**A Year of Progress and Struggle**

2019 was a significant year for me, marked by my first year of not relapsing before my book on tour began. This achievement was a huge milestone for me, one that I am still proud of to this day. It's a testament to the hard work and dedication I've put into my recovery from an eating disorder. While I don't like to use the term "recovered," preferring instead to say "recovering," it's clear that I've made significant progress in my journey towards healing.

For me, recovery is not just about reaching a point where I no longer struggle with my eating disorder, but also about learning to live with it. It's about acknowledging that I still have thoughts and feelings that can trigger old behaviors, but choosing not to give in to them. Recovery is a daily process, one that requires constant effort and self-care. And while I'm proud of the progress I've made, I know that there will always be days when I struggle.

**A Year in Review**

One area where I've seen significant improvement is in my relationships with friends and family. These events have become a big part of my life, and I've learned to appreciate the social aspect of food and eating. While it's not something I'm always comfortable with, I've found that being around others who care about me has helped me to stay on track with my recovery. It's nice to have people who understand what I'm going through and can offer support when I need it.

But despite the progress I've made, there are still days when I struggle with depression and anxiety. These feelings can be overwhelming, making it hard to get out of bed or face the day ahead. In recent months, I've been experiencing more anxiety than usual, which has affected my motivation and desire to do things I enjoy. Even simple tasks like reading or editing videos have become daunting challenges.

**Stomach Issues and Motivation**

One area where I'm struggling is with stomach issues that seem to be linked to my anxiety. For the past six days, I've been experiencing vomiting every morning, as well as stomach cramps all day long. These symptoms are a major indicator of my anxiety levels, and they're making it hard for me to cope. Even simple activities like taking a shower or getting dressed have become overwhelming tasks.

I'm also struggling with motivation in general. I used to enjoy reading, video editing, and work, but lately, these things have become tedious chores that I struggle to complete. I find myself spending more time in bed than usual, watching TV or scrolling through my phone rather than doing anything productive. It's not like me to be lazy, but this is the reality of my current situation.

**New Coping Mechanisms**

Since my coping skills haven't been working as well as they used to, I've had to try new things to manage my anxiety and depression. This has been a bit of a challenge, as it's hard to find what works when you're feeling overwhelmed. But I'm determined to keep trying until I find the right combination of strategies that work for me.

I'm also grateful for the support of friends and family, who have been understanding and patient with my struggles. They've encouraged me to keep going, even when things feel like they can't get any worse. And while it's not easy, I know that with their help and my own determination, I'll get through this difficult time.

**Life Update**

While life is good right now, I wouldn't say that everything is perfect. There are still days when anxiety and depression creep in, making it hard to see the light at the end of the tunnel. But I'm learning to navigate these feelings, one day at a time. And with the support of loved ones and my own resilience, I know that I'll come out stronger on the other side.

**A Pumpkin Carving Update**

Finally, I'd like to share an update from my pumpkin carving adventure. It was a fun way to spend the evening, watching the video below to see how it turned out. As you can see, I've managed to create a pretty good angelic foreign design, which I'm really proud of. Carving pumpkins is one of those activities that brings me joy and calmness, and I'm grateful to have had the chance to do it again this year.

