Real Talk with Kaycee Louise

Welcome back to another real talk video discussing some of the challenges faced by people seeking a higher level of mental health care. While this video focusses on the challenges in accessing Eating Disorder Treatment, I am (almost) certain that these challenges aren't in ED's alone but rather a larger scale problem.

Mental health IS physical health, and yet if someone needed surgery for a broken leg they wouldn't come up against anywhere near the number of barriers or hoops to jump through that people seeking mental health care face. Cost can be a huge barrier, outrageous weight bias and long wait lists among other things really allow people who are struggling to deteriorate rapidly before they are able to access appropriate care.

Enjoy the video, I hope that you find it informative and validating and look forward to keeping the conversation going!

Wellness is such a popular term that we hear about a lot, and it's so often used as a guise for businesses to sell you their products. In this video I discuss what wellness means to me, and how we don't need to buy products or programs in order to begin to tap into our own unique wellness. It begins with you, and it ends with you. There are definitely services that you can pay for (think therapy, coaching, one on one or group support) that will help to support you on your own journey, but wellness is an inside job.

This audio only extract of my YouTube video with the same title involves me speaking some real talk around mental health. Remember that I am not a mental health care professional, but an individual with lived experience, sharing my own knowledge, wisdom from my own research to hopefully help even just one person feel less alone in their mental health challenges. This video discusses what stigma is, some ways that it can show up, and finally some ways that we as individuals can help break the stigma surrounding mental health, mental illness, and the challenges of being human.

Should you want to watch the video on YouTube, you can find it at https://youtu.be/LS_oYx1M9Aw !

To skip the pre-amble relating to some technical difficulties of the video you can head to the start time of 01:35.

To head straight to what we as individuals can do to help break the stigma of mental health, the time stamp is 08:31.

Enjoy, take care, and let's tackle stigma together!

Kaycee x

Hello lovely humans and welcome back to another video where we chat some real talk about living life with mental health challenges. Let's face it - everyone either is someone or knows someone who has grappled with their mental health at some point in their life. Something that I've been taught to do is to figure out what works and keep a little toolkit to deescalate me in times of need. In this video I take you along for a bit of nature with my gorgeous pooch, Ruby, and sit and chat about things that work and WHY it's important to figure out those things. When we know more, we can be more empowered and we can inform those who support us so they can feed our own wisdom back to us at a time where our inner resourcefulness is low. Be prepared though, sometimes people (me included DO NOT) want our own wisdom fed back to us... but it's worth an open hearted shot. Mental health challenges are hard... whether it's anxiety, or mood, or an eating disorder, or personality disorder if we can figure out what works it might be able to make some of those hard times a little bit more manageable (notice I didn't say easy...!).

I would love to hear from you in the comments about things that work for you, or any wisdom you might have on the topic and please do share this video to anyone whom you think might be interested.

REAL TALK; Comparison and the Human Experience

It's time we had a chat about comparison and how it affects our experience as humans. As usual I go on a ramble; there's discussion about comparison and social media, comparison to self, the goods and bads of comparison, comparison as the thief of joy, invalidation, our unique individual emotional experiences, I mention my fave gal Brene Brown for a moment to touch on vulnerability... and then eventually bring it back full circle.

Hope you enjoy and as always make sure to share, like, and touch base with me or others and open up conversations and authentic connection.

WANT TO COMMENT ON APPEARANCE?! Consider These 3 Things First

Welcome back to another video. Today I'm discussing some things I invite you to consider the next time you see someone and get the urge to comment on their appearance. We are all complex individuals and a comment on appearance, weight, shape or size, can be interpreted in so many different ways because of the way diet culture and weight bias has sneakily made its way into the collective subconscious. The way that we intend a comment to be taken, versus how it is actually received is dependent on this filter that we each (not necessarily knowingly) view things through.

You never know what someone is going through, so taking the time to pause and enquire before commenting on someone's appearance will give you more time to really make an informed choice as to whether that is the best thing to do.

A question to ponder... what is it that you really love about the person presenting themselves in front of you? What would it be like to tell them that rather than going with the easy, instantaneous comment on appearance when you meet up?

This is something that I personally am working on, and it's important to be gentle with ourselves as we seek to change our behaviours and cognitions. You aren't going to get it right all the time, and that is okay. Learn from each experience and remember... when we know better, we can do better!

Thanks for stopping by, I would love to hear what you think of this video in the comments below (as well as any suggestions that you might have for future videos).

Take care,

Kaycee x