It can be challenging to be a friend of a person with bipolar disorder. I freely admit this. I know that my life is difficult for me to deal with and, certainly, it can be difficult for anyone else. Nevertheless, friendship with a person who has bipolar disorder can be just as rewarding as any other friendship.

Making friends at work when you have depression is important because social support is an integral part of a healthy life. Even the most introverted among us need friends. Depression inherently affects the way we interact with others. Feelings of loneliness are a common sign of depression and the symptoms of depression often result in the desire to isolate yourself, which only further compounds the feeling of being alone. It can feel impossible to reach out when you're depressed, but if you can establish a healthy support network, you have a lifeline during moments when it feels like depression is encompassing your whole world. This is particularly beneficial at work, where you spend most of your time. This is why it’s in your best interest to try to make friends at work, even with depression.

When in the depths of relationship abuse, you're probably considering how your abuser is sabotaging your life. While being proactive and optimistic are important and beneficial, understanding your circumstances is as well. Relationship abuse commonly consists of many abusive behaviors that are sabotaging to the victim's life, and while not all of the behaviors below may be the case for every abusive relationship, there are certainly many that may feel familiar for different cases. Warning, bleak reality checks ahead.

It's one thing to recognize examples of gaslighting abuse in a relationship, but it can be difficult to know how to respond. Part of the problem with gaslighting abuse is that if it were easy to spot, it wouldn't be so effective. The reason these abuse tactics are so insidious is because gaslighters expose themselves gradually, but not without first discovering what makes us tick. As gaslighting abuse targets, we need to understand why and how gaslighters work to get us under their thumb so we can figure out how to respond. You will learn some examples of gaslighting abuse and how to respond to it if you keep reading.

The effect of exercise on mental health and mental illness isn't what most people think. One of the go-to remedies for those who don’t understand mental illness is to suggest those who have a mental illness exercise as if it’s a cure. It’s often used in the argument that pharmaceuticals are bad by saying regular exercise is the only real cure. While being active can have a positive effect on some people, it’s still not a cure for mental illnesses. Because of that, the suggestion of exercise to fix them is very much a notion of stigma because of its oversimplification and misunderstanding of mental illness.

Separation anxiety in children is an intense fear of being separated from a loved one. It's considered normal in infants and toddlers. In older kids, it may be a sign of an anxiety disorder. As the parent of a child with disruptive mood dysregulation disorder (DMDD), I often find myself wondering if what he experienced in early childhood was separation anxiety or the signs of the emotional disorder to come.

If you struggle with anxious thoughts, there's a chance that you tend to magnify your problems. I've been there before, and sometimes it's hard to catch yourself doing it. However, once you master identifying this problem, you can decrease your anxiety (and anxious thoughts) by problem-solving quicker.

Sleep is my escape, and I need it because schizoaffective disorder causes so much stress in my life. I also suffer a lot from schizoaffective depression. Sleep is an escape -- like a magic getaway. I look forward to going to sleep every night.

Anxiety facts can help with one of the most maddening things about anxiety. That is, anxiety makes you feel like you don’t understand yourself anymore. If your anxiety has lasted for a long time, you might feel that you’ve never fully understood yourself. You know you feel terrible: worried, fearful, stressed, and gripped by a cycle of rumination and overthinking. You’re pretty sure it’s anxiety, but you check and double check references to be sure because you wonder if it’s actually anxiety or something else. These five anxiety facts might help you understand yourself and your own anxiety.