**Conclusion**

And that's my life update for now. It's not always easy, but it's real, and it's worth sharing with others who may be going through similar struggles. Thank you to everyone who has supported me on this journey, and I'll see you in the next video.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhey what's a pillow my name is Emma and today I'm going to be giving you guys a life update while carving a pumpkin now there have been two videos I wanted to film this autumn number one was a life updates I haven't actually done one since like 2017 and like my life has changed and number two was to carve a bookish pumpkin because when I was in high school the first pumpkin I had ever carved entirely by myself was an angelic rune from the Mortal Instruments series obviously and every year since then I wanted to film me carving a rune pumpkin but I just have never gotten around to it and lucky for me one of my lovely subscribers named viv actually suggested that I do both at once which I thought was a fantastic idea so I'm super excited for today's video we're gonna talk about all the things we're gonna talk about my recent breakup we're gonna talk about school and pull and mental health and I really hope you guys are excited I'm really not confident in my abilities to multitask but I'm gonna give it my best shot this is so nerve-racking oh my god here we go so I feel like the first thing we could talk about is my breakup because those of you who have been like sort of following along as I briefly mentioned it like on my channel and on social media and I know y'all are curious so yeah many of you have probably seen my previous boyfriend named Doug on my channel he was in a lot of my videos we were together for seven and a half years until this June when we broke up and now I know so many of you are gonna be curious and you want to know what happened and why you broke up and unfortunately I'm not gonna be telling you the only reason is that I want privacy and that's not something I really want to hash out online um so all you need to know is that it wasn't dramatic there was no big fight and it was a very healthy breakup what I do want to talk about is what my life has been like since then like what happens when the person you thought you were gonna spend the rest of your life with is no longer in your life whatsoever honestly the first few weeks of my breakup were agonizing like I cannot remember the last time I was in that much and though it was entirely my own decision that doesn't make it any easier whatsoever I spent a lot of time crying all I think I did for the first few weeks was just laying in bed and listen to the thank you next album by Erina grande and cried a ghost in like six times a day I'm incredibly lucky that I have a massive support circle comprised of friends and family members and classmates and therapists and other girls in my therapy group so I had like all the tools I really needed to make it through this very difficult time but it was especially hard in the beginning because within the first few days like I did not want to talk about it with anyone I just like you know wanted to be distracted or left to my own devices and I was not here for like discussing it with them and so I'm really lucky that like everyone in my life was supportive of that because that's what I needed in the beginning but then I had sort of set up this expectation that like I didn't want to talk about it what so ever and like people couldn't ask me about it and I totally acknowledge how my responses gave off that impression but then a couple weeks later like I really wanted to talk about it with people and everyone just assumed they couldn't ask me about it and I didn't reach out to them and say hey I need to talk to you about the fact that I'm going through some stuff so yeah I suffered in silence for a long time because like my friends didn't want to ask me if they thought I didn't want to talk about it and I just didn't have the strength to reach out so I really only had my therapist for a bit of it but it was they were so supportive and helpful but I definitely learned from the experience that your friends cannot read your mind and you really need to reach out when you're struggling you can't just sit back and expect everyone to check on you and to know how you're doing and to know exactly what you need in the moment you have to advocate for yourself and express what you need from others and if they're good people that you have in your life they're gonna do that for you but you have to take the initiative it was rough and it was lonely and it's no one's fault by my own but that was also in June and it then quite a few months since what like four months now and I'm really doing better it's no been weird though because for a long time it felt like I wasn't even single and like we weren't really broken up kind of like phantom limb syndrome when like your limb is missing but you still feel it they're in functioning that's how I was kind of living my life for a while and I've sort of had to like almost retrain myself how to live an independent person and to not be so wholly connected and attached to someone else like a great example of this is my friend Monica was over and she was asking me like Oh like when you move out where do you think you're gonna want to go or like when do you think that might be and I had to stop first I couldn't be like I really don't know you know I had spent like so much of my adolescence and like all of my young adulthood with this one person and we were always making plans together and I sort of had to imagine my life with that person in it knowing that we would have to make compromises and you know a lot of my life changes would affect them so you know just like when I move out and where that would be - that was never really something I got to decide fully for myself until now and discovering moments of that where I feel fully independent and have this freedom that like I can barely ever remember having has been really exciting and so I've really just been trying to discover and grasp on to moments like that like for example like I got to go on a date with a girl for the very first time and that's something I never thought I would ever have the experience to do in my life and now it's something I can do for the rest of my life if I want to so yeah it has not been easy it's been one of the hardest things I've ever had to do in