Alicia Brunskill
Bio
Alicia writes about a variety of topics including mental illness, languages, education and cats. She also loves writing poetry and fiction. Alicia lives in Rutland, England with her partner, cat and dog.
Find her on Twitter: @aliciabrunskill
Stories (37/0)
Learn a Foreign Language at Home - Part One
I’m that person you know who loves languages, is always learning several at once, and who even made an embarrassing attempt at creating their own language as a child. This love stretches to my own language and, to be honest, words in general.
By Alicia Brunskill4 years ago in Education
Coping with Sleep Deprivation
Not getting your eight hours a night puts you in a strange place, your needs become a little different to those of people who sleep and recharge at night. Your outlook becomes different too, often quite negative because of the constant lack of good, refreshing sleep. After not sleeping well for a long time, I made changes to my daily routine to make the days a little easier and to encourage my body to sleep.
By Alicia Brunskill4 years ago in Longevity
Depression and Sleep
The longer that I have suffered from depression, the more complex my relationship with sleep has become. Not being able to have a consistent store of energy is one of the most frustrating aspects of this illness, both because I try so hard to do all the things you’re supposed to do to get a good night’s sleep, and because it is absolutely no fun being tired all the time despite whatever you try. Depression tiredness is more complicated than not getting eight hours of rest a night, but how is sleep affected by this disorder?
By Alicia Brunskill4 years ago in Psyche
Books That Have Helped Me During Depression
Most of the books that have struck a chord with me during bouts of deep depression have done so because the ruling emotion (or sensation) I was feeling from the disorder was present in that book. I couldn’t read anything else or engage with it as deeply. It was a way for me to explore what I was feeling through someone else’s situation, before seeing it there in my own life. I think when I’m reading books in this state of feeling depression so keenly, I’m looking for answers more than ever. Therefore, I examine scenes in the books over and over and wonder why they resonate so much with me. I wonder, what has happened to make me feel so connected to this book?
By Alicia Brunskill4 years ago in Psyche
When Your Chest Feels Like It’s Going to Explode from Anxiety
On days like this it’s a battle to get anything done, make decisions, focus and not lose your temper. Your body is taking you on a ride that you didn’t ask to go on, all because your faulty alarm system has been triggered; and you never have the code to turn it off.
By Alicia Brunskill4 years ago in Psyche
Depression, Anxiety and Travelling
Travelling with mental illness brings a lot of different challenges from being at home but also some of the same familiar ones, too. I have been diagnosed with mixed depression and generalised anxiety disorder so most of the challenges I am going to talk about will relate to the ones I face because of these illnesses.
By Alicia Brunskill4 years ago in Psyche
Losing Your Sense of Urgency to Depression
Despite deadlines looming, barely any food in the fridge, medication dwindling, your depression brain wants to put everything off. Everything can wait. And even when the supplies do finally run out, it’s a mammoth effort to get up and out to re-stock. You reschedule tasks for the next day, and the next day; moving through each one at a snail’s pace that you can’t change. It’s like slogging through mud every day with a tired resignation that this is how it is until the depression begins to lift a little.
By Alicia Brunskill4 years ago in Psyche
Adopting a Cat
When I adopted my cat Nellie, she was the first cat I had ever owned. I grew up with dogs, rabbits, guinea pigs, goldfish, hamsters, and whatever else we rescued from the wild. As a child, I considered myself a lover of animals, certainly, but very much in the camp of ‘dog lover.’
By Alicia Brunskill4 years ago in Petlife
Indecision Caused by Anxiety
I suffer from GAD (Generalised Anxiety Disorder) and one of the most frustrating aspects of this disorder that I come up against is indecision. I’m talking about when I can’t make even the simplest of decisions because of the ‘what ifs’ flying out of my overactive brain. I can end up feeling paralysed, having flitted from task to task in the hope of finding easier, clear-cut decisions to make. Finally, I reach a complete impasse as I realise I’m cycling through the same few decisions over and over and am no closer to a resolution.
By Alicia Brunskill4 years ago in Psyche
