Hit that cup with a bag of And Relax. This isn't a product that's claiming to pay your rent, cure your acne and reverse the effects of a 5-day bender in less time than it took my ex to climax, it's just good old-fashioned, feel-good tea. 

Interested in getting your lips on these delicious blends? Then lucky for you bitch can hook you up. Click here*, buy yourself a brew or two and enjoy the benefits of downing multiple cups of your new fav without the post-caffeine jitters setting in before the 3pm slump.

Trust me, your blood pressure will thank you. 

Want to know more? Check out their media pack here - tearevv.co.uk/pages/media-kit

xXx 

*Disclaimer - I get money when people buy this product using the links below. Whether you agree with this or not I really don't care, bitch has rent to pay. 

Irony 101

Define irony - a bunch of idiots dancing around on a plane to a song made famous by a band that died in a plane crash.

Or, my mental health being shaken by an app designed to aid my mental health issues. 

I'm not doing so well right now. May is hellish for me and I'm making it through on a day by day basis. I can't talk to my friends or family about what I'm feeling because it's either completely over to them or they work on the basis of 'I'm here for you unless what you want to talk about makes me feel uncomfortable when I pretend you haven't said anything'. I'm finding everyday tasks and work really hard, but I'm managing to make it through. 

As I'm still using the Thrive app, I've been looking to it as much as I can, but it really doesn't seem to be helping right now. If anything, it's made me feel worse. 

When I first used it I mentioned that I was stressed about money. I'm a millennial, of course, I'm fucking stressed about money. Since then I've been inundated with messages from them every time I turn the fucking thing on telling me to set budgets or pay back the money I owe people, despite a) having indicated that I've already done so and b) never indicating that I owe anyone any money.

Apart from the student loan people, but they can suck a dick.

I also had more trouble with the 'feeling insecure about my weight' suggestion. I'm on the edge of falling into full-blown eating disorder oblivion atm (note the crying at 7am yesterday morning for feeling too fat) and the last thing I needed was my phone telling me I should feel bad about the way I look.

That's what it felt like anyway.

I've got one more week left to review the Thrive app before I give my final verdict. So far, for brief periods of anxiety and stress its okay, but not anything more serious. I'll keep you posted.

xXx

Flexible AF

I've had hypermobility for most of my life, it started off in my arms and now it's in the majority of my joins. Whilst it's kind of fun to see people squirm when I dislocate my jaw or my shoulder pops in and out of joint, it's also quite painful, and I now spend most of my days on painkillers in a bid to feel even the tiniest bit comfortable. Unfortunately, due to my *cough* high drug tolerance, they don't usually have much of an effect. 

Luckily, I've just discovered a new product that's soon to be released that claims to be able to cure joint pain without using any kind of painkillers, gels or supports. The WellWrap, to be released later on in the year, is designed to help cure joint pain using NASA based low-level laser therapy, or LLLT.

Another benefit of the WellWrap is that it's able to monitor the vital signs of the wearer, such as blood pressure and temperature. This makes it great for keeping track of your overall health and is really helpful if you ever need to give up-to-date medical information to your doctor.

Although I haven't personally been able to try the WellWrap just yet, there are plenty of people who have. This is what they had to say...

I won't lie, I tend to avoid these things because of the cost. Girl has zero, and I mean ZERO coin right now, and splashing out isn't really something I'm capable of. Luckily, when this baby launches next month, you can save 40% on a first come, first serve basis. So there really is no excuse for not snapping it up. Or why not send it as a gift? Nothing like stopping other people around you from being in pain for added good karma.

Still need convincing that the WellWrap is for you? Check out the videos below to find out just how helpful LLLT can be. 

Find the WellWrap Indiegogo page here bit.ly/WellWrap

xXx

Starting to Thrive

In a bid to shut my brain the fuck up long enough for me to form a coherent sentence or do anything outside the realms of normal functioning, I'm currently using an app called Thrive to try and calm myself down when I start to feel anxious. My BPD is in hyper-sensory overdrive atm and I've started experiencing symptoms of dissociation, so anything that can maybe give me a break is a definite bonus.

The first step you go through when you first sign up/log on is to assess your mood. One of the things I'm liking so far is that you can input good and bad feelings, the app doesn't purely focus on the negative. A lot of apps I've used in the past don't do this, and it can be a bit of a downer.

What I'm not loving are the suggestions about what I could be feeling 'bad' about. Having purple bubbles guessing what I think's wrong with my life at that exact moment in time isn't always helpful. If I'm feeling low about something else, I don't exactly want to be asked if I'm feeling bad about my weight. Far from making me feel better, thanks to it being easy to input how I'm feeling, all it did was make me feel bad about my weight when that wasn't on my mind to begin with.

There are different places on the 'island' that you can visit when using the app. I haven't tried out all of them so far, but I've played around with breathing, deep muscle and meditation features and they've been pretty straightforward and self-explanatory. It's recommended that you practise these regardless of how you're feeling each day, but to be honest I just haven't had the time.

Another interesting part of the app is that it sends you a weekly 'report' summarising how you've been feeling in accordance with the data you've inputted. Given my BPD and the fact that I didn't manage to check in every day, mine was a tad erratic, but it will be interesting to see how the weeks compare as I continue throughout the month.

Back next week with an update!

xXx

Random things that piss me the fuck off

I'm late on a blog post, but I'm knackered and cranky, so ranting is as much as my brain can handle.

I have a short temper, this is true, but I manage to get by most days without screaming at anyone. There are things, however, that simply push me over the edge and lead me into an all-consuming rage that can only be cured my innumerable amounts of swearing and repeated use of the word cunt. At this present moment, they are the following...

The ukelele

There's a woman in Southend who likes to sit on the high street and, for reasons that I'll never understand, play the ukelele. Now whilst I'm sure she's a lovely person, every time I see her I want to whoop her upside the head with her stupid pygmy guitar. Is she a gnome? No. THEN WHY IS SHE PLAYING AN INSTRUMENT SIZED FOR ONE? As far as I'm concerned there is absolutely no use for the ukelele, other than to beat someone to death for playing the ukelele.

People with emotional service animals

Now let me make it clear that I'm in no way knocking the work service animals do, they're fucking amazing and far more beneficial to society than I will ever be. What I'm talking about are emotional support animals outside of the realms of man's best friend.

You may remember two stories that have been in the news this year about mishaps with such animals. One where a woman wasn't allowed to bring her emotional support peacock on a plane, and another where a woman claimed to have been told to flush her emotional support hamster down a toilet.

Aside from the obvious, such as wanting to know who's plumbing is sound enough to flush a hamster, I have a big BIG issue with this. Stop being such a fucktard, you don't have an emotional support peacock, or a hamster, or a goat or a toad or any other random ass animal someone may choose, YOU JUST HAVE A PET. Stop fucking whining and leave them at home. And if you don't want to be without them, stay at home. It's a perfectly simple remedy, and and I don't have to damage my brain by subjecting it to such bs whenever I check my FB news feed.

People who claim to be afraid of small holes

One of the first conversations I had with my landlady's son was about this, and I went off on one to such a degree that he immediately told me I needed to eat something, that's how bad my hangries were. But that doesn't mean my beliefs don't stand true.

THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS BEING AFRAID OF SMALL HOLES. Sweet mother fucking baby Korean Jesus! There are people in the world whose homes are being destroyed by war and you claim to be frightened of a picture of a hole? Sure they may make you feel uncomfortable, but there are lots of things that make people uncomfortable. I, for instance, am made uncomfortable by your all consuming stupidity, so move along, suck it up and be quiet. I have shit to do.

and, of course, Cat Dealy.