my entire life so far but I'm trying to find the good in it and the joy of it and you know not let it prevent me from living the life that I want to lead so ultimately I'm doing pretty good and just thank you so much to all of you that have like attempted reaching out or just showing general support as you've been finding out I've really really appreciated all of your sweet kind message next I think we can talk about grad school because that's probably the biggest part of my life so far and I'll give you a brief summary if you are not someone who's been following at my academic journey all these years so I graduated with my bachelor's in psychology in 2017 and I am now in graduate school for clinical mental health counseling so I eventually want to become what you guys would consider to be a therapist so I'm currently enrolled in a three-year part-time graduate program to get my masters in clinical mental health counseling and if you follow me on social media you probably know that I love grad school I'm at a really amazing program I'm with the same 13 people for all three years of our classes so I've gotten really close with all of them and we have a great dynamic I love the faculty because they are all so incredibly supportive and willing to work with you and like I just I could not be any better program but also I just love the curriculum so much currently I'm enrolled in a psycho diagnostics and treatment planning course which is basically all about like setting up treatment plans and treatment goals with clients and then I'm also in group counseling which is all about how to specifically lead therapy groups and I'm loving both of them so much school is going really well I'm really lucky because I don't have any tests whatsoever the semester one class with group counseling like it's basically just writing reflections on the reading and what we do in class so it's super easy and with psycho Diagnostics there's no tests or quizzes or anything there's just like a lot of assignments that I'm currently working on but this year I signed on to be a graduate assistant at my program which is very exciting and that means that I basically work for my program for free it's like it's sort of like an unpaid internship I'm currently running their social media so you should follow us at Malloy CMHC on Instagram we post some pretty popin counseling and mental health themed stuff so I do that and then I also get the offer to work closer with the faculty on like research and presentations and whatnot so I haven't really delved into that as much yet but I'm starting to and I'll talk about that and the main thing that's so great about it is that I get a break on tuition it basically pays for one of my courses each semester that I work there and that is super necessary for me as someone who is in desperate need of financial aid but basically with my graduate assistantship I'm submitting a proposal to present at the New York mental health counselors Association conference that they have every year me and the head of the department are hoping to do like a presentation on trichotillomania which is hair-pulling disorder because she had a really interesting case that I helped her put together a presentation on already so we're gonna try and submit that which is very exciting and then also with the grad school I was like all of my course burgers going great and my position at the program is also doing well I just got accepted to my first internship so basically with my program in order for me to graduate and you know be applicable for licensure in the future I have to do a practicum which is a 100 hour internship in a semester and then we do like our actual internship one and two which are two three hundred hour internships that happen in our last year that starts in January to May and I'm incredibly nervous obviously I've never done anything like this before where I've treated someone for mental health issues in a professional capacity but I'm also so incredibly excited because like this is what I wanted to do with my life since I was 15 all I wanted to do is be able to offer support and help someone cope with the things that they're going through in the way that my therapists have helped me do that and like it's becoming a reality so yeah I just got accepted to my internship I'm actually going to be working at the clinic that is a part of my program and I'm super excited about it because like their whole mission is offering affordable low cost counseling to pretty much anyone so I have the opportunity to work with children teens adults couples run groups or do individual therapy so I think it's gonna be a great experience and also because the clinic is so new like I think they only started in maybe January um I really get to see what it's like to build up a clinic or like a mental health setting because I'd like to explore private practice and like owning my own space to offer counseling in the future so I'm gonna you know see how that's actually done and put together instead of just going to a place that's super established so I'm really really excited for the opportunity now we can talk about pole so if you do not know I started taking pole dancing lessons in August of 2017 and it's been a massive aspect of my life pretty much non-stop since if you are interested in following my pole journey or seeing like my progress that basically is documented from the beginning you can follow my pole Instagram account at Emma poles if Paul doesn't interest you and you don't want to follow me that's totally okay I made the separate account so you don't have to be exposed to it if you don't want to but it's a big part of my life so we're gonna talk about it now so if you've been following me like on that account or even on Twitter or my regular Instagram I've talked about how I've gone through like quite a few studio closures and whatnot where like the first one I started going to closed and then the second one I started going to like there were some bad business practices and I didn't want to go there anymore and then the third one was like very low-key and I can only go like once every few weeks and then that close so basically the instructor that I have been following through all these different places she's been teaching at finally opened up her own studio and it's in Mineola Online Island and they have pole and aerial hoop and aerial silks and aerial hammock and handstands and yoga and