[caption id="attachment_811" align="alignleft" width="170" caption="a reminder of hope - and the need to be prepared"][/caption] Today is my son Ben’s 30th birthday. Whoa. How did this happen? I know every parent feels this same sense of disbelief as their children celebrate milestones; still, when your child has dealt with serious illness, that sense of wonder is enhanced by the fear you have felt in the past. I remember asking myself: will Ben even live to be 30? I know there are many parents who share these fears for many different reasons – even with perfectly healthy children, fear of losing your child is part of the beautiful package of love. No, Ben has  not been diagnosed with cancer or heart disease. He has not been deployed to a war zone. Ben has schizophrenia, a physical illness of the brain. Yes, it has changed our family forever. But is it life-threatening? You bet it is.

Addiction recovery, or for that matter, any recovery, requires a certain amount of patience in yourself as you learn new healthy coping skills. Some people who struggle with addiction have struggled for years, and brain pathways have developed around the craving and use of substances. In order to change behaviors, there is absolutely going to be an amount of time where you feel uncomfortable, unsure of yourself, and feel out of your comfort zone. That is because the addiction was the comfort zone for so long, no matter how devastating the consequences.

What does verbal abuse sound like? The tone and content varies from abuser to abuser, but the words effect the victim in similar ways. Victims hear horrible things from their abuser and they feel small, withdrawn, angry, helpless, sad, shame, and a hundred other horrible emotions - sometimes all at once.

An underlying premise of schema therapy is that people with borderline personality disorder operate in different modes, including Abandoned Child mode. In this video, I talk about the Abandoned Child mode and how to cope with it.

When I think of intimacy, I think of the ability to share personal insights or facts with another person who will keep them between the two of us and hold them gently. Holding my personal fears, joys, mistakes and successes gently is important to me. When my abuser would manipulate the intimate facts of me to control me, I felt he betrayed me just as if he had stood on a rooftop and blurted private facts of me into a bullhorn. And yet, although my intimacies often came back to bite me in the butt, I kept sharing them with him! Why? Because I thought that sharing brought closeness, appreciation, understanding, and love. I thought I could force him to love me the way I wanted by being completely open and honest.

The story of Salecia Johnson--a 6-year-old Kindergarten student who was handcuffed and arrested following a destructive tantrum--received widespread media attention. That this unfortunate event occurred at all is bad enough--the public's response has been even worse.

Is addiction a disease? This question has been up for debate for many years. If so, how does addiction qualify as a disease?

Recently, I was talking with someone on Twitter and she was concerned about the side effects of psychiatric medication X. I asked her what her starting dose was for the psych medication and she said 15 mg. Now, I’m not a doctor, but I can tell you two things: That is ridiculous. That will certainly make the patient stop the medication early due to side effects and never even find out if it works.

I'm not sure, are you? Ask yourself the loaded question: "I have a mental illness. Am I really sick?" When I ask myself this question my mind conjures up this: "No, sometimes life just gets a bit tough, but doesn't it for us all?" And then my inner psyche rambles on about how the disease of mental illness, the 'sick' part of it, is nothing like, say, a broken leg or bout of pneumonia. But that's not the point.

Self-esteem boosters are a good way to begin your journey to building or improving your self-esteem. When you are feeling insecure, nervous, or lacking confidence and self-esteem in a situation, your body language reflects it. Remember the first day of school when you were growing up? Were the confident kids the ones looking down at their shoes, mumbling, and standing shrugging their shoulders? No, they were the ones who were smiling at you, inviting you to sit with them at lunch, and walking around the halls with a purpose. Think about how this plays out in adulthood. Do you walk around like the shy kid who gets pushed around in a crowded cafeteria, or the self-assured, student who has no problem raising her hand in class and making new friends?