Ranting for the sake of ranting, somehow. I found a meme page that pissed me off this morning, I'm burnt out, hungry and sick of the conditioning around being told that we should be obsessed with dating more than anything else.... what else is new?

Hey guys, welcome back to Rant Room 😊 I have wanted to talk about this for a while, as it's quite important to me. I put this episode off for quite a while as I was worried about sharing my perspective on it, but I definitely think it's a subject worth sharing. Thanks for listening and please rate/review/subscribe (I have no idea where the button is for that, but there must be one as all the cool podcasters seem to be saying it these days?!) Much love ❤

⚠️⚠️ Trigger warning: I'm going to be discussing disordered eating patterns such as binge eating in this episode, please feel free to skip if this is a triggering subject for you! ⚠️⚠️ Hey everyone, welcome back to Rant Room! Last week was Eating Disorder Awareness Week and it got me thinking about my own experiences with disordered eating patterns and body dysmorphia. I wanted to discuss what it can be like to live with hidden eating disorders in particular and how this can impact people, especially in the age of social media and how who we follow can play into our emotions without us even noticing it. Hence why I unfollowed a lot of people not too long ago and replaced them with a lot of accounts that spread more positivity and body neutrality across my Instagram feed, rather than every filter under the sun that makes me feel even worse about myself. Here are a few of my favourite accounts if you are looking for inspiration (especially with regards to ED recovery and body neutrality/body positivity.) @thewellful @bodyposipanda @bulimiacoach @i_weigh @antidietriotclub ...all amazing accounts that have helped me endlessly ❤ Hope you enjoy the episode!

Hey everyone! Welcome back to Rant Room. I wanted to talk about what it actually means to back off and calm down. Why is it so hard to do? How do you do it? The trick is sometimes as simple as this: knowing when you need to calm down. Like me, today. Have a good day and happy listening 💖

Hi everyone! Recently I have been struggling a little... being cooped up in the house over lockdown 3.0 is really starting to mess with my head. A few weeks ago I had a really huge dip and was feeling very inadequate in comparison to people around me... so I recorded a few thoughts on this. I also included a few ideas about how to break out of inadequate feelings. I hope that somebody finds this relatable and it reassures them to know that they're not alone - it really helps to know that. Much love, happy listening and stay safe ❤

With Christmas around the corner, some of us might be planning to see our family (depending on Covid rules in different places), and some of us might not. But here's what to do if you are feeling worried about potentially dealing with toxic family over the holiday season...

Yeah. Me too. It sucks. And it's really hard. This doesn't just go for love, it goes for old friends and family, for places and people and maybe even for what normality used to be like BC (before Covid, ugh.) But you're not the only one, it's fine to miss people even if you feel as though you shouldn't. Even if you were the one who cut them out. Understand your reasoning, and realise that it's okay to experience missing someone, even if you feel as though you shouldn't.

Cultural values are a funny subject. They're so subjective. You're often led to believe that if you reject one aspect of your culture that you're banned from the rest of it. That's a bunch of crap. You can separate yourself from toxic family and toxic values while still embracing your culture - however impossible it seems.

Bit of a trigger warning on this episode for anyone who has been in a potentially dangerous situation on social media. This was a really difficult episode to record, probably the hardest one yet, because I've never talked about it until now, with anyone. When I was a teenager, social media was just starting to become a constant thing. It had been around for a number of years, but by the time I hit my teens, thanks to smart technology and things by a brand called Apple beginning with "i", social media was becoming more accessible than it had ever been before. Gone were the days of having to log into Facebook from your computer, or when 3G (!!!) was a thing in 2007 and every time we accidentally clicked on the Internet button on our brick phones we'd shit ourselves, because our parents would have a fucking fit when the phone bill arrived at the end of the month and go insane. (Nope, that one actually wasn't me!) In 2013, I made my first Instagram account shortly before my 16th birthday, and seven years on I still use it more than most social media apps. You can do so much more with it now - with most apps - than you ever could back then. I experimented with photo filters, used roughly 38 hashtags on each picture, posted cryptic emo quotes, and followed everyone who randomly liked my pictures. About a month after I made the account, a creep slid into my DMs (not at all uncommon in 2020, unfortunately), but this was a different type of creep, the worst type of Instagram creep that seven years later we are trained to look out for and avoid like crazy. But back then, with the accessibility of social media being so new, nobody was talking about this stuff, because it wasn't anywhere near as common as it is today. Safeguarding, stranger danger and all that is still so important, but social media introduced a whole different dimension to it, with online grooming becoming more prevalent all over the globe, which is exactly what happened to me at the age of 16. This was a really tough experience to go through, and it wasn't until earlier this year that I realised the impact and extent of what had happened to me. This is partly because I completely blocked it out and refused to acknowledge it, but also because I did some online safeguarding training during lockdown and it got me thinking deeply about this particular experience. For anyone who has been affected by anything similar, this might be triggering to listen to, so please feel free to skip this episode if you would wish, as I do talk about some difficult stuff. Here are some useful links that talk about online grooming and similar situations: https://www.childline.org.uk/info-advice/bullying-abuse-safety/online-mobile-safety/online-grooming/ and https://www.thinkuknow.co.uk/parents/articles/Online-grooming/

It's hard to cut things out. It's hard to cut people out, and to let people leave your life when you still care about them. But there's no use in keeping things around when they're not bringing anything to your life. Thinking about cutting out things that don't bring any value to your life - and knowing you need to cut them loose - is often more painful than the act itself.