flexibility and even kids aerial classes and it's here to stay and I'm living my best life finally being able to train with pole the way I wanted to I know there's like a stigma attached to pole dancing but I do one because it's so empowering and like such a huge boost to my self-esteem to be able to see like what I can accomplish and how far I can push myself it's an amazing amazing workout like it's the greatest form and most interesting bit of fitness I've ever experimented with and I'm so happy I get was try but what I consider to be most important is it's really transformed my eating disorder recovery and the two years that I've been doing Pohl have absolutely been the strongest of my recovery which we're gonna get into later but um it's been really amazing and like nothing but positive for me so I'm just I'm so happy that like things are falling into place to pull where I've always wanted them to be that being said though it hasn't been all puppies and rainbows specifically because of all the studio closures there have been a lot of like months where I haven't been doing it and I've request a lot where I was like super super powerful and amazing when I started and then through all of this I've totally lost a bit of strength and skill and I'm still working on getting it back you know I definitely have had a lot of days and pull where I just feel like the worst one in the class and I'm upset that I'm not where I used to be or I'm not making it progress as fast as I used to but I really tried to adopt this philosophy of like any training is good training and the fact that I went to Paul that day and I experimented and made me the tiniest little bit of progress on that one move or trick that's what matters the most and so the most exciting thing going on with Paul right now is that I am performing in my studios very first you did showcase and that basically means that you know family friends whoever wants to come it can come watch as some students have choreographed and are performing their routine so I'm gonna be performing on pole for the first time I've been a dancer for most of my life have been dancing for like 20 years now and I have performed solos and I've performed like a million group numbers and duets and whatnot but I've never performed with pole before and so that in itself is really nervous because I have so much more to worry about then if I was just performing a regular dance solo there's just like so many extra things I could go wrong that I'm not used to like I could at a straight before the end of the routine when I have like some big tricks at the end if I get too sweaty I'm not gonna stick to the pole and I could just slide right off and just even something as simple as like going to grab the pole and missing it is something that I'm anticipating but I've pretty much choreographed it entirely myself thus far it is too like a girl by liz' which I am really really excited about it's like super fun and sassy and I'll insert a clip here if you want to check out a little preview I will be posting the full video on my poll instagrams IG TV if you do want to see it when it's done oh yeah as much as I am nervous I'm also equally as excited because I really do want to like compete in a pole competition one day and I figured my first time performing would be so much better in like a low stress environment surrounded by friends and family and people at the studio where like I could do literally anything including fall on my ass and everyone's gonna clap for me so I think it's gonna be a really really fun experience and yeah I just cannot wait to continue with my polijarny and and see where things go from here so it's actually coming out pretty good so far I'm very excited about how I've done with these two cuts and now all I really have to do is just cut around the sides which is the big part I've been avoiding and so to close out this video I figured I'd give you guys a little mental health update because I have not been able to upload on my mental health channel for like two years now but it's something that I you know still think about and I know you guys always want to know how I'm doing so I figured we could talk about it now when I had initially started planning this life update I really thought it was gonna be like a oh my gosh I'm doing great like things are not affecting me at all and that is just not the case anymore we can't start off by me talking about my eating disorder which is actually doing really well while my eating disorder isn't doing well my recovery is going really well if you don't know I've been eating this sort of recovery for like seven or eight years now oh my god probably coming up on eight years and like I said earlier since starting pole I've had like my strongest years of recovery yet and 2019 is by far the strongest altogether and I think one of the easiest indicators of all this progress I've made is that normally whenever I go to like a book convention like book con or y'all fest or whatever I always relapse in the weeks leading up to it like I get very pressured on my appearance and I'm going to when meeting people and in photos with people so I usually like end up crash dieting and over-exercising in the weeks leading up to the convention and then by the time I get there and I'm surrounded by my friends and like food is obviously a very social thing at these events I usually can snap myself out of it but 2019 was the first year I did not relapse before booked on and I was very very proud of myself for that it was like a big big thing for me I don't ever like to use the word recovered in reference to myself I always prefer recovering because like I do still have thoughts all the time like I look at myself in the mirror and I'm still not happy with what I see and part of my brain wants to use behaviors and revert back to those things in order to achieve that but I've been in recovery for so long and I've learned so much about my eating disorder and eating disorders in general that I've just realized just not worth it for me to gamble with my life in my health in order to achieve something that's not even like anatomically really possible for me so yeah overall I'm doing pretty well in your soda and I'm very very proud of all the progress I have been making specifically this year on the other hand I've been struggling a bit with my depression and anxiety more than I have in quite some time in general I've just