A few people have recently asked me how I deal with negative talk about body image when comments are made around me.  While the following five tips are my ways of coping, I think they are universal enough to perhaps help you, too, when you find yourself in these types of situations:

I just sent in my life insurance premium. It was due in July. It wasn't entirely my Adult ADHD that lead to my paperwork being incomplete for so long - my wife and I use an online bank and we had ordered new checks months ago and they didn't come until mid-August. That has so little to do, though, with me sending it in tomorrow. If the premium was due late July, I should have sent it in mid-August - not mid-September. Paperwork is one of my least favorite adult needs.

When I’m in a full out major depressive episode (MDE) or on the cusp of one, there are few things that can put me in a positive frame of mind. That’s why it is so important to practice positivity when I’m in depression remission.

In this two-part series, I speak with former Congressman Patrick Kennedy, D-RI, about mental health stigma and the work he and others are doing, not only to combat stigma, but to bring research into brain disorders and illnesses to the forefront. Kennedy is a co-founder of One Mind for Research, a group dedicated to brain disorder research. In this interview, Kennedy speaks about mental health stigma; the role his uncle, President John F. Kennedy played in bringing about treatment to local communities, and the role of post-tramatic stress in the "astronomical" suicide rate of today's veterans.

In the book Hagakure, samurai Tsunetomo Yamamoto writes about an alcoholic samurai. More Than Borderline blog author, Becky Oberg, examines what this tale can teach us about making mistakes.

Grief is a curious thing; especially when the mourner has a mental illness.  My mother died a month ago today from a combination of COPD, heart failure, diabetes, brain and bone cancer.  Her breast cancer had metastasized to every organ in her body.  I found out via my aunt 5 days after her death.  I wish that I could say that I was surprised, but my mother had chosen a hard life for years.  The surprise was how quickly she died after the brain cancer diagnosis.  She was diagnosed in May and given a year to live; she was dead in less than 3 months.   My mother and I had what could best be described as an awkward relationship:  abandonment as an infant, a lengthy court battle before my grandparents got guardianship and very limited contact throughout my life.

During my self-harming years, writing was my main outlet and focus. All my life, I’ve been writing, but as a teenager dealing with deep depression and a parent’s divorce, writing became more than just a hobby. It became the one coping skill I could really count on. Well, until my floppy disk would crash (yes, floppy disk). I’m not trying to push writing onto self-harmers who are seeking a positive coping skill to replace their negative one. I’m just putting it out there as an option. There are many other creative ways that can help you stop harming yourself. But since writing is the skill that practically saved my life, it is the one I know best.

For all of us, and when I say “us” I refer, of course, to those who society might describe in terms less than entirely flattering, for example, “laughing academy graduates”, “strange rangers”, “those who dance to the beat of a different marsupial”, and of course, “Followers of Lord Whackadoomious”, to cite only the most widely circulated, familiar to schoolchild and senior citizen alike, there comes a time and, speaking from experience I assure you it is a time one remembers

So, you've made the decision to recover from your eating disorder -- awesome!  Now what?  Everything is puppies and rainbows and unicorns and all you have to do is eat, right? Well, yes, you have to eat (sorry, no way around that one!), but it's not really about what you're doing necessarily - but about what you're NOT doing. You're not restricting, you're not overexercising, you're not bingeing, you're not purging, you're not taking x, y, and z pills. And you are going to want to do all of those things (and more) during the course of your eating disorder recovery.

Summer's end is always bittersweet for me. It is probably my favorite time of the year. I still carrying the excitement for the warm weather, vacations and happy bliss that comes with summertime. So just as Bob laments back-to-school time, I feel a little sad when the end of summer comes.