If you are new and very confused about why this video features a girl lying on the floor...

you have a lot of videos to watch.

But the tl; dr of the situation is:

Hi, I'm Jessica.

I'm disabled; I have a thing called Hereditary Neuropathy with Liability to Pressure Palsy

with Mixed Connective Tissue Disorder which gives me a thing called Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome

And that's the short version.

I made a video explaining POTS and I will link to it down below in the description

and also in a card up above.

But, to sum up how I am feeling right now:

"awful" is a good word, obviously.

I feel incredibly dizzy, and I have no blood in my brain

and my heart is beating at twice the rate that it should

which is great.

Also I feel like this kind of pressure building behind my eyes that wants to shoot out

- which isn't fun, but I imagine would look quite interesting.

So today I am going to be filming from the floor.

As you can probably tell already, I am a very chirpy and optimistic person.

My glass is always half-full.

Every cloud has a silver lining.

The sun will come out tomorrow.

Maybe not the last one.

No, because there is sun in every day.

You just have to look for it.

I don't even know where these things come from.

It's like there's a cheese factory inside my brain.

I annoy even myself.

I can make any situation into a cheery learning moment.

It annoys other people, but I do like to think of it as a gift

because of course I do.

Partly, I was just born with an innate optimism.

But, also, some bad things have happened in my life.

I mean, really bad.

I'd be lying if I said that every moment had been wonderful

and I'd been able to see the light at the end of the tunnel

because that's just not true.

When I first started to have really bad symptoms

and I was spending a lot of time in hospital,

and then I had a medical procedure that went wrong,

it got pretty dark.

It was pretty sad inside my head for a while.

I've also always been one of those really empathetic people

who just soaks up everyone's emotions around me

and feels all of the feelings all of the time.

It's not really great when you're in hospital

and people around you are all panicking about whether you're going to make it or not.

Their upset fed into my upset.

I became iller and iller to the point where I had to spend two years lying in my bed

in the dark

with no light, no sound, and no touch, because those things brought me incredible pain.

Now you would think that those things would drag me down even further

into the dark depths of my minds

but no.

Instead, I used that time to write many Buffy and Faith fanfictions in my head

and also many queer books that I am now actually putting onto paper.

But mainly I used it to create some very strong mental defenses.

These are the foundations in my brain now

and I ought to share these coping strategies in case one of them can help you.

Number one:

This is the most important one, so I am putting it first -

and that is self-love.

Yeah, I know, it can sound really difficult and really hard,

but the bases of self-love is self-compassion.

You have to acknowledge that hard stuff happens and it is totally OK

to have bad reactions to those things.

You have to cut yourself a break.

Know that you deserve the warmth and the love and the kindness

just as you would give to someone else who was in the same position.

Don't be too hard on yourself.

You can put this into practice by using affirmations

- I know, it can sound a bit silly -

but, genuinely, sometimes look in the mirror and be like, "Well done!"

"Well done, self, we got through today and you killed it. Good job."

Even if, you know, your day was literally just you got out of bed and then you made it to the toilet

and then you came back to bed.

Excellent!

You did it. Well done.

Praise yourself for the things that you have managed to do; not the things that you think you should've done

but didn't.

Also, I used to write myself positive notes

when I thought I had done well, genuinely.

I used to send myself cards.

I mean, that is also helped by the fact I have a terrible memory

so I didn't always remember writing the cards.

That gave me extra joy when I opened them.

Number two: forgiveness.

This sort of ties in to the first one.

Forgive yourself

for what has happened,

whatever it may be.

Forgive yourself for the part in it; forgive your body for not working.

If you're struggling with someone else because you've got into an argument with your friend,

forgive yourself for the part in it and forgive your friend

because holding onto resentment does nothing but bring you harm,

and we're trying to avoid that.

So, you can recognise what has happened,

you can acknowledge your feelings -

good feelings; bad feelings; whatever your feelings are

- and then you can commit to letting go of those bad feelings.

It's what I do.

If I ever feel like someone has done something that upsets me

(and by "someone," I mean my own body

or a human being),

I try to use person-centric language.

So, "I feel..."

Like, "I feel that what happened was...

blah blah blah."

Rather than, "You did this."

"You have upset me."

Does this make sense to you?

Basically, holding onto negative feelings

does nothing to punish the other person;

it's only punishing you

- especially if that "other person" is your own body.