been more anxious and depressed than normal or but I consider to be my normal I've had a lot of days recently where I will wake up at like 4:30 in the morning and I just cannot get back to sleep and so that has been really affecting me some of you know I've got like some weird stomach issues that I don't really have any answers for but they always get so much worse when I'm having like a real period of anxiety so like for maybe like six days Street I would just vomit every morning and feel super nauseous and have stomach cramps all day long I feel like one of the biggest indicators of this is that I've really been struggling with motivation and like finding the desire to do things that I actually enjoy in three areas where I've seen like a major shift are reading video editing and work I just really have been struggling to get myself to do all three of those things which I genuinely enjoy all of them spend a lot more time in bed than normal and like I am not the type of person to just lay in bed and watch Netflix that's not me whatsoever but I've been doing that a lot recently there was actually a day when I was off school and I was off work and I was trying to have a good productive morning and I just laid in bed for like ten hours and did absolutely nothing and I don't think I've done something like that or had a day like that since high school so yeah it has not been fun but I'm think I'm trying my very best to work through it because I obviously don't want to be in this position I had mentioned on Instagram that like a lot of my coping skills and the things that like normally help me through periods like this just like haven't been working and I just can't get myself to either follow through with them or even start with them and if I do try and complete them it just doesn't work but honestly the only thing I can really do is just keep trying new ones and experiment and see what is gonna work for me now even if it's not what has worked for me in the past or something that I never thought would work for me okay this part is getting a little wild so yeah I definitely wish I had more of like a happy I love my life and everything's great update all around but I don't and that's just not realistic for me right now you know the important thing is that I'm working through it and I'm using the resources and the support that I have available to me and I just got to keep reminding myself that I'm gonna get through it because I know I am so honestly that really completes the life update I feel like that's really everything that I wanted to get across in this video but I do still have a little bit of this pumpkin to carve so I think I'll just do like a time-lapse and then I'll show you the final result all righty so this is my angelic foreign pumpkin which I love so much I think it came out like way better than I was expecting I'm pretty proud of myself with this one and I hope you enjoyed not only watching me carve it but also my life update overall life is pretty good at the moment there's not much for me to complain about and that's a really good thing so in the comments below I would love it if you guys could give me your own little life update and let me know what is going on with you but that is it for this video thank you guys so much for watching and I'll see you soon for a new one bye we were not going to get that lens covered were wehey what's a pillow my name is Emma and today I'm going to be giving you guys a life update while carving a pumpkin now there have been two videos I wanted to film this autumn number one was a life updates I haven't actually done one since like 2017 and like my life has changed and number two was to carve a bookish pumpkin because when I was in high school the first pumpkin I had ever carved entirely by myself was an angelic rune from the Mortal Instruments series obviously and every year since then I wanted to film me carving a rune pumpkin but I just have never gotten around to it and lucky for me one of my lovely subscribers named viv actually suggested that I do both at once which I thought was a fantastic idea so I'm super excited for today's video we're gonna talk about all the things we're gonna talk about my recent breakup we're gonna talk about school and pull and mental health and I really hope you guys are excited I'm really not confident in my abilities to multitask but I'm gonna give it my best shot this is so nerve-racking oh my god here we go so I feel like the first thing we could talk about is my breakup because those of you who have been like sort of following along as I briefly mentioned it like on my channel and on social media and I know y'all are curious so yeah many of you have probably seen my previous boyfriend named Doug on my channel he was in a lot of my videos we were together for seven and a half years until this June when we broke up and now I know so many of you are gonna be curious and you want to know what happened and why you broke up and unfortunately I'm not gonna be telling you the only reason is that I want privacy and that's not something I really want to hash out online um so all you need to know is that it wasn't dramatic there was no big fight and it was a very healthy breakup what I do want to talk about is what my life has been like since then like what happens when the person you thought you were gonna spend the rest of your life with is no longer in your life whatsoever honestly the first few weeks of my breakup were agonizing like I cannot remember the last time I was in that much and though it was entirely my own decision that doesn't make it any easier whatsoever I spent a lot of time crying all I think I did for the first few weeks was just laying in bed and listen to the thank you next album by Erina grande and cried a ghost in like six times a day I'm incredibly lucky that I have a massive support circle comprised of friends and family members and classmates and therapists and other girls in my therapy group so I had like all the tools I really needed to make it through this very difficult time but it was especially hard in the beginning because within the first few days like I did not want to talk about it with anyone I just like you know wanted to be distracted or left to my own devices and I was not here for like discussing it with them and so I'm really lucky that like everyone in my life was supportive of that because that's what I needed in the beginning but then I had