Eating disorders

Reviewing Teen Calm’s Self-Care awesome Box

~ Vickyw
Teen Calm self-Care Box

As a mental health sufferer, I was delighted when Teen Calm’s Self-Care monthly box of goodies arrived having neglected my own personal care regime.

Teen Calm offers monthly and every three-month subscription boxes for both male and female anxious teens full of self-care items.

This is the first-ever box I have reviewed, and being a thirty-something year old I found that the price was a little steep at £25 a month or £75 every three months, and that’s not including postage. Postage costs depend on the type of subscription you choose.

When opening Teen Calm’s Self-Care box, I picked out a card that I will be keeping on the office’s notice board. It’s a good idea to look at positive messages throughout the day.

The next thing to pull out is 54 ways to ease the anxious mind cards. My 10-year old niece and I will be looking at these more closely when we have our chill time in the cabin. Watch out for a blog post on these at a later date.

I then picked out Aromatherapy bath potion sea salt infused with a blend of pure essential oils. This is the perfect thing to use after a long day at school or work.

Unfortunately, I don’t have a bath, so a pity its not or bath and showers. My niece will be enjoying a long relaxing soak in a tub after forest school. I usually have showers to help me relax after a long day.

The handmade lavender soap was a lovely idea. The soap is made by a company called Grace’s Generation.

The worry doll was one of the best surprises as I’ve never seen or heard of these before. The story of the original Guatemalan worry people, apparently you put the doll under your pillow when you go to bed, and in the morning, your worries will disappear. Not sure it works, but I love the doll and the idea.

One of the best items inside the box has to be The Teenage Guide to Stress book, which briefly covers essential teenage issues such as friendships, exams, education, sex, depression, drink and drugs and eating disorders. If a book like this had been available when I was younger, I would have purchased it. I’m happy for my niece to read this as she needs to be aware of these life problems.

This book is available to purchase from £6.55 on Amazon.

The final item I picked out of the box was a pack of love hearts that I will share with my niece as a bit of a treat.

Teen Calm boxes are definitely great for teens as well as young adults. I would love to receive one of these from a family member or friend when I’m feeling low.

Teen Calm’s boxes make me smile as they are packed with full-size random products with fun, exciting new things to try.

I would also say you get more than your money’s worth in this box, and not many other packages have full-size products. These make lovely surprise gifts for pre-teens, teenagers or adults especially during lockdown or other stressful periods such as exams etc.

If you are reading this, but you don’t have a chronic illness or mental health. Self-Care is for absolutely anyone. Self-care is essential to practice daily.

Let us know if you or your teenagers practice self-care?

Hope with Eating Disorders book review

~ Vickyw

A PR company sent me Hope with Eating Disorders book to review as this is a subject that many of you may have experienced.

Lynn Crilly gives an insight from a personal perspective on what it’s like to be a mother with a daughter suffering from an eating disorder. 

In its second edition, the self-help book is available online at Amazon and other book stores for £15.99.

Hope with Eating disorders isn’t a book for sufferers, its a book written by a mother who wants to get her message across on how to help family members overcome eating disorders.

Lynn openly shares the struggles and pain she and her family went through when her daughter Samantha was diagnosed with Anorexia Nervosa and OCD in her early teens. 

During her daughter’s recovery, Lynn sets up her own counselling business to help educate other parents, carers, siblings and friends about mental illness and treatments and how to support their loved ones. 

The book is divided into 12 chapters explaining what eating disorders are and breaking down in simple terms treatments and their impact on loved ones.

Would I purchase Hope with Eating Disorders?

The book is helpful if you have loved ones suffering from an eating disorder. The way Lynn writes this is engaging and easy to read. This is a raw, heartbreaking story with a positive outcome that makes this book worth reading. 

The author does not hold back, and Lynn is proof of someone who is positive, and by sticking to methods, she believes in giving family and friends and even eating disorder sufferers hope in their recovery.

I would purchase this book as it gives insight from another person’s point of view instead of the sufferer. I’ve suffered many issues over the years, but this book makes me see things from another perspective.

Let us know your thoughts about the book? Would you purchase the book? Why or why not?

I made myself sick, and they laughed at me

~ Vickyw

Trick Scales

Never did I imaging making myself sick until I did this every day and people laughed at me.

I was 13 or 14 years old when I first watched the movie “When Friendship Kills” like the girls in the film who made themselves sick I too was body-conscious having been called fat from an early age.

The girls in the film ate usually and made themselves sick and successfully lost a lot of weight.

I wanted to be like them. Slim and almost perfect, only they were too thin, and one of the girls in the film ended up dead due to a lack of food and alcohol.

I never saw this, and sometimes I still don’t see this.

I tried starving myself and ended up almost passing out.

It made me feel weak and a failure because I couldn’t handle going without a few calories.

When I went to school, I started starving myself and making myself sick.

This became regular until people began to notice. You wouldn’t believe the reaction I received; I told them I wasn’t feeling well, and this would continue every day.

A teacher questions me, and of course, I was good at blagging, so I told them it wasn’t happening and that I was okay.

People who I thought were my friends started laughing and making sick noises until I broke down and confessed.

My friends even came to my house once and watched me throw away my dinner and were almost in tears. I just told them that I wasn’t hungry, and I was full up.

The only thing that made me stop was when I threw up blood, and I got scared. I was all alone starving myself and making myself sick, with no one to talk to because people thought it was funny.

Today, I still hate my body and the way I look, and maybe the bad things that have happened to me are funny and all my fault.

My perception of the perfect body is still those girls who are too thin in other people’s eyes.

I no longer make myself sick, but occasionally starve myself and restrict myself to a certain number of calories per day.

Maybe I will never fully recover, but I will always hear them making sick noises and laughing at me.

It’s taken me years to write this post about making myself sick.

One of the reasons why I have finally gained the courage to write about this, let alone hit publish is because of a friend who has encouraged me to be myself.

Please note that this is a real-life story and that names and places have been changed to protect identities.