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I am a college bipolar student, but graduation is almost here. I can already imagine the feelings of gratefulness and relief - and anxiety. This is a scary time, filled with graduation anxiety. The end of my academic life, the preparation for real life after college. Many, many college students and young adults feel inadequate and lost when entering real life, and this is undoubtedly one of the most stressful time in one’s life. There are so many things to do. Find a job, save up money (while paying off those student loans), living with parents and finding your own place. But what about those of us bipolar students and our anxiety? What can we do to reduce graduation anxiety?
Anthony D'Aconti
Welcome to the Anxiety Schmanxiety Blog!
I'm Anthony D'Aconti, the Founder of Breathe Into the Bag, an anxiety magazine created to help people struggling with all types of anxiety disorders, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and PTSD. I'm proud to join the Anxiety Schmanxiety Blog and hope that by sharing my experiences and expertise, I'll be able to help you with your anxiety challenges.
Winter can be so depressing, can't it? I live in the great Canadian north. Well, not too far north. In fact, I live near Toronto, which is just one hour north of Buffalo. Still, in the winter, the nights get pretty darn long and the often times below zero days, are gray and snowy and downright depressing.
When it comes to self-harming, the importance of the marks tends to overpower the importance of relationships with reality. Well, at least this rang true to me during my difficult years. I had friends in high school, however, most of them I do not talk to anymore. Those I do still talk to I hope to never push away.
I will admit it now, though. I pushed most of my friends away during the years I struggled with self-harm.
Radical acceptance means complete and total acceptance of something, accepting reality, and is a key component of Dialetical Behavioral Therapy.
Yesterday, I listened to an interview with Marsha Linehan, the creator of Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT). If you aren't hip to the help DBT can offer, you might find some new ideas here.
Stigma: a fallacy based on preconceived notions. I am going to go out on a limb here: Everyone at some point in his or her life has experienced stigma. Maybe because we have a lisp, a limp, maybe due to a physical impairment or maybe due to socioeconomic status. Stigma is nearly always directed at something we are unable to fully control.
Paul made an appointment with me and arrived with a concern: “My wife keeps telling me I have ADHD because I am always misplacing things, forgetting what she says, and running late - even to work. But I have never been hyperactive, so can she still be right?”
A week later, I met Jennifer upset with what her doctor had told her. “He said I have ADHD, but I know I don’t! I am very low energy, and my biggest problem is procrastination. I have ADD, not ADHD.”
Is it ADHD? Is it ADD? What’s the difference?
Do you ever feel as if you're not good enough?
Do you ever wake up at night and think, If others really knew me...
Do you ever walk around looking at others, knowing they are better/smarter/more beautiful than you?
Yes.
Have you seen those posters or t-shirts that read: “I Can’t Stay Calm Because I Have Anxiety”? They’re a play off the trendy t-shirts, posters and other items with the royal crown and the directive to “keep calm and…”.
As those of us who experience any form of anxiety are aware, merely reading a sign that tells us to "keep calm" is too simple—easier said than done. On the other hand, don’t believe “I Can’t Keep Calm Because I Have Anxiety.” It’s just not true!
For children of all ages, Halloween is a time when vampires, zombies, murderers, psychopaths, the undead, succubae, and other creatures of the night roam far and wide across the landscape, terrorizing young and old and demanding food in exchange for safety from unpleasant tricks, rather like a Mafia protection scheme.
But the American public is difficult to shock since it subsists on a steady diet of horrifying fare including political ineptitude, reality TV, and social media, in itself a swamp of deception, intrigue, and awesome-sauce. Hollywood contributes to this atmosphere of doom, fear, paranoia, dread, terror, angst, despair, misery, alienation, and fin de siècle ennui by churning out an almost endless supply of apocalyptic dystopian love songs featuring all manner of dark vision. The result is a jaded populace.
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.