Blogs
Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) recovery (and the actions it requires) often incites a lot of fear. It has to: creating change always takes you into uncharted territories that can make you question yourself. Frequently, the pain of facing difficult things, plus the exhaustion of attempting to break free from what’s controlling you will put you in situations that bring on a big feeling of “I can’t handle it.” This moment and feeling are the essence of fear in PTSD recovery and there are good reasons for feeling it.
The causes or the effects of anxiety: which came first: the chicken or the egg? Anxiety has both causes and effects. It seems straightforward, but to those of us who have experienced it, it’s not always so clear which comes first, the causes or the effects of anxiety. It can be a frustrating chicken-and-egg conundrum.
![Writing for Coping with Depression has been an amazing journey. I am sad to say goodbye but I remind people that writing can keep us connected.](/sites/default/files/styles/blog_listing/public/uploads/2015/04/woodland-656969_6401-325x216.jpg?itok=2jcbtaAW "My Last Article for "Coping with Depression"")
It’s hard for me to believe, but my time writing for the Coping with Depression blog has come to an end. I started this journey because I believed that we can help one another by sharing our stories and our experiences about depression. Today, I’m more convinced of that than ever.
Ruminating can harm your mental health recovery because when you "go over in the mind repeatedly and often casually or slowly" you compulsively remind yourself of what is wrong. It's negative thoughts compounded by repetition and habit, making rumination dangerous. People with depressive and other mental illnesses often have a similar trait: many suffer from excessive and compulsive negative thoughts that distort reality. Thus, rumination involves an endless loop of negative thinking that can exacerbate depression and other mental illnesses.
Bipolar symptoms can get out of control and sometimes we need to consider safety tips for bipolar. These safety tips can apply during a bipolar mania, hypomania or depression. When we implement a series of these bipolar safety tips, I call it being on a self-imposed “bipolar lockdown.”
I have learned, over time, that a positive attitude can lead to blissful living. Elation comes rushing out from deep inside my soul when I have feelings of happiness, which is much more often in my daily living than not. How is it that it comes so easily? It's naturally an extension of an attitude and having an instinctively positive attitude can bring much more joy and bliss into your daily living.
Unfortunately, abused people often believe certain lies. No one wakes up one day and says, "I think I'll fall in love with an abusive person." Many people in abusive relationships report that there was no violence until the relationship was well-established. At this point, conflicting emotions come into play--and emotions can be powerful and confusing. The fact that abused people believe lies makes the situation even more complicated. Here are three lies abused people believe.
Alcoholics often wonder if it's safe to eat food cooked with alcohol. After all, alcohol is used to cook many foods: pasta sauces, chocolates, jams and even cakes. Recovering alcoholics are often faced with the question, is it safe for me to consume this food or not?
Traveling with a child with mental illness presents unique challenges. My son, Bob, lives with bipolar disorder and social anxiety. Traveling used to be so difficult we avoided it altogether. Now, after years of learning the hard way, I can offer some tips for traveling with a child with mental illness.
In dissociative identity disorder (DID), communication between alters (alternate personalities) is the key to a person’s well-being. With DID, a person may have one or many alters, all working together to form the whole of who the person is. I have formed a couple of ways of working with my alters to create communication within dissociative identity disorder between alters.
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.