Hello, hello!
If you have found yourself in a situation
where you must stay home for the majority of,
or all of your time, perhaps dealing with
isolation, then this video is for you.
For years I have spent the majority of my
time at home and mostly isolated due to chronic
illness, and inaccessibility as a wheelchair
user, and in this time I have found some ways
to lift my spirits and continue my personal
growth.
Finding Your Small Joys
When I was younger and going through a tough
time, something that kept me hanging on was
this fantasy of “peace”; I would imagine
myself as an adult, alone, and playing oldies
music on the radio, watching the sunrise through
a window, having a cup of hot coffee... and
this is what peace looked like to me.
And now I'm an adult and I can give myself
that fantasy, I can hold my hot mug of coffee
and take a deep breath in, and a deep breath out
and really appreciate that moment.
Staying in one place and in periods of, or
total isolation, can be really psychologically
taxing, so you deserve to find your moments
of joy and peace and to give them to yourself.
When I was recovering from surgery and I couldn't really get out of bed at all,
the thing that brought me joy was musical theatre.
I would either watch musicals on TV or if I couldn't watch TV then I would listen to cast albums
and imagine what the musical looks like in my head, essentially directing musicals inside of my head.
Kind of like a musical audiobook! And that was the
thing that would make me happy!
What’s something you can do at home that
would make YOU happy?
Let me know in the comments! And maybe you guys can bounce ideas off each other.
When it comes to daily activities; if
structured routines is how you wanna go, you can
make a schedule for yourself, set up times for
your meals, for learning something new (maybe
a new language or skill), or try new things (like a new recipe, or watching a new movie or book),
or working on creative things like writing or painting!
If you love your unstructured time, 
have at it!
But if you come across the feeling of "I'm
bored, I don't know what to do, ahh!!"
Maybe what might help you is to at some point, sit down and write down all those things that make you happy,
that bring you joy, the things you would like to try, put them on little pieces of paper,
and then just have them in a bowl or hat or whatever you want and when you have those
feelings of restlessness then you can just pick something out of the bowl and try that!
Or if you need to rest, rest!
Try not to be hard on yourself for needing
to!
If you gotta, you gotta.
Self Discovery
Self-discovery is a huge opportunity to be gained from alone time and I think that more
people should attune themselves to that.
It's a time to figure out what are the things we do
that are performative versus innately US.
How do you behave when you are alone?
What actions do you do solely because people are watching you?
Do you like these things about yourself?
Is there anything about yourself that you'd
like to work on?
This is a great time to take all those personality
quizzes and see what kind of insight they can offer;
there/s things like Myers-Briggs, The Color Code, the enneagram, finding your love language,
getting your birth chart done... so many!
I'll go ahead and leave some 
links in the description for you!
“Who am I?” is often an existential question
that a lot of people dread but I LOVE exploring myself
and learning about myself and finding
the places where I'd like to grow, learning
the language that will allow me to communicate
myself better!
It's one of my favorite benefits of all my
time isolated and at home.
Self Therapy
Whether or not you are seeing a therapist
(and remember that there are some who do
video calls, and phone calls, and texting for their sessions) something that I always practice
is some form of self-therapy.
By "self-therapy" I basically mean, keeping an eye on my mental health and doing whatever is in my power to...
keep my brain healthy.
But I'll go into more detail about what self-therapy means for me...
I started doing this because I dealt with
mental health issues as a teen and as a young adult
and didn’t really have access to a professional
therapist.
My only real options at the time were to research my symptoms, essentially self diagnose,
and find healthy ways to cope with whatever was available to me.
And I know the idea of "self-diagnosis" and "self-work"
may sound alarming to some people but when
it’s that or nothing, you do what you have to
do to survive.
Two separate times in my life I dealt with
severe mental illness; by "severe" I mean I was in the
depths of mental illness and it was extremely harmful to myself, um, and I had no idea for the
longest time that I was even dealing with mental
illness at all, I just thought my intrusive
thoughts and were logical and factual, and they
went unquestioned for the longest time too,
and as I said it ultimately put me in very dangerous
situations.
When I started to question it... which is essentially what I mean when I say "self-therapy"...
I learned as much as I could, and I put words to what I was experiencing,
and did whatever was in my power
to, to just to TRY to help myself.
At the time when I was dealing with the very deep lows of my mental illnesses and doing my
self-therapy/self-work; a lot of it was instinctive but with the amount of information we now have
available through the internet, I can
also recommend seeking out coping mechanisms
and healing tools through that avenue.
Without having the names for it at the time,
I was practicing mirror work, exposure therapy,
correcting intrusive thoughts as though another
being were saying them, discovering my triggers,
and setting boundaries, etc.