sort of set up this expectation that like I didn't want to talk about it what so ever and like people couldn't ask me about it and I totally acknowledge how my responses gave off that impression but then a couple weeks later like I really wanted to talk about it with people and everyone just assumed they couldn't ask me about it and I didn't reach out to them and say hey I need to talk to you about the fact that I'm going through some stuff so yeah I suffered in silence for a long time because like my friends didn't want to ask me if they thought I didn't want to talk about it and I just didn't have the strength to reach out so I really only had my therapist for a bit of it but it was they were so supportive and helpful but I definitely learned from the experience that your friends cannot read your mind and you really need to reach out when you're struggling you can't just sit back and expect everyone to check on you and to know how you're doing and to know exactly what you need in the moment you have to advocate for yourself and express what you need from others and if they're good people that you have in your life they're gonna do that for you but you have to take the initiative it was rough and it was lonely and it's no one's fault by my own but that was also in June and it then quite a few months since what like four months now and I'm really doing better it's no been weird though because for a long time it felt like I wasn't even single and like we weren't really broken up kind of like phantom limb syndrome when like your limb is missing but you still feel it they're in functioning that's how I was kind of living my life for a while and I've sort of had to like almost retrain myself how to live an independent person and to not be so wholly connected and attached to someone else like a great example of this is my friend Monica was over and she was asking me like Oh like when you move out where do you think you're gonna want to go or like when do you think that might be and I had to stop first I couldn't be like I really don't know you know I had spent like so much of my adolescence and like all of my young adulthood with this one person and we were always making plans together and I sort of had to imagine my life with that person in it knowing that we would have to make compromises and you know a lot of my life changes would affect them so you know just like when I move out and where that would be - that was never really something I got to decide fully for myself until now and discovering moments of that where I feel fully independent and have this freedom that like I can barely ever remember having has been really exciting and so I've really just been trying to discover and grasp on to moments like that like for example like I got to go on a date with a girl for the very first time and that's something I never thought I would ever have the experience to do in my life and now it's something I can do for the rest of my life if I want to so yeah it has not been easy it's been one of the hardest things I've ever had to do in my entire life so far but I'm trying to find the good in it and the joy of it and you know not let it prevent me from living the life that I want to lead so ultimately I'm doing pretty good and just thank you so much to all of you that have like attempted reaching out or just showing general support as you've been finding out I've really really appreciated all of your sweet kind message next I think we can talk about grad school because that's probably the biggest part of my life so far and I'll give you a brief summary if you are not someone who's been following at my academic journey all these years so I graduated with my bachelor's in psychology in 2017 and I am now in graduate school for clinical mental health counseling so I eventually want to become what you guys would consider to be a therapist so I'm currently enrolled in a three-year part-time graduate program to get my masters in clinical mental health counseling and if you follow me on social media you probably know that I love grad school I'm at a really amazing program I'm with the same 13 people for all three years of our classes so I've gotten really close with all of them and we have a great dynamic I love the faculty because they are all so incredibly supportive and willing to work with you and like I just I could not be any better program but also I just love the curriculum so much currently I'm enrolled in a psycho diagnostics and treatment planning course which is basically all about like setting up treatment plans and treatment goals with clients and then I'm also in group counseling which is all about how to specifically lead therapy groups and I'm loving both of them so much school is going really well I'm really lucky because I don't have any tests whatsoever the semester one class with group counseling like it's basically just writing reflections on the reading and what we do in class so it's super easy and with psycho Diagnostics there's no tests or quizzes or anything there's just like a lot of assignments that I'm currently working on but this year I signed on to be a graduate assistant at my program which is very exciting and that means that I basically work for my program for free it's like it's sort of like an unpaid internship I'm currently running their social media so you should follow us at Malloy CMHC on Instagram we post some pretty popin counseling and mental health themed stuff so I do that and then I also get the offer to work closer with the faculty on like research and presentations and whatnot so I haven't really delved into that as much yet but I'm starting to and I'll talk about that and the main thing that's so great about it is that I get a break on tuition it basically pays for one of my courses each semester that I work there and that is super necessary for me as someone who is in desperate need of financial aid but basically with my graduate assistantship I'm submitting a proposal to present at the New York mental health counselors Association conference that they have every year me and the head of the department are hoping to do like a presentation on trichotillomania which is hair-pulling disorder because she had a really interesting case that I helped her put together a presentation on already so we're gonna try and submit that which is very exciting and then also with the grad school I was like all of my course burgers going great