Had a pretty good day today. It was hard coming home from the Fair to my stressful housing situation and my anxiety had been sky high lately. Rose visited and kept me company through a stressful appointment. I took her out for a treat at my favourite cafe. In a burst of energy I pruned, mowed, swept, and tidied my front yard, then re-washed the load of wet laundry that had been sitting in a basket for several days and yet to be hung out, this time it actually made it into the line. We all went down to the beach and did an hour of training, Zoe has her test for Basic training class this Saturday. She’s going very well with one small but significant glitch – she has almost no capacity to pay attention when other dogs are around, they’re just too interesting. This is going to make the test in class rather interesting.

The evening was spent lying on the couch watching the Hobbit. My pain levels are down, I’ve Zoe sleeping on my legs, I’ve decided to sleep on the couch tonight so she can sleep with me. My neighbour has done nothing more antisocial than chuck a bunch of leaves and garden debris over the fence in a week. My psychiatrist was nice to me when I went in on Monday very stressed and teary. Things are challenging but okay.

I’ve been working on a new mental health approach… Learning to accept even my own lack of self acceptance on my rough days. To have a less perfectionistic, and a more compassionate stance towards my mental health troubles. It’s okay to have issues, even the self loathing kind. If I can’t always stop me from hating myself, maybe I can at least break the spiral where I hate myself for hating myself. So far it’s helping.