There is, of course, a limit to this because
there will definitely be some cases where
seeing a professional is the best option, whether it be for medicinal reasons or some other kind of treatment,
however, trying to be attuned to ourselves, question our thoughts, question our mental health,
discovering the parts of ourselves that need healing or accommodation, so that we can navigate the world
more safely, and to grow, is definitely something rewarding that we can try to do on our own.
Grieving the Life You Once Had
For many of us, being homebound is a transition,
and it can be a really difficult one.
It’s often not a choice, and so it feels
forceful, out of our control, and that’s
one of the first triggers.
It sometimes means we need to find new ways
to work or that we cannot work at all.
It means less socialization, getting to hug
people we love, getting to hang out with them,
and doing activities with them.
For me that was one of the more painful things,
particularly right now, not knowing when I’ll
be able to hug my friends again is something
that has literally brought me to tears...
I was originally trying to keep this video
a bit broad so it might be used for a variety
of different circumstances where one might
become homebound but in this next part,
I will be touching on some grieving topics where
the difference between a pandemic lockdown
and being homebound due to chronic illness/disability
become a little difficult to tell apart,
a lot of it is actually very similar.
But I do want to take this moment to say that
in these shared experiences there can be so
much trauma on top of trauma and while I am
referencing the current pandemic, I would
like to offer my deepest condolences to those
who have lost their loved ones, whether or
not it was to COVID-19, if you have lost anyone
you love at all, for any reason, my heart
is with you and I hope you have the time and
space you need to grieve these losses.
There are things to be angry about like oppressive
systems of power, failing leadership, hoarding
of resources, continued racist violence, and
disregard for human life.
There are anxieties like contagion anxiety,
income anxiety, and the anticipation of the
long term emotional and psychological wounds
this will create, the PTSD, the FEAR.
All of our current circumstances have such
an emotional toll, um, it's very common
for them to trigger anxiety and depression, um...
among many other mental illnesses.
It can cause us to feel hopeless
and irritable, be hypersensitive to microaggressions
or perceived microaggressions.
Grief is ever-present, and can just sort of…
spike or burst in those moments when you feel
the impacts of change, you will ache 
in nostalgia for the past.
You will mourn...
the things you imagined for your future.
You'll feel moments of longing, anger, sadness...
Whatever it is that you feel, FEEL
it, do not try to numb it, just go THROUGH it.
And remember that it’s not the end,
we just have to find new ways of doing things.
In the future, I recommend looking to disabled
folks in that regard, disabled people have always
led the way in finding new ways to adapt.
Hashtag: The Future is Accessible.
We now have the ability to live stream with
professors and teachers, work from home with
our computers, meet up with our friends through
group video chats, the possibilities are endless.
Work and education, community and joy, can
continue even if you cannot leave your house.
I’ve been having to spend most of my time
at home for years now because I’m chronically
ill.
I’ve already been through the trapped feelings,
the exhaustion of looking at the same 4 walls every day,
and, for me, I've experienced the anger, the
anxiety, the sorrow, and to this day the grief
comes in moments and waves…
For anyone, being “stuck at home” can
cause psychological distress; restlessness,
irritability, depression, anxiety.
I can feel that way about not just my house
but my body.
Sometimes I become all too aware of my chronic
pain; if I’m not distracted by something and
then all I have is my pain, its like this horrifyingly loud
intolerable ringing in my head, and just like
you might wish to just erupt like a rocket
out of your house, I can sometimes feel that
way... about my human suit.
All that to say, my grief is multi-layered,
I’ve had to grieve not just my ability to
go out, be among people that I like, do the
jobs I used to do, attend college courses,
etc, and the ability to do those things on
a daily basis, but I’ve had to grieve my
body’s specific loss of abilities that put
me in this position in the first place, and
I had grieve the loss of privilege.
I’m making this video during a pandemic
where most of us are staying home but when
things eventually open back up…
I’ll still be here for the most part and
others are home 24/7 so I just hope that the
tools that were being used by disabled people
for accessibility, now popularized by the
pandemic, hopefully are here to stay and that we continue to pursue equitable accessibility for all
of us.
If you managed to arrive at the end of this video, I know it was a long one, I know, thank you for sticking around
I hope you leave here reminded to try and be kind
to yourself and kind to others, if you have
more than you need, spread it onto others
who don’t, keep an eye out for those who
are vulnerable, this is inclusive of elderly
folks, chronically ill folks, people with low-income
or people who have lost their jobs.
And also remember that so many people are struggling
so the least we can do is try to have an understanding
that we’re all experiencing a collective trauma experience, so many of us are in survival mode
or exhibiting our trauma responses so try not to take small outbursts personally,
and hold ourselves accountable, we shouldn't be having outbursts at people, taking things out on other people,
projecting whatever we are experiencing onto other people, um...
but also remember to set clear boundaries
and keep yourself safe.
Please share things you find rewarding
about staying home in the comments, like I said,
I'm sure so many people are looking for things
to uplift them in this time.
And I will see you all eventually, take care
and stay safe.
Bye.