and my position at the program is also doing well I just got accepted to my first internship so basically with my program in order for me to graduate and you know be applicable for licensure in the future I have to do a practicum which is a 100 hour internship in a semester and then we do like our actual internship one and two which are two three hundred hour internships that happen in our last year that starts in January to May and I'm incredibly nervous obviously I've never done anything like this before where I've treated someone for mental health issues in a professional capacity but I'm also so incredibly excited because like this is what I wanted to do with my life since I was 15 all I wanted to do is be able to offer support and help someone cope with the things that they're going through in the way that my therapists have helped me do that and like it's becoming a reality so yeah I just got accepted to my internship I'm actually going to be working at the clinic that is a part of my program and I'm super excited about it because like their whole mission is offering affordable low cost counseling to pretty much anyone so I have the opportunity to work with children teens adults couples run groups or do individual therapy so I think it's gonna be a great experience and also because the clinic is so new like I think they only started in maybe January um I really get to see what it's like to build up a clinic or like a mental health setting because I'd like to explore private practice and like owning my own space to offer counseling in the future so I'm gonna you know see how that's actually done and put together instead of just going to a place that's super established so I'm really really excited for the opportunity now we can talk about pole so if you do not know I started taking pole dancing lessons in August of 2017 and it's been a massive aspect of my life pretty much non-stop since if you are interested in following my pole journey or seeing like my progress that basically is documented from the beginning you can follow my pole Instagram account at Emma poles if Paul doesn't interest you and you don't want to follow me that's totally okay I made the separate account so you don't have to be exposed to it if you don't want to but it's a big part of my life so we're gonna talk about it now so if you've been following me like on that account or even on Twitter or my regular Instagram I've talked about how I've gone through like quite a few studio closures and whatnot where like the first one I started going to closed and then the second one I started going to like there were some bad business practices and I didn't want to go there anymore and then the third one was like very low-key and I can only go like once every few weeks and then that close so basically the instructor that I have been following through all these different places she's been teaching at finally opened up her own studio and it's in Mineola Online Island and they have pole and aerial hoop and aerial silks and aerial hammock and handstands and yoga and flexibility and even kids aerial classes and it's here to stay and I'm living my best life finally being able to train with pole the way I wanted to I know there's like a stigma attached to pole dancing but I do one because it's so empowering and like such a huge boost to my self-esteem to be able to see like what I can accomplish and how far I can push myself it's an amazing amazing workout like it's the greatest form and most interesting bit of fitness I've ever experimented with and I'm so happy I get was try but what I consider to be most important is it's really transformed my eating disorder recovery and the two years that I've been doing Pohl have absolutely been the strongest of my recovery which we're gonna get into later but um it's been really amazing and like nothing but positive for me so I'm just I'm so happy that like things are falling into place to pull where I've always wanted them to be that being said though it hasn't been all puppies and rainbows specifically because of all the studio closures there have been a lot of like months where I haven't been doing it and I've request a lot where I was like super super powerful and amazing when I started and then through all of this I've totally lost a bit of strength and skill and I'm still working on getting it back you know I definitely have had a lot of days and pull where I just feel like the worst one in the class and I'm upset that I'm not where I used to be or I'm not making it progress as fast as I used to but I really tried to adopt this philosophy of like any training is good training and the fact that I went to Paul that day and I experimented and made me the tiniest little bit of progress on that one move or trick that's what matters the most and so the most exciting thing going on with Paul right now is that I am performing in my studios very first you did showcase and that basically means that you know family friends whoever wants to come it can come watch as some students have choreographed and are performing their routine so I'm gonna be performing on pole for the first time I've been a dancer for most of my life have been dancing for like 20 years now and I have performed solos and I've performed like a million group numbers and duets and whatnot but I've never performed with pole before and so that in itself is really nervous because I have so much more to worry about then if I was just performing a regular dance solo there's just like so many extra things I could go wrong that I'm not used to like I could at a straight before the end of the routine when I have like some big tricks at the end if I get too sweaty I'm not gonna stick to the pole and I could just slide right off and just even something as simple as like going to grab the pole and missing it is something that I'm anticipating but I've pretty much choreographed it entirely myself thus far it is too like a girl by liz' which I am really really excited about it's like super fun and sassy and I'll insert a clip here if you want to check out a little preview I will be posting the full video on my poll instagrams IG TV if you do want to see it when it's done oh yeah as much as I am nervous I'm also equally as excited because I really do want to like compete in a pole competition one day and I figured my first time performing would be so much better in like a low stress environment surrounded by