Think. Feel. Be. 2 Mindful Mental Health in Everyday Life

By Caitlin McColl

This is the second volume of collected articles written by me on Medium.com on the subject of mindfulness, mental health and psychology.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Caitlin McColl
• Release date: Jan 16, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215682876

Caitlin McColl

Since childhood, Caitlin has written mainy fantasy - with dragons, wizards and other fantastical monsters. But now she writes Steampunk, stories that makes our world just a little bit more interesting, with the ability to mask the humdrum days we all have - those cold, grey, rainy, depressing days. The days you accidentally sleep in, lock yourself out of the house, battle morning rush hour and realize your still wearing your slippers. Caitlin lives in beautiful Vancouver, Canada with her husband and her dog.Amazon: www.amazon.com/author/caitlinmccollInstagram: instagram.com/caitlinmccollauthorSeptember 2020-Published The Clockwork Universe and The Stained Glass Heart, follow ups to Under A Starlit Sky. Also re-did covers for books.-Published All That Remains - a free short story collection from 2017-Republished The Diary of Dr Jekyll that was published by a Seattle based publisher that is no more2015-Released a free ebook compilation of stories from her short story blog, Under A Starlit Sky, collectively called The Dark And Shadowy Places.Hope you enjoy!

Book preview

Welcome!

Welcome to the second volume of my Mindful Mental Health in Everyday Life book (you can check out the first book, just called Think. Feel. Be. also on Smashwords for free!).

This is a collection of my articles on Medium that are featured in my Mindful Mental Health publication on that platform. I’ve also recently created a private companion Facebook group to the Mindful Mental Health publication called Mindful Mental Health which you can join here: https://facebook.com/groups/mindfulmh.

You don’t have to be a member of the Medium publication or even a follower! It’s just for people who are interested in the topics or areas of mindfulness and mental health (or mindful mental health - whatever that means to you!). The group is an inclusive and safe space where people can discuss and share mindfulness and mental health:

Tips

Advice

Information

Inspiration

quotes/memes

articles (either articles by others or ones they have written themselves!)

Websites

personal experiences

anything else you’d like that’s mindfulness or mental health related!

So if that interests you, I’d love you to join! And with that said, let’s get started with the articles on mindful mental health.

Here’s a run down of what is in this book:

6 Fun Facts About Synesthesia

Comprehending the Incomprehensible: How to cope with tragedy

The (Not So Subtle) Art of Asking for Help

How to Survive a Pandemic Christmas….Again

6 Ways Your Imagination is More Powerful Than Reality

10 Ways To Care For Yourself

How Hurtful Words Can Affect Your Mental Health

Can Reading About Mental Health Have An Effect On Your Mental Health?

The Mental Health Benefits Of Forest Bathing AKA Shinrin-yoku

The Joy of Dogs (aka the mental health benefits of pets)

5 Ways To Improve Your Mental Health

The Future of Mental Health

Are You A Highly Sensitive Person? Here’s 16 Traits Of HSPs

Do You React Before You Think? Here’s Why You Shouldn’t

6 Positive Traits of People With Borderline Personality Disorder

Affective Realism: How Your Body Feels Affects Your Decisions And Actions

Why It’s OK To Be Obsessed With Your Fave Fictional Characters

Mental Illness - I’ve never liked that term. Should we call it something else?

Wanna Live Longer? Ease Off On Ranting

Be Authentic — What Does That Really Mean?

Don’t Be Like Me And Just Be

4 Keys To Increased Wellbeing

How Checking Off Your To-Do List Can Help You Feel On Top Of the World

Feel The Fear and Do It Anyway

Becoming A Mental Health Ambassador

I hope you enjoy. Thanks for reading.

Be well,

Caitlin

6 Fun Facts About Synesthesia

September 6 2021

Have you ever said something to a friend or family member that they thought was really strange? Like maybe that a certain song sounded orange or that you could ‘see’ music? Or that the number 5 is green to you? If so, you may have Synesthesia, a neurological condition that scientists are still trying to figure out more about it and why it happens. The word means to blend the five senses. People with synesthesia (known as synesthetes) experience the world differently — to put it simply, think of it like crossed wires in their brains — their senses are hooked up to each other in weird ways where one sensory source produces another result — such as tasting sounds or hearing colours. There are many different types of synesthesia such as Chromesthesia — where a person hears a sound and sees a colour associated with it (high pitched sounds are often brighter colours and lower sounds are darker). Different people may see a certain sound as a different colour. One of the most common forms of this condition is grapheme-color synesthesia- where people will see letters or numbers with different colours. For example, ‘A’ might be yellow and 12 might be a shade of blue.

Disclaimer: The information in this article is not intended nor implied to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. All content, including text, graphics, images, and information, contained in this video is for general information purposes only and does not replace a consultation with your own doctor/health professional.

With that said, here are 6 interesting things about synesthesia.

Most are born with it and it runs in families

According to Jacoby Bancroft on Ranker.com, researchers think everyone has synesthesia when they are born but you just grow out of it as you grow up. But there are cases of people developing it later on in life. Both of these are called Developmental Synesthesia. But some people suddenly gain these abilities due to medical issues like strokes, tumors, or brain injury and this is known as acquired synesthesia. Also, the condition can be inherited, and that around 40% of synesthetes have another close family member with it, and scientists have discovered that a specific gene on chromosome 16 causes grapheme-color synesthesia but don’t know why. But scientists think that .5 to 1% of people have it.

Left-Handed People and Women are More Likely to have it

Again, scientists don’t know why, but it turns out that studies in the US show that women are three times more likely, and in the UK for some reason, eight times more likely to have it. And strangely more synesthetes are left-handed compared to the rest of us.

When sick their ‘abilities’ can change

When a synesthete comes down with a cold, flu, or something like an ear infection, being sick can affect how they experience their condition — either strengthening or weakening it, or it just is out of whack and not ‘right’. For example, a sound-colour synesthete with a blocked ear will not only lose their hearing but the colours they usually experience will be different. And if you have the condition and also depression? You might find that it temporarily leaves altogether.

There are over 80 different kinds of it

Our senses can be linked with each other in a large combination of ways, and also with other things like personality traits. And most people with the condition only have two senses linked (i.e. sight and sound) but some have three or more and according to BetterHelp there has been at least one case where someone had connections between all five!

And there are two major groups of synesthetes. One is called Projective where the person hears, smells, tastes or feels the second sense, and where it is projected in front of you. For example, tasting blueberries when you hear a specific piano note. The second is Associative meaning that they have a connection between a stimulus and a sense but only associate it in their minds, not directly experience it. With the example above where the first group actually tastes blueberries hearing a certain note, someone in the second group would just have an association between the note and blueberries. In other words that note would remind them or make them think of blueberries. Of course, someone could belong to a mix of both of these groups.

Some rarer forms of it are: Auditory-Tactile (or hearing-touch — where sounds cause the person to feel sensations inside or outside their bodies (sometimes pleasant, others not so much). Similar to that is mirror-touch where they can feel pain if they see someone else in pain. Not very fun! Another rare form is Lexical-Gustatory (and Sound Gustatory) when people can