Blogs
While trying to overcome negative thoughts, you may not have simply given in to them. This surprising method of dealing with negative self-talk can be extremely powerful.
Few people think of anxiety as a scheduling affair; however, conceptualizing anxiety relief as something that involves planning can help you schedule away your anxiety. Imagine being able to schedule anxiety out of your life. There are multiple ways to do it. Here we'll explore three different ways to use the concept of scheduling to drastically reduce anxiety.
Is your job causing your depression? I get it. Work is supposed to be stressful. It's called work and not play for a reason, after all. But there's a difference between experiencing stress on occasion and experiencing stress every single day. In fact, it's possible that what you think is stress is actually depression, and that your job is what is causing your depression.
If you know someone who is struggling with low self-esteem, you may have many instinctive reactions about how best to help him or her. Also, when that person is someone you deeply care about, you may think that you have to go to a lot of extra effort to boost his or her self-esteem; which is understandable – it just shows you’re trying to be supportive. However, for someone who has low self-esteem, there are certain things you might say which – although said with positive intentions – can be quite unhelpful. In fact, certain comments can make that person feel worse about themselves. Here are some examples of things to avoid saying to someone with low self-esteem.
Radical acceptance is a term often taught in dialectical behavior therapy. It pulls from Buddhist principles and is the act of fully accepting reality just as it is. I have found that many of the DBT principles are simple in theory but difficult to implement. Radical acceptance is no exception, but there are many benefits of radically accepting things you cannot change.
Do you know how many alters your system contains? Can you ever really know how many parts you have?
Going on vacation with borderline personality disorder can bring added challenges. A few years ago, when I was on vacation with my friend in France, I found myself crying on the bathroom floor in the middle of the night becoming increasingly distressed and desperate to be at home. I love going on vacation and being lucky enough to explore new places, but there are times when going away causes me additional challenges for managing my borderline personality disorder (BPD).
What is your inner GPS? Some call it intuition. Others call it a "gut feeling." No matter the label, we all have an internal GPS that guides us. But what happens when your inner GPS is recalibrated to someone else's objectives? This recalibration is the result of a verbally abusive relationship. The abuser will work their magic to undo our self-trust and put that trust into their hands. When this happens, we feel as though there is no place to turn, and the minute we get lost, the recalibration begins.
My relationship with sex after trauma hasn't been a good one. You see, when I was 16, I got drunk at a concert. On the train ride home, I drifted off. When I woke up, a stranger's hand was in my underwear. I pushed his hand away and he sped into the next train car. My reaction was a feeling of shame; I blamed myself for the sexual assault. I shouldn't have gotten drunk; I shouldn't have worn a skirt; I should have been more responsible. With the support of my parents, I eventually reported the incident, but the shame remained.
Bad mental health days hurt, in no small part because they make me feel so alone. It's hard for me to ask for help, but I'm trying to get better at it because it turns out, having some support can make a world of difference on bad mental health days.
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.