friends and family and people at the studio where like I could do literally anything including fall on my ass and everyone's gonna clap for me so I think it's gonna be a really really fun experience and yeah I just cannot wait to continue with my polijarny and and see where things go from here so it's actually coming out pretty good so far I'm very excited about how I've done with these two cuts and now all I really have to do is just cut around the sides which is the big part I've been avoiding and so to close out this video I figured I'd give you guys a little mental health update because I have not been able to upload on my mental health channel for like two years now but it's something that I you know still think about and I know you guys always want to know how I'm doing so I figured we could talk about it now when I had initially started planning this life update I really thought it was gonna be like a oh my gosh I'm doing great like things are not affecting me at all and that is just not the case anymore we can't start off by me talking about my eating disorder which is actually doing really well while my eating disorder isn't doing well my recovery is going really well if you don't know I've been eating this sort of recovery for like seven or eight years now oh my god probably coming up on eight years and like I said earlier since starting pole I've had like my strongest years of recovery yet and 2019 is by far the strongest altogether and I think one of the easiest indicators of all this progress I've made is that normally whenever I go to like a book convention like book con or y'all fest or whatever I always relapse in the weeks leading up to it like I get very pressured on my appearance and I'm going to when meeting people and in photos with people so I usually like end up crash dieting and over-exercising in the weeks leading up to the convention and then by the time I get there and I'm surrounded by my friends and like food is obviously a very social thing at these events I usually can snap myself out of it but 2019 was the first year I did not relapse before booked on and I was very very proud of myself for that it was like a big big thing for me I don't ever like to use the word recovered in reference to myself I always prefer recovering because like I do still have thoughts all the time like I look at myself in the mirror and I'm still not happy with what I see and part of my brain wants to use behaviors and revert back to those things in order to achieve that but I've been in recovery for so long and I've learned so much about my eating disorder and eating disorders in general that I've just realized just not worth it for me to gamble with my life in my health in order to achieve something that's not even like anatomically really possible for me so yeah overall I'm doing pretty well in your soda and I'm very very proud of all the progress I have been making specifically this year on the other hand I've been struggling a bit with my depression and anxiety more than I have in quite some time in general I've just been more anxious and depressed than normal or but I consider to be my normal I've had a lot of days recently where I will wake up at like 4:30 in the morning and I just cannot get back to sleep and so that has been really affecting me some of you know I've got like some weird stomach issues that I don't really have any answers for but they always get so much worse when I'm having like a real period of anxiety so like for maybe like six days Street I would just vomit every morning and feel super nauseous and have stomach cramps all day long I feel like one of the biggest indicators of this is that I've really been struggling with motivation and like finding the desire to do things that I actually enjoy in three areas where I've seen like a major shift are reading video editing and work I just really have been struggling to get myself to do all three of those things which I genuinely enjoy all of them spend a lot more time in bed than normal and like I am not the type of person to just lay in bed and watch Netflix that's not me whatsoever but I've been doing that a lot recently there was actually a day when I was off school and I was off work and I was trying to have a good productive morning and I just laid in bed for like ten hours and did absolutely nothing and I don't think I've done something like that or had a day like that since high school so yeah it has not been fun but I'm think I'm trying my very best to work through it because I obviously don't want to be in this position I had mentioned on Instagram that like a lot of my coping skills and the things that like normally help me through periods like this just like haven't been working and I just can't get myself to either follow through with them or even start with them and if I do try and complete them it just doesn't work but honestly the only thing I can really do is just keep trying new ones and experiment and see what is gonna work for me now even if it's not what has worked for me in the past or something that I never thought would work for me okay this part is getting a little wild so yeah I definitely wish I had more of like a happy I love my life and everything's great update all around but I don't and that's just not realistic for me right now you know the important thing is that I'm working through it and I'm using the resources and the support that I have available to me and I just got to keep reminding myself that I'm gonna get through it because I know I am so honestly that really completes the life update I feel like that's really everything that I wanted to get across in this video but I do still have a little bit of this pumpkin to carve so I think I'll just do like a time-lapse and then I'll show you the final result all righty so this is my angelic foreign pumpkin which I love so much I think it came out like way better than I was expecting I'm pretty proud of myself with this one and I hope you enjoyed not only watching me carve it but also my life update overall life is pretty good at the moment there's not much for me to complain about and that's a really good thing so in the comments below I would love it if you guys could give me your own little life update and let me know what is going on with you but that is it for this video thank you guys so much for watching and I'll see you soon for a new one bye we were not going to get that lens covered were we\n"