I ask myself, "How much time alone is too much time alone?" on a regular basis. When it is 6 p.m. and I have been writing all day and have not left my house for more than thirty minutes to walk my dog. Or when it is 4 p.m. and I am exhausted because the sun has slipped away again and I'm getting sort of sad. Spending time alone, being able to be alone, is healthy. But when you live with a mental illness, spending too much time alone, well, take it from me--it gets pretty lonely.

If you haven’t been turning in to Homeland, you’ve been missing out on a new bipolar icon. Homeland stars Carrie Mathison, played by Claire Danes, a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) office who, unbeknownst to her employer, has bipolar disorder. Homeland is no average show. Homeland won Best Show, Best Writing, Best Actor and Best Actress Emmys. You can catch Homeland on Showtime in the US and Super Channel in Canada. Of course, the reason I tuned is was to see how this show handles mental illness. And they do not too bad a job.

If you were once depressed and suffered symptoms of depression such as inability to concentrate, difficulty getting out of bed, irritability, low self-esteem and lessened joy in day-to-day activities, even when those symptoms disappear, you may continue to state that you still suffer from depression. When you are bogged down with the flu, you will be besieged by a number of symptoms. Sore throat, digestive difficulties, headache, nausea and nasal congestion. But once you treat the flu, and the symptoms disappear, you wouldn’t consider yourself as still suffering from the flu.

My son, Ben, who lives with paranoid schizophrenia, is in the process of rebuilding his life. After years of feeling buried under symptoms, distracted by hospitalizations, rejected from opportunities, and feeling left behind by friends whose lives had followed more predictable paths unfettered by mental illness, he is also (dare I say it? Yes!) reclaiming his future. So far, so good. Living with Mental Illness. Steps toward Recovering Life. Reclaiming his future. How delicious. How marvelously hopeful. And it's a phrase I heard echoed this week at a breakfast briefing of the International Center for Clubhouse Development (ICCD) in New York City. I love this phrase, because it's not only full of hope, it is full of truth - for those who manage to find their way to a Clubhouse, embrace its community, and take advantage of its opportunities.

When you've got an urge to self-injure, it's good to have an alternative list of healthy coping mechanisms to use. This helps you avoid physically harming yourself when dealing with dfficult emotions. In this video blog, I discuss several healthy alternatives to self-injury behavior, and talk about some common controversial methods and whether I think they work or don't work to stop self-injuring.

There are a lot of things I don’t believe in. Religion. Ghosts. Tarot card readers. Tea leaves. Homeopathy. Taylor Swift. And so on. We all can make a list like this. We all have things we believe in and things that we don’t. But one thing we all have in common is that we’re all looking for ways to get through the pain of mental illness, bipolar disorder. And some people find religion, ghosts, tarot card readers, tea leaves, homeopathy or Taylor Swift comforting. And I think it’s important we don’t disavow or judge something just because we don’t believe in it.

When you live your entire life with mental illness your relationship with the particular nemesis tormenting you goes through a long, evolutionary arc. What do I mean by this? Let’s find out. At first there is the glorious warm bath known as victim-hood, in which we indulge as long as possible until at last the water turns cold, grimy and inhospitable. At that moment we must look directly into the pitiless, unflinching eyes of reality’s rubber ducky. We fantasize about having ourselves dry-cleaned. Our lament of how unfair this all is must finally be returned to our children, where it belongs. Fairness, as we have told them so many times, is not of this world. Stuff happens. Deal with it as best you can but please, no whining.

Do you remember vinyl records? When they had a scratch, the needle would stick in the groove and the same line would sing over and over and over until you moved the needle off the crack. Sometimes we can feel like we have that “broken record” in our heads, repeating negative thought patterns, negative self-talk, doubts, worries. Sometimes it is the voices from our past who told us we would never be good enough, or didn’t try hard enough and now even though that person isn’t here, the voice plays on and on and on.

I remember being a little girl--my hair was curly and my mother put pink ribbons in it. Apparently, I was pretty cute, but I'm certain it's a mothers blessing to honestly believe they have the best looking little ones. That aside, I remember a life in which I was not afraid of the future. I was excited! I had lots and lots of plans, some of them secret and some of them I told everyone I could. When I grew up I wanted to be a doctor and an actress and as pretty as the babysitter who occasionally took care of my siblings and I. I was not afraid of the future; I was still young and pure as only children are. I had not yet been diagnosed with a chronic mental illness.

Addiction is both a societal as well as an individual problem. We have tried to tackle this issue for eons but have not discovered the true root cause of addiction.