Blogs
Now that the Thanksgiving and Black Friday madness have come to an end, the post-feast blues have probably started to sink in. You may feel groggy and uncomfortable from binge eating on Thanksgiving and your mind may be overwhelmed with the amount of shopping you still need to do. On top of that, aspects of your day-to-day life that didn’t affect you before, may have now become stressors just because it is the holiday season – icy roads, overplayed Christmas carols and a rise in the heat bill to name a few. If you weren’t anxious before, the statements above may have triggered it.
How do you live with abuse and learn to trust your intuition after distrusting yourself for so long? Why do you want to revive your intuition anyway? Here's the deal: your abuser wants you isolated from everyone and anything (such as your intuition) that could convince you to leave the relationship.
You've learned how to live with abuse your partner's way. It's time to live with abuse a new way.
Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) is the most effective treatment available for bipolar (or unipolar) depression (Around 78% of people who get ECT show improvement, according to an United States Food and Drug Administration analysis, this is much higher than any drug.) but ECT is often thought of as a treatment of last resort. This is the case because of concerns over possible, serious ECT side effects like amnesia. But if ECT is the treatment of last resort, what do you do if that treatment fails?
You can manufacture an attitude of gratitude even if you don't normally feel thankful. Focus on what you're grateful for now--name something you're grateful to know or have. Gratitude is an expression or feeling of appreciation, and it matters. It is recognizing the source of "goodness" in your life rather than "badness." Do you have good days, trustworthy friends, a supportive family, a respectable job, decent pay, etc.? Could the list of goodness in your life continue? Think about it. An attitude of gratitude can go a long way to uplifting your heart, mind, and soul.
Having confidence while dating can be difficult. Don't let your past keep you from feeling confident, learn how to move past your ex and feel confident again.
One of the many annoying things about anxiety and anxiety disorders is that they are almost always there. Whatever we do, wherever we go, there it is. Another irksome thing is that sometimes it feels even bigger than we are, dominating our entire being. Fortunately, no matter where we are, what we’re doing or how big anxiety feels, we can shrink it.
Thanksgiving is upon us today in the United States and, with it, a call to express gratitude for all that we have. This got me thinking about the relationship between gratitude and depression. Can expressing gratitude help depression?
On Understanding Combat PTSD I focus on the issues surrounding combat posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), often from a medical perspective. However, there are many people that have views on combat PTSD outside of doctors. Of course, veterans are one of these groups and some veterans (and others) might argue that PTSD is not, in fact, a disorder. Why would people think that?
Navy veteran, Scott Panetti, was diagnosed with schizophrenia in 1978 and hospitalized 14 times for the disorder. In 1992, he suffered a psychotic break and killed his wife's parents, telling the police that "Sarge" did it and demons were laughing at him. Amazingly, he was allowed to represent himself, and passed up a plea deal that would have saved his life. At his trial, he wore a cowboy suit, subpoenaed Jesus Christ, the Pope and President Kennedy, and argued that only an insane person could prove the insanity defense. He was sentenced to death.
The holiday season of 2013 was the worst of my life. I was grieving the end of a relationship. I was mourning my independence because I had to move back in with my parents. I was suicidal. I was broke. All in all, I felt like a disaster. But I got through it. I wasn't sure I was going to, but I did. It was, however, one of the loneliest times of my life.
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.