Blogs
I am certain that my grandfather-diagnosed with bipolar disorder in his early twenties-was not affected by technology. He was probably not bombarded by an onslaught of information available at our fingertips. This poses the question: How does rapidly evolving technology influence our mental health recovery?
It's often hard to tell the difference between whether you're explaining something or making excuses for yourself when you have adult ADHD. When you find it difficult to accomplish something and your ADHD symptoms are holding you back, you may try to explain why this is the case and others may think you are making excuses. How can we find the balance in these situations?
Self-Care. I've been sharing my perspective on self-care for parents with a child diagnosed with mental illness for a few months now. So many of the parents I work with don't practice good self-care. It is probably the last thing you think about at the end of a long, hectic day. You have bills to pay, a home to clean and a family to care for. So where do you fit in? When do you get your self-care?
This post provides parents with easy ways to help improve and build their child's self-esteem over the summer months. Simple and fun ways are provided by blogger and therapist Emily Roberts.
Anxiety is worse than wasted time. Wasted time is just lost time, but anxiety is suffering time. Much worse.
In writing and speaking about psychological trauma, I am most often reacting to an ongoing perception that few people really "get it" - about many aspects of this whole class of mental disorders. This multidimensional misunderstanding is seen in many ways:
Today, at AA, we were reading a story from the Big Book. The part that jumped out to me was this:
"It was here that I realized for the first time that as a practicing alcoholic, I had no rights. Society can do anything it chooses to do with me when I am drunk, and I can't lift a finger to stop it, for I forfeit my rights through the simple expedient of becoming a menace to myself and to the people around me."
It made me think about AA sayings that apply to people with borderline personality disorder (BPD).
A normal life is something I’m not very familiar with. I’ve never really had one. From the time I was a kid with an alcoholic father, to the teenage years I spent depressed, to my adult years dealing with psychiatrists, symptoms and medication side effects, I’ve never really enjoyed anything termed normalcy.
But the question is, does anyone with bipolar enjoy a normal life?
According to a recent survey, 90% of surveys referenced on the Internet are entirely fictitious.
According to an entirely different, completely credible, survey, 87% of all information posted on the Internet is “useless, stupid, false, and/or toxic.”
Survey author, Chumley Entwhistle, Dean Of Psychology at Basingstoke University, expanded. When he was finished expanding, he explained.
“All of us remember the first time our parents caught us shooting heroin. We said, ‘But all the kids are doing it.’ To which our parents replied, ‘If all the kids were setting fire to their hair, would you do that too?’ After a considerable amount of soul searching we realized that we would.
Initially, the title of this blog was "A Recipe For Disaster..." But I used to really (stress this) enjoy a few cocktails. Or an entire bottle of cocktail mix. And that nearly killed me.
That aside, in this blog I want to focus on why those living with mental illness may abuse substances, what some of these substances are, and the impact this can have when we are working to recover from mental illness.
Why Might People With Mental Illness Abuse Substances?
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.