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Do you have a strong feeling that one of your coworkers has depression and needs a little help at work every now and then? While it is kind of you to want to help instead of turning a blind eye to the whole situation, you have to use discretion lest you end up offending or pushing away your coworker. Here are four tried and tested tips that you can use to help a depressed coworker.
Perhaps you've heard the saying that an "attitude of gratitude" is good for you. Is it just an old wive's tale, or is there any truth to it? This season of thanks and giving seemed like a good time to check the research and find out. Here's what I learned about how practicing gratitude affects your brain.
It's official: The holiday season has arrived, and Thanksgiving is just around the corner which means that eating disorder (ED) survival tips are now more important than ever. This time of year is known for family traditions and cultural festivities, but it can also feel like a burden if you are in recovery from an eating disorder. Maybe there's a relative who points out the number of calories everyone is about to consume at the dinner table. Perhaps your well-intentioned grandmother hounds you to take seconds on dessert or the conversation detours to how "healthy" and "normal" your weight has started to look.
Is it possible to be thankful for anxiety? Since Thanksgiving is just around the corner, and it’s because it’s tempting to write about what I’m thankful for, I’m going to give in to that temptation. And because I’ve never been one to shy away from taking contentious positions, I’m going to go right out and say that I’m thankful that I have anxiety.
When you're living with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), the holiday season can feel like a nightmare. Holidays can be stressful for everyone, but trying to balance the activities of the season when you have PTSD can be very overwhelming.
For me, choosing to take antidepressants in addiction recovery has been a great choice. After fighting through years of active addiction and a few years of addiction recovery, I have finally decided to work on my mental health struggles with a psychiatrist. My addiction to sex and pornography started roughly ten years ago in high school, but I didn't actually pursue recovery until years later in my early twenties. Amidst the fight against this devastating addiction, I was also consumed with a number of mental health disorders ranging from generalized anxiety, posttraumatic stress disorder, and most recently, depression.
If you experience anxiety or depression, your thyroid could be part of the cause. Place your hand gently on your throat and notice the feel of a tube (that's your trachea, also known as a windpipe). Now, close your eyes and picture a small butterfly perched across the front of the trachea. That's your thyroid, an imperceptible yet powerful gland that plays a big role in your body's functioning, including, possibly, anxiety and depression. While research studies thus far have found mixed results regarding the thyroid's role in mental health, there is enough evidence linking thyroid functioning to anxiety and depressive disorders to consider your thyroid as a possible cause of anxiety or depression.
An alter in dissociative identity disorder (DID) is always assigned a role or a job. For example, an alter might be a host, protector, persecutor, rescuer, gatekeeper, etc., and the alter usually has his or her job from the time he or she is created. As a result, it is an important question to ask if it is ever appropriate to assign an alter a different job. What if the role for which the alter is responsible puts the DID system in harm's way? What should you do then? Should you tell the headmates they are not needed anymore, that you can perform their jobs and take care of yourself?
I have been taking a poetry class at a nearby university -- one I attended when I was struggling in early recovery. In returning this fall I've had to face fears and past failures.
Music is one of the most important parts of my life and a playlist of calm music is one of my necessities. I’ve written about it before on this very post: "Music as Anxiety Relief." Today I want to revisit a very specific facet of this topic.
I believe she will only be able to rid herself of her demons, and hopefully her BPD as well, when she's ready to confront the abuse of her father. If she can put the blame where it belongs, she may stop projecting that victim/perpetrator cycle on the present men in her life. These demons are a metaphor for the purgatory she has created for herself. That reality has consequences in the real world, but it need not be real in the tangible sense. Exorcising her demons will require the expenditure of real physical energy and probably the destruction of aspects of her personality. If this ever happens, and it's possible but not probable, then these demons will evaporate. They are only as real as one's personality is real. In short, reality is not the question, it's what you make of the things you feel to be real.