The difficulty in knowing how to deal with poor mental health is the fact that everyone’s case is very individual; everyone has different triggers, responses, and coping mechanisms. For me, my strongest coping mechanism is to write.

Writing about an upsetting situation helps me think about it logically and clearly. Converting emotions into words forces me to think through what happened stage by stage and piece together which bits are the most problematic. Watching the words appear on the screen in front of me helps me rationalise my reactions, allowing me to adopt the perspective of the reader reflecting on the choices of a character in a book. I don’t necessarily publish what I write in response to a tricky scenario either, although sometimes a passage will grow and develop into something I’m comfortable with others reading.

I picked up on this technique when I was having frequent accessibility issues at a building I used on a daily basis while at university, which despite my feedback and advice continued to occur, becoming increasingly frustrating as the months passed. Often I would come out of the building trying to hide the fact that my cheeks were flushed and I was shaking with anger, so nonchalant and disinterested was the response of the members of staff. I took to keeping a record of accessibility issues, when and where they occurred, and if possible who was responsible for an issue. About once a week I would submit this alongside an email reiterating my frustration to a more senior member of staff, but when that didn’t have an effect I took it to the highest level of management. The problem lingered but lessened significantly, and on my more recent visits I haven’t had any difficulties at all.

What I noticed was that keeping a record and writing an email about the incidents greatly helped calm me down, and while still annoyed and aware of the problem, I wasn’t fixated or brooding about it constantly. I decided I’d try this technique with other problematic scenarios, and was surprised to find out just how effective it was. The many issues I had faced at school concerning a lack of both physical and emotional support formed two blog posts, and my Twitter followers are bombarded with photographs of blocked access routes as I come across them. I found that while my memories of these cases are far from positive, I didn’t revisit these memories as regularly as I once did, and overall I simply felt happier. It worked.

If you want to try writing as a coping mechanism for difficult situations, it’s important to remember that no one ever has to see it. Computer files can erased, and paper can be shredded. It doesn’t need to be coherent, grammatically correct, or full or delicate vocabulary. It won’t work for everyone but it did for me, and it helped me put together something I feel truly proud of. Writing is my therapy.