Lil' Steps Wellness Farm | AD

Animals, they are always that I gravitate towards during my down days. They bring a sense of calm and an overwhelming sense of happiness. 

Lil' Wellness Farm uses the idea of animals to help children and teens through their mental health struggles, by using them to assist with their therapy. If you've been reading my blog for a long time, you will know that first and foremost, therapy is something which I have put as my number one recommendation. Therapy is what can help you get to the route causes of your mental illness and struggles, to help and rewire your brain. For children, therapy can sometimes be something that seems quite formal and scary and so with the introduction of animals, it provides a much easier and calmer environment. Adults can also benefit from this too! I'm twenty-five now and would happily have this as part of my therapy routine.

The Farm is situated in St. Malo, MB and it offers a range of services and programmes to suit whatever issue you may be dealing with. Recently, the founder of the farm, Lucy has written a book to accompany the wellness treatments that are already offered. It is a book focused for children and teaches them how to handle worry and fear and how to deal with it appropriately. This makes it much less scary than seeing someone sitting in an armchair as they would traditionally experience! I know I would've loved it if my cartoon characters would've spoken about at the anxieties I was feeling as a young child. The book is titled 'Cindy and Cristabelle's Big Scare'. You can grab yourself a copy from the website which I have linked below.

Lucy is also expanding her experiences to create courses that will appear in schools based upon the book, as well as a parent and caregiver course which will help parents to understand how to look after their child if they are struggling. This is hugely important as I find it is often the negativity from parents and guardians that can really stunt the growth of a child when they are struggling. If we find that mental health is becoming something that may become part of a school syllabus, we will find happier and healthier children. 

Lucy has a history routed in psychology and counselling and has used this to help create a professional, fun and working environment that I wish I had access to during my trying times. 

If anything I have written is something that you would be interested in, alongside all of the other events and services the farm offers, head over to their website, here.

Understanding other's emotions

Believe it or not, we all can still find ourselves acting from a primitive side of our brain during most situations in our lives. When a car pulls out on us, we usually react in anger rather than thinking why the other person acted in such a way. This is known as a primitive reaction. Perhaps that person was late for an interview or had a medical emergency? That's not to say that their actions were correct, it's just a intellectual thought pattern that will change our unhelpful reaction at the time and one that we rarely consider.

I feel teenagers, my teenage self included, are a prime example of having emotional outbursts without thinking of the reasoning behind it first. I remember that I used to just argue and scream and shout anytime I felt attacked for my behaviour in the aim of defending it. However, that never ended well and I always ended being worse off. Perhaps the biggest issue was that I never did reflect and the problem didn't get solved at all.

If there's struggles in relationship or connection, it may be that we are misunderstanding the other person and what they are trying to portray. We can find that people seem to overreact about the tiniest thing and take their anger out upon us, and we have the tendency to bite right back, which is never going to help anyone. But before doing this, take a few seconds to try and examine why this person is acting the way they are. The kitchen might have a few crumbs on the worktop and yet you're now part of an argument as if you've broken their favourite and rare piece of pottery. Their reaction seems extreme and your reaction is to defend yourself because you don't want your character to be defamed for no apparent reason. However what you may find with reactions such as this, is that the person is really saying to you that they got a warning at work today, or their Mum is sick. Even as adults we can often find ourselves reverting back to our childhood behaviours when we are going through struggles. This is not to excuse their behaviour and should be told as such, but it may be a subtle cry for help. 

Sometimes when we are personally attacked, it may not be about you yourself, but may be about what the other person is struggling with. Never automatically assume this though and always see where you can improve before looking into the other person's emotional state. Every action that we undertake draws from all areas of life, some good experiences and some bad and we react and assume accordingly to what we have been taught. This is why when someone acts in a way that I wouldn't be deem to be correct or right, I usually take the time to sit back and see if there are any internal or external factors that would've caused them to act in that way before deciding how to react. You'll find your reactions and ways of coping will change dramatically when switching from primitive reactions to intellectual and logical ones.

The opinions of a single life

The other day I was posed with a statement: 'You're twenty-four now, shouldn't you think about settling down?'. It stumped me for a little bit because even though I know my answer, if you look all over social media there are people my age whom are engaged and are getting mortgages, perhaps because they're happy or perhaps because it's what society and instagram shows is what makes you happy and this can be an extreme influence on our daily lives. I think we all seem to fall into this trap of what is meant to be good rather than taking the time of looking into ourselves and thinking about what it is that we actually want as people. 

It's funny how we take other people's opinions so seriously and yet the person who has come up with that opinion, will take no more than a couple of seconds to think about it before getting on with their own lives and yet we use that opinion to fulfil some of the most important decisions that we will ever make in our lifetimes. We all get too easily sucked into what our lives should be, that we can end up unhappy in the long run. All of us feel like we're in a constant rat race to be better and compete against each other, but that will only ever bring us temporary happiness. If marriage isn't for you, and yet it is seen as the done thing, your instagram of your wedding day may be pretty but your life won't be, if it's not what you really wanted. 

In response to the question, I had to look at what was the right thing for me. I don't have to be in a relationship constantly in order to be happy. In fact, a lot of relationships, especially the wrong ones, can breed more unhappiness. There is no rule book that states a relationship will make you happier than being single as it is all down to the person. We seem to have this romantic vs classical philosophy that being single is wrong and makes you unhappy, but people forget about the toxic relationships that exist and own personal preferences, which should all be considered.

At the end of the day, there is nothing that will make you happier than doing what feels right within you. If that means never getting married, or travelling the world and starting a career when you're thirty, that's okay. There is no hard and fast rule, just because someone on instagram has got hundreds of likes...they may be extremely unhappy in their choices down the line just because they felt this invisible pressure to follow the trend. 

There are certain external factors about my environment that mean I am not fully in the place where I want to be right now, but that is something I have to accept. What I can change is important and with that, it is what I want and not what others deem my success to be. Real success is making decisions, that at the time feel right, even if they may not work out in the end.