Tag: help

Recovery is a personal journey

Posted on by philipdodson

Recovery from anything is a long road and one that needs to be taken at our own pace.

Well-intentioned advice from others is all well and good, but it is personal to us all and we need to feel in control.

There is no set pattern, no blueprint to follow, even if it is recovery from illness or physical injury, it is still the head and mind that needs to recover as well.

The same with depression and mental illness, it is at our own pace and the more people allow us to recover at our pace through empathetic support rather than autobiographical stories of how they did it or how others did it the better we feel.

We all feel vulnerable when we’ve been physically or mentally ill, we need to be listened to and understood, we need help when we ask for it and we need our time to get well.

The more we understand this the better we can be equipped to support others as often we all need someone to listen rather than fix.

Learning in front of others

Posted on by philipdodson

Part of my ongoing journey of getting even better at stuff has involved, more recently, admitting to myself that I don’t know everything and I’m doing something about it. What!! You mean Philip you’re actually applying your learning! Well, trying to.

Back to the point. So Martha lent me this ace book by Austin Kleon called ‘Show your Work’ and I’m only just into the first few pages and I’m loving it.

He talks about a notion of learning in front of others. I love this idea. It’s part of what we’ve been doing for a bit at my coworking space with various groups, especially the Working Out Loud group that we ran.

Sharing our story and sharing our learning and then actually doing the future learning in front of others and sharing what goes well and what doesn’t is vulnerable stuff but one that is very liberating and inspiring, it allows others to help.

Receiving help is something I’m shit at, as I think it shows that I’m weak, more of bullshit gender conditioning that we all suffer.

It’s actually the complete opposite, it’s brave to ask for help.

So be prepared I’m doing all my learning in front of others going forward and I’ll need your help.

Learning out loud.