Blogs
Success and failure are pretty common words in our everyday lives and they’re also prominent in conversations about mental health. When we see someone in recovery of any sort, we say they’re successful; we do this with ourselves, too. It’s often only when we’re acknowledging our own mental health recovery progress that failure comes into the mix. We feel like failures if we can’t succeed like those around us; we feel like failures if we have setbacks. It is because of that that I feel it would be better to remove the words success and failure from our mental health vocabulary.
Traveling during eating disorder recovery can be tricky. When we get outside of our normal routine, slips have more potential to occur. With proper planning, however, taking trips and sticking to your meal plan is absolutely possible. Here I share my experience and travel tips for your eating disorder recovery.
My name is Mikaela Mariner and I am the new coauthor of Relationships and Mental Illness. I am here to speak on the reality of mental illness and the importance of relationships. With only a few years of recognizing my anxiety and depression, my biggest takeaway thus far is my ability to identify when my mind is trying to take over. Being married to my best friend has been a huge help for me and my primary inspiration to help others. You could say I’ve always been a writer but it wasn’t until recently that I learned exactly what it is I’m supposed to be using my craft for; realizing how to utilize it was a monumental step in my journey.
Anxiety affects me much more than schizoaffective disorder. You see, schizoaffective disorder is a combination of bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. I have schizoaffective disorder, so I have symptoms of schizophrenia and symptoms of bipolar disorder. Then there’s a bonus--generalized anxiety disorder. Bipolar disorder is often accompanied by anxiety disorders. And it's my anxiety symptoms that affect me the most, even more than schizoaffective disorder.
It's okay to request mental health disability for dissociative identity disorder (DID). Dissociative identity disorder affects each person in different ways -- including his or her ability to work. While many people with DID are able to go to school and work regularly, other people have a more difficult time. Severe mental illness can keep you from working, and DID is no different. For some, mental health disability with DID is their only option.
If you have ever suffered from any kind of addiction, then you know that dealing with addiction cravings to avoid relapse isn’t easy. It’s an overwhelming feeling of need that feels like it can only be satisfied by going back to your addiction. I know how it feels – in early sobriety, I had intense addiction cravings that felt all-consuming. I had to learn to deal with them, or I was in danger of relapsing. For me, learning how to deal with the addiction craving was the key to avoiding relapse.
Evidence shows that using cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) to treat anxiety works. Cognitive behavioral therapy focuses on replacing maladaptive thoughts and behaviors with positive, healthy ones. Patients are taught to recognize, question, and refute negative behaviors and thought patterns, and then to replace them with more adaptive versions. By learning to do this, we engage in new ways of thinking and acting. Using CBT to treat anxiety helps us more effectively manage our anxiety symptoms.
Anxiety disorders and mood disorders are two separate experiences. While both involve thoughts, feelings, and actions that are disruptive to life and disproportionate to circumstances, they have different symptoms (they do often occur together, though). Because these are different disorders, anxiety disorders and mood disorders often have different treatment approaches. What should you do, then, when your anxiety behaves like a mood disorder?
My name is Kristen Schou and I am delighted to join the Speaking Out About Self-Injury blog on HealthyPlace. I am so excited to have a platform to share my experiences with self-injury and give advice to help others. Self-injury is a condition that is very stigmatized which causes people not to reach out for the help that they need. My goal for this blog is to help others who are going through the same thing that I went through.
People often say to those suffering with bipolar disorder, “Others have it worse than you.” This is not a helpful statement. We know that others have it worse than us. In fact, others with bipolar have it worse than us; that’s just math. But the fact that others have it worse than us is absolutely irrelevant to our suffering with bipolar.
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.