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I have been feeling overwhelming depression for the past couple of weeks. Living with a mental illness can make anyone exhausted, turning simple daily tasks into daunting and dreaded foes. My responsibilities loom before me like an abysmal darkness that I cannot escape. Practicing self-care feels impossible. Even thinking about housework or errands exhausts me. Welcome to the hard days of overwhelming depression.
Helping others improves your self-esteem and sense of purpose. People who volunteer their time, donate to a cause they care about, or aid someone in need of assistance, have higher self-esteem and overall wellbeing. How can you help others and improve your self-esteem?
Coping with a diagnosis of a mental illness can be scary, but if you’ve made it to this point, it means you’ve reached out for help. That’s a great first step. You’re on your way to receiving treatment and most likely feeling better. It's important to cope with mental illness, and it's important to cope with the diagnosis of mental illness--accepting the illness--too.
I wish I didn't hear voices on vacation, but I know I do. Every year, my schizophrenic and schizoaffective symptoms come with me on vacation. They pack themselves up--even my schizoaffective voices. But I didn’t let hearing voices on vacation ruin my fun. Here’s what I did.
Anxiety is a constant companion that catastrophizes everything and makes even the smallest worries seem insurmountable. So what happens when a major event or trauma arises? How do we manage anxiety levels that – in the face of actual disaster – quickly could become crippling?
Social anxiety and performance anxiety both involve a great deal of fear, worry, and dread. When it comes to anxiety in general, that’s not unique. All types of anxiety disorders involve some type of fear, a whole lot of worry, and an overarching sense of dread. It’s the nature of the anxious thoughts and emotions that define a particular type of anxiety. With social anxiety disorder, the apprehensions largely involve fear of being judged or embarrassed in social situations. In this, social anxiety is a close cousin of another type of anxiety: performance anxiety. Understanding their relationship will help you reduce both social anxiety and performance anxiety.
Being selfish, when you live with bipolar disorder, is not an easy task; although bipolar stigma tells people otherwise.
I have a mental illness and an addiction. I honestly didn’t care if I lived or died, during my decade long drug and alcohol addiction. Which is why I tried and failed at sobriety so many times. My addictions co-occurred with a mental illness called bipolar disorder. A depressive stage of bipolar, even sober, can leave me hopeless. I'd lose interest in all the things that mattered to me before. It didn’t matter to me if I got sober. There were no consequences strong enough to make me want to stop because I didn’t care if I ever saw tomorrow. I didn’t make plans for my future because I really didn’t want one. It was a slow suicide.
Due to changes in my work commitments, this will be my final post for Mental Health for the Digital Generation at HealthyPlace. I've very much enjoyed my time blogging about mental health for HealthyPlace and am saddened that I won't be able to continue.
Everyone experiences trauma differently, but one fact is universally true: trauma is unfair. Living with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is also unfair. Nobody deserves to be traumatized. So how do we heal from something that should never have become our burden in the first place? How do we deal with unfair trauma?
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.