Photo credit: Towfiqu Barbhuiya on Unsplash.com Happy 2023!! The last three years have lasted what seems like a decade, but if we can survive the surrealism of the Covid-19 pandemic, this year should be a breeze. Right? I hope you had a nice time over the holidays and that you got to spend time with the people who mean the most to you. If you struggle to take your meds, this post is for you. MEDS CAN HELP – IF…
Image credit: Thomas Bormans on Unsplash Welcome to Mental Health Moment (MHM) #13! MHMs are short posts that I write every once in a while as a break from my usual 1500- to 1800-word posts, for your convenience. 😊 This one is a list of simple and effective ways of feeling productive, even on the days when you don’t think you can do anything. LIFE IS NOT BLACK AND WHITE As one of my therapists told me several years…
Photo credit: Christian Erfurt on Unsplash So, Lisa and I went to a concert last week by a band called Badflower. They’re a heavy alternative rock band, and their performance was awesome! We decided to make an evening out of it – dinner and the show. Sounds good, right? Well, my anxiety had other plans for me. It was out of hand from the moment we left the house until after we got to the concert. I was shaky,…
Image credit: Priscilla Du Preez It’s hard to talk about what’s bothering you, isn’t it? When my depression first started, around age fourteen, it was bad. Really bad. In fact, I was suicidal. I apparently told my parents how bad I was feeling (I don’t remember doing that), because I soon started seeing a psychologist. But I wasn’t ready to be “in therapy.” I saw it as a failing, an embarrassment, a sign of weakness, so I didn’t say…
Image credit: Isaac Quesada on Unsplash I’ve felt really good for most of the last year and a half now, and for literally the first time in my 52 years, my depression is in remission. That’s a BIG freaking deal! 😊 But that does not mean I’m completely out of the woods, and it certainly doesn’t mean that it can’t come back and take me down at any time. While I’m feeling decent and going about my life, my…
Image credit: Ryan Searle on Unsplash Welcome to MHM #11! Mental Health Moments are shorter posts that include tips and suggestions for getting through your day without letting your depression get you down. I tend to be a bit wordy in my regular posts; MHMs are my attempt to be a little more palatable for those who don’t want to read longer posts. And now, onto the show! Spring has sprung and we’re on our way to a nice-looking…
Image credit: Amin Moshrefi on Unsplash If there’s one thing I hope we learned in 2020, it’s that we can’t take our health – mental, emotional, physical, or spiritual – for granted. I mean, let’s face it – 2020 sucked. The entire world was thrown into a situation it was mostly unprepared for. That was especially true here in the U.S. Out of the more than 116 million cases of COVID-19 worldwide as of this writing, there have been…
Welcome to Mental Health Moment (MHM) #10! MHMs are shorter posts and often include a list of some sort, making them quicker to read. Image credit: Todd Diemer Do you know what Seasonal Affective Disorder, or SAD, is? It’s a type of depression that’s brought on by a lack of sunlight. It usually hits during the fall and winter months, and it can hit hard. SAD can, less often, bring about dark moods in the spring and summer. It…
Image credit: Ylanite Koppens I was born to write. Unfortunately, I was also born to be depressed. Keeping a traditional journal is one way to get your thoughts and feelings out of your head so you can take a more objective look at them. But writing long-form, even if it’s a rules-free method such as free association or a “vomit draft,” in which you write down whatever comes to mind without censoring it, takes time, energy, and commitment. I…
Image credit: Glenn Carstens-Peters About a month ago, I was feeling quite depressed. And since my depression had been in remission for a while, I was surprised. Despite knowing from experience that I would eventually feel better and be able to get through my days without feeling that damn hole in my heart, I still felt distraught. Depression makes you feel like it’s never going to get better, that you will always feel that way. It is the nature…
Photo by Alexas Fotos It’s a strange time in this world. And honestly, it’s starting to freak me out a little. Depression and anxiety thrive in times of chaos and disarray. People are hoarding essentials like toilet paper, paper towels, bread, meat – even Cap’n Crunch. Much of the U.S. has been either asked or ordered to stay home to slow the spread of the COVID-19 virus. Here in Michigan, we’ve been stuck inside for three weeks, with at least…
Photo by Ryan McGuire What is a safety plan, anyway? A safety plan is a document that lists everything you can think of that will keep you safe from harming yourself or others, or from dipping way down the continuum of depression. I’ve had one for many, many years. I now need to update it because I moved to another state and I need to rebuild my professional support team. Do you have a safety plan? It can be very…
Photo by Sharon McCutcheon on Unsplash Every so often, I like to publish a post about general mental health care. With Thanksgiving and Christmas now in the rear-view mirror and a new year bearing down on us, I thought this would be a good time to remind you to pay more attention to your well-being than you usually do. Certainly, the holidays can bring out the best in people – their smile may be a bit brighter, their words a little less sharp,…
They say that hindsight is 20/20, right? That’s good, because I totally blanked on Suicide Prevention Awareness Week (Sept. 8-14) and World Suicide Prevention Awareness Day (Sept. 10) this year. At least I didn’t miss the entire Suicide Prevention Awareness Month! In hindsight, I realize that I need to be a little more organized when it comes to these things. I haven’t been on the Twitter machine much lately, so I didn’t see the hashtags that are associated with these…
Photo by Maksym Kaharlytskyi on Unsplash I feel small today. Small and quiet. My last post, How to Change Destructive Thinking, has a positive twang to it. It’s all about possibility and how we actually do have the ability to challenge our negative thoughts; we just need the tools to do so. That hasn’t changed. It is still true for me, and it is still true for you. I wrote that post two days ago, published it yesterday, and sent it out…
Photo by Jordan Whitt on Unsplash When you come out to someone about your depression or anxiety, you may encounter any one of a number of responses. Here are a few examples: They give you a hug. They say, “Really? I had no idea.” They ask if they can help. They say something like, “What do you have to be depressed about?” This post is going to address some of the things you really don’t want to say to someone who has depression,…
Welcome to Mental Health Moment (MHM) #7! This post is all about fun (and mostly free) things you can do to combat your depression and anxiety or even keep them at bay. I’ve seen lots of lists of ways to keep yourself busy and distracted, but for the most part, they lack an important ingredient – fun! So I thought I would make up my own list of things you can do fairly easily when you feel depression or anxiety…
Photo by Milada Vigerova on Unsplash Every so often, I like to publish a post about general mental health care. So today, I bring you Mental Health Moment (MHM) #6. I’ve been feeling a bit run-down lately. I know a lot of it is because of the stress I’ve been under recently, but the other part of the equation is that my last round of TMS was in November. The effects of the TMS usually start subsiding after about five or six months,…
