Unfortunately, it is the case that bipolar coping skills can sometimes stop working. This echoes the unpleasant experience of many with medications that can stop working due to tolerance. One doesn’t develop a physical tolerance to a coping skill, but sometimes changes in life or treatment can cause a bipolar coping skill to stop working. Here’s how to handle it when you rely on a bipolar coping skill that just stops working.

By the time my narcissist boyfriend hit me, we were more than a year into our relationship. Though he had yelled at me plenty, I had no clue until the moment his hand crashed into my face that physical violence was in his repertoire. Nor did I know he was a narcissist and already priming another woman to replace me. I did know, having been tipped off by his daughter, that he had kept secret from me an addiction to meth. I should have left upon this discovery, but I was far too enmeshed to escape. Besides, my narcissist boyfriend promised to change and I thought forgiving him was the high road.

Life is good, even with schizoaffective disorder, and I look forward to April 15 when I turn 39. I was 19 ½ when I had my first schizophrenic psychotic episode and that means I developed schizoaffective disorder half my life ago. Life is good with schizoaffective disorder now, but has it always been that way?

Why should you try exercises for depression treatment? Exercise has been widely known to help treat depression. Not only does it release feel-good endorphins, it gives structure to our days as well as distracts us from our depressed thoughts. In this post, you'll find the best exercises for depression treatment.

Being hard on yourself is an unfortunate effect of anxiety. We blame ourselves for this and we chastise ourselves for that. We ruminate about the past and beat ourselves up with worry. We fear things that might happen in the future because we think we’re not good enough to handle this or that. Being so hard on yourself cannot only be an effect of anxiety, but it can also cause increased anxiety. Anxiety and self-hatred exacerbate each other so that it seems that we’re stuck in this awful place forever. In reality, you don’t have to always be so hard on yourself. There are ways to stop and to even start liking yourself.

Writing a goodbye letter to my eating disorder was one of the most challenging—but empowering and rewarding—tasks I was assigned while in treatment for anorexia. As someone who has been using the written word as therapy ever since I learned how to form a sentence, this tool immediately resonated deep within my bones and it's been a crucial guidepost in recovery. This goodbye letter to my eating disorder was a break-up of sorts, a severing of the relationship, an epilogue to the abuse and toxicity. It gave closure to traumas, wounds and regrets from the past while extending permission to move forward in the present. If you haven't tried writing a goodbye letter to your eating disorder, I recommend it. This could be just the motivation you'll need to embark on your own path toward recovering from an eating disorder.

As an individual with complex posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and resulting low self-esteem, I can spend an exhaustive amount of time worrying about how others perceive me. Even though these worries are not the most rational when held up for inspection, they are so automatic that sometimes they slip right out before I have time to think about them. Here are some examples of how my low-self esteem manifests itself and what helps me fight the negativity, warped self-confidence and low self-esteem caused by my PTSD.

Is it true that one dissociative identity disorder (DID) headmate can kill another headmate? Every DID system is different, including the way the headmates address conflict and the dislike amongst each other. It is not uncommon for parts to dislike a headmate in their system. Some systems believe that it is possible and permissible to kill a DID headmate if they pose a threat to other alters or the system as a whole. Some might feel that it would just be easy if "X" headmate or "Y" part did not exist and that killing the headmate would be easier. Given the discord among many headmates, is it possible for one headmate to kill another headmate?

There's no doubt that weather affects our mental health as anyone's mood can be affected by the weather. I live in Toledo, and many people complain about our weather. I think the weather is the best part of living here. I’ve always been fascinated with weather and I love living in an area that has four distinct seasons. I thought this article on the effects of weather on mental health would be timely considering April is the start of Ohio’s tornado season.