Forgive. You don't have to forget.

You just have to forgive.

Number three: change the narrative.

This is a bit of a tricky one.

This sort of goes along with the 'glass half-full' way of thinking.

Best way of doing this was to use a thing called expressive writing.

I don't know if you've ever heard of this.

This is where you give yourself an allotted time period

and you sit down with a pencil and paper - maybe it's twenty minutes -

and you just write.

Not on a topic; you don't try and pick anything.

You just follow your thoughts

and you just write and write and write and write and write for twenty minutes.

It doesn't have to be perfect; it doesn't have to have good grammar or sentence structure or paragraphs, no.

You just write whatever you're feeling; whatever thought comes into your head

and then you can read it back over

and see what you've said.

And I find that it really is a helpful way

to recognise negative thinking patterns.

And then you can look at them and you can use that wonderful word:

So, you look at it and you're like, "Oh, this terrible thing...but!

How could I turn this around?

How can I take this negative thought

and instead try and make the best of it

in order to help myself?"

Once you've recognised the problem -

basically, you can't do anything until you have recognised the problem.

Number four:

I don't really like calling it "mindfulness."

I hate the word mindfulness.

What's a better word than that?

OK, number four:

be present.

This is recognising what is around you;

taking a moment; taking some stillness;

being calm;

not letting yourself get too caught up in a situation.

This would happen a lot. I would find that I would start thinking about, "Oh, my God,

what about the future?

What if I'm still this ill in five year's time?

What if I'm still this ill in ten year's time?

What if I never meet anyone and I never get married and I never have children and I never have a career

and I'm never anything and I'm just stuck in this room forever?"

Mind blown.

Yeah.

Not great.

So, instead, if I felt myself starting to spiral a bit,

thinking about the future,

I would've said: bring it back to today

"OK, what happened today?"

"How was today better than yesterday?"

"How was today better than last week or last month?"

"What have I managed to achieve so far?"

Look at all the great things that you're doing right now

before you start panicking about all the bad things that might be in the future.

This also applies to the past.

Don't live in the past.

Don't think only of past failures.

Think about the cool stuff that happened in the past

because that great stuff is gonna happen again in the future.

Number five:

face up to your fears.

I know I just told you not to worry too much about the future, but right now

this is more facing what you are afraid of this very second.

Repeated slow exposure to things that bring you fear

have been shown to decrease anxiety and worry.

So, obviously don't do this if you are terrified of crocodiles.

Don't slightly, one little bit at a time, put your hand closer and closer and closer to the crocodile's mouth.

That's not a great idea.

But if your fear of something is stopping you living your life,

then that's something that needs to be overcome.

The best way to do this is with small steps; short tasks;

and constantly be getting feedback from the people around you

who can give you affirmations of safety.

That it's OK - this thing is scary for you right now,

but it will not be scary for you next week when you try it again

because you've already done it

and it didn't go wrong.

It can also be really great in these situations to team up with someone else -

whether they have a fear of a completely different thing

or no fears at all!

You can face the thing that you're scared of

and they'll be there going, "Oh, no, that's not scary at all"

"Oh, crocodiles? Pfft!"

"I mean, if you want to talk about marshmallows - that's terrifying."

And you'll be like, "Um...marsh-marshmallows are OK."

"Shall we, like--OK, I'm gonna put a marshmallow vaguely near you and we'll just work up to the touching of a marshmallow"

Those are my five resilience pathways.

There you go.

That sounds fancy, doesn't it? "Resilience pathways."

They're the things that work for me.

They're the things that work for me, and hopefully you can take a little bit from them.

One of the best pieces of advice that my mother ever gave me

was a little motto to live by.

Because I'm one of those people who wants to do absolutely everything

all of the time

and help people - help everyone!

I would be the person on the plane who would put someone else's mask on, and then DIE.

So the thing that she told me was to be kind to myself and to use the motto,

"Will doing this bring me health, wealth, or happiness?"

If it does not, do not do it.

Do not stress yourself out doing tasks that you don't actually have to get involved with.

There you go. That is how I stay positive.

I really hope that this has helped you, and you can put some or all of these into practice in your life.

If I could give you just two very clear lines to take with you,

they would be: This, too, shall pass

- which is something that I say to myself all the time

when I'm in my worst pain.

It means that you have been through bad things before.

This is no different.

This, too, will end.

And the second one is you are never alone

because it's true.