Blogs
With use of e-cigarettes and vaping on the rise, many people are beginning to wonder, just how safe are e-cigarettes and vaping? I recently attended a lecture by three professors at Portland State University that addressed the science of e-cigarettes. The neuroscience presented was complex but at least one point was clear--vaping and other forms of electronic nicotine delivery are not harmless.
There is a difference between a mood disorder in a teenager and teenage moodiness. My teenage son, Bob, lives with bipolar disorder, the monster of all mood disorders in teens. We recently discussed the difference between mood disorders and moodiness because Bob is recovering from an episode of bipolar depression.
Dissociation is an anxiety symptom that is part of dissociative identity disorder (DID). Sometimes dissociation is not splitting between personalities, but only losing touch with reality for a time. Many people who suffer from DID also experience other mental illnesses, or mental illness symptoms. One that I have noticed is anxiety. Dissociation and anxiety symptoms sometimes causes my panic attacks.
My depression goes hand-in-hand with anxiety, which leaves me feeling paralyzed with fear. For years I hid from life, until I started using my feelings of anxiety and the hopelessness of depression to convince me that I had nothing else to lose. I learned to make my own luck to defeat depression-related anxiety.
A reader wanted to know about my recovery from gastric sleeve surgery for binge eating disorder. Here is a quick post about my recovery and the immediate diet following it. It wasn't easy, to say the least, but by following doctor's orders and taking it easy, I had a complication-free road to recovery and a great start to my new life as a sleever. Stay tuned for more of my experience with gastric sleeve surgery recovery and how it helped me with my binge eating disorder.
Many people claim that marijuana is not addictive and steadfastly promise that their recreational marijuana use does not harm anyone. Results from a recent lab study may shed new insight on the effects of marijuana that has, until now, been unexplored. This study indicates the offspring of recreational marijuana users may be more susceptible to heroin addiction than children of non-marijuana users. In other words, recreational marijuana use may correlate to heroin addiction.
I had been in outpatient therapy for six months. I was seeing a dietitian. I was made to attend an eating disorder support group. Even given all those interventions, if you asked me, I didn’t have an eating disorder. I was a healthy eater who maybe had a few “funny” things around food. It's hard to tell the difference between a diet and an eating disorder for some.
When someone lives with anxiety, it can seem that life is anxiety. It often feels that anxiety is the rule and that there are no exceptions to anxiety. It can be overbearing and consume our entire being, creating anxious thoughts and anxious emotions and restricting what we do. While this feels very real, the truth is that anxiety is not always as strong as it wants us to believe. There are exceptions to anxiety, times when our anxiety isn't as intense as it usually is.
Anxiety triggers are pesky things and they can be difficult to avoid. As a person living with an anxiety disorder, I don’t intentionally put myself in a position to trigger an anxiety or panic attack. Some triggers are easy to avoid. If snakes trigger anxiety, a pet boa constrictor isn’t for you. But what about happy memories? Is it possible for a happy memory to trigger anxiety?
I was in college when Columbine happened and the university grew concerned that one of their students with mental illness might decide to copycat the shooting. So they treated me to a no-knock, no-warrant search of my dorm room out of concern I might become violent--even though I had no history of violence and no warning signs. The director of the counseling center, my therapist and even the dean said I was no threat, and I was allowed to graduate, even though I was kicked out of the dorm. The university was worried about me--or more accurately, about my conduct--because I was a mental health consumer. But are people with mental illness more violent than people without mental